I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING
Or: I wish coding were like reading a knitting pattern
Three weeks ago I started the Front End Web Development course with Thinkful. I’m still in the early stages of learning and, as exhilarating as it can be learning a new skill, as a mother far into her career it can also be overwhelmingly frustrating. This weekend I spent my entire Saturday ignoring my family while I pounded away at my Thinkful assignment. What I built was nice… for a first try; it’s just not exactly what I’d planned in my wireframe, and I needed help; I was feeling defeated.
You see, I’m coming into this with very little experience. I learned HTML to built a website (and I’m showing my age here) in 1997 for an assignment on the “psychology of design” [pause here to think about how that 90's site must have looked]. Since then, I used minimal HTML on my blogspot site and in flickr from around 2000–2006. Basically, I knew how to link, make something bold and insert an image. HTML has changed a lot since then, and so have I!
In February, I moved to a more technical position at the non-profit organization I work for; since then, we've developed a WordPress microsite for our I&R department; it’s now all mine, and I love it. I started up a campaign management system, and built the online registration (using eventbrite) for our free workshops and support groups. I also built pages to show a visitor the full scope of my non-profit’s services by region and by type; while it’s an improvement on what we had, it’s not perfect and it’s time to branch out to make our online information more ours; more interactive; more *now*. My company is about to embark on a new journey, new site, and a new CMS with a Drupal shop, and I want to play a large role in it. To do so, I need to know more than my basic HTML, which is why I chose Thinkful to help me develop my FEWD skills. I know this is a new skill that will take time and won’t be easy, but still! I was frustrated that it wasn't working the way I wanted it to, so I ended up in Slack posting to my fellow students and mentors:
So where does the knitting coming in?
I wrote the six stages because I needed to know the challenges weren't just me; to make sure I shouldn't just quit because I don’t have the brain for it. I got the support and reinforcement I needed, with extra encouragement after Thinkful blogged what I wrote. Their blog post made me re-read what I had written in Slack, and I remembered something; I felt this way about learning to knit too! It was Hard; vexing; “impossible” even, but I’d walk away, do something completely different and, when I came back to it with fresh eyes (and a new level of patience), I would often find I could get a little further. Sometimes I would be truly stuck and would have to ask for help from someone with more experience than me; It’s how I had a knit blog: to connect to others doing this crazy thing called knitting.
Granted, coding isn’t knitting, though there has been plenty of discussion about how the 2 relate; but, the truth is, since those days of annoyance, I've knit a lot. My knitting skills are admired; I’m pretty good. I've written patterns, can knit in the dark watching a movie, and I find it one of the most relaxing and satisfying things I can do. Maybe one day, I’ll have similar feelings about building a website.
This is my first blog post since April 2006 — which was about knitting, of course. You can follow me on twitter to find out when I’ll post erratically about my experiences learning code @cabechler. If you’d like to share your experiences as a new coder, I’d love to hear how you’re doing it and how it’s working out for you.