Learning to Code in the Cold
The day is almost over, but there’s still time to celebrate. But what are we celebrating today? Well, the people we’re commemorating write in strange languages with names like C#, Java, Python, JavaScript, Go, Ruby, Haskell, Swift, COBOL, and BASIC (to name just a few). That’s right, today is Day of the Programmer.
I didn’t learn to write code until my mid-thirties. And it was a whammy of an introduction, for I attended an intensive four month coding bootcamp.
Coding bootcamps are controversial. Many critics argue that bootcamps, no matter the intensity, simply don’t provide an adequate breadth of experience to prepare graduates for a career in software development. It seems highly suspect to claim that a mere semester’s worth of daily training can match the depth of a traditional university degree.
And I’m not one to entirely disagree.
However, my bootcamp did teach me some things that my university experience didn’t. And I’m not talking merely about how to use technology.
Bootcamp was no walk in the park. Within the first week of classes we were writing simple Java programs in good ol’ clunky Eclipse and committing our code to GitHub. Think about it: in that one week we were taught the basics of Java, Git, and GitHub. To programming geniuses, this might not sound like much, but to plebeian programmers like me, it sure felt like drinking from the fire hose.
And the fire hose only became more powerful each and every week.
After Java came JavaScript, and CSS, and finally web hosting. By the bootcamp’s completion, we were capable of building our own web based applications from scratch—and that’s exactly what we did. For the culmination of the coursework was a team built application that we showed off to local recruiters and employers.
But, as I hinted earlier, that wasn’t the heart of the experience: grit and determination were.
I took the bootcamp during the winter and, in my part of the country, that meant bitter cold. And I wasn’t one for driving to campus. This meant that even getting to the classroom was a struggle. Wrapped in layers, I fought the biting winds and cautioned across slippery sidewalks.
But the difficulties were nowhere near ending once I arrived. Everyday was a lesson in my own technological ignorance. And every evening was spent in a lonely solitude in which I’d attempt to unravel the arcane mysteries of the day’s lessons. Sometimes it’d make sense, yet other times it was as opaque as a Delphic divination.
It was an extremely numbing time, both within and without.
Yes, I thought of giving up. I thought at times that this stuff could only be grasped by minds more nimble than mine. However, as the days wore on, the weather became warmer and the lessons, somehow, became more comprehensible. At some point, I was no longer learning how to program. Rather, I was becoming a programmer. The information was no longer an esoteric script discernible to the chosen few. I had somehow crossed the boundary into the culture of coders.
This didn’t mean that I knew everything. Far from it. But I did know how to ask the sort of questions that programmers ask and I knew how to find answers the way that programmers do. All that information had magically transformed into an art and a skill.
The snow had melted and the gray clouds passed.
And all I had to do was hold on.
So, on this Day of the Programmer, let’s celebrate not just the technological wonderland that we live in. Let’s also acknowledge the spirit of determination that made it all possible.
Happy Day of the Programmer!