I have been programming for couple of years and am generally good when it comes to fixing problems and creating small-to-medium scripts, however, I'm generally not good at designing large scale programs in object oriented way. Few questions

1. Recently, a colleague who has same number of years of experience as me and I were working on a problem. I was working on a problem longer than him, however, he came up with a better solution and in the end we're going to use his design. This really affected me. I admit his design is better, but I wanted to come up with a design as good as his. I'm even contemplating quitting the job. Not sure why but suddenly I feel under some pressure e.g. what would juniors think of me and etc? Is it normal? Or I'm thinking a little too much into this?

2. My job involves programming in Python. I try to read source code but how do you think I can improve me design skills? Are there any good books or software that I should study?

Please enlighten me. I will really appreciate your help.