Learning to code is my stress relief

Ryan Morrison
Jul 28, 2017 · 2 min read
The code for a simple Flag Game

My wife has been on at me for years to “get a hobby”. Something that isn’t watching TV or playing games. But after a day at work, cooking dinner and helping get the kids to bed – there wasn’t time.

Then in June 2017, after finding myself get distressed very quickly over things I never used to care about I decided the time had come to get a hobby at last. Something to take my mind off life.

Sport has never been something I’ve cared about so that was out. I can’t cycle due to problems with my knees, I already play guitar there isn’t the room at home to take up painting.

So I took up coding. Specifically coding on a Mac for iOS. Within a month I had my first app on the Apple App Store.

OK the app doesn’t do much but it is live. It’s a simple tapping game where you have to click on the screen as many times as possible within ten seconds. That’s it. So far about 50 people have downloaded it.

You can download Tap Stars on the Apple App Store if you like.

Since I started my coding journey I’ve made half a dozen or so very basic apps that do everything from let you guess the flag of a country to convert the age of your dog into human years.

My wife asked me what I wanted to get out of this, after telling me she didn’t mean a computer based hobby, and I just want to get better at it. That’s it.

Coding for me is like reading or writing for someone else. It is basically a distraction from ordinary life and a chance to just do something fun with an immediate result.

Ryan Morrison

Written by

Digital Content Producer, media officer, journalist, iOS developer and science student with the Open University.

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