There's a specific kind of frustration that comes early in learning anything: you can see clearly that what you've made isn't good, but you can't yet see why, or what to do differently.
Ira Glass described this better than anyone. Your taste develops faster than your ability. For a while — sometimes a long while — the gap is just something you live with.
I think about this often when I'm learning something new. The gap is evidence that you're developing taste. It's uncomfortable, but it's not a sign you're failing. It's a sign the feedback loop is working.
What the gap feels like in software
You read code that's clean and clear and you think: yes, that's what I want to write.
Then you open your own files.
The instinct is to attribute the gap to experience or intelligence. But I think it's mostly just hours — accumulated decisions, accumulated mistakes, accumulated pattern-matching.
The only cure is to keep making things and to stay honest about what isn't working yet.
The gap closes. Slowly, then suddenly, like most things worth waiting for.