Not a Programmer
My name is Richard and I am not a programmer. I am a car guy. I worked in the industry for 23 years until I couldn’t do it anymore.
I have been interested in programming for a long time but for some reason, I never really seriously pursued it. I had an Apple II back in the 80’s (yes, I am that old) and I really loved it.
About 10 years ago, I started trying to learn HTML and PHP. I would use my feeble programming skills to try to develop applications related to my day job. Unfortunately, it never seemed to go anywhere and my sites weren’t as good as the professional ones.
Lost in the Woods
I found Free Code Camp while Googling “how to learn to code online for free”. The curriculum looked pretty ambitious and I really wasn’t sure I was willing to make the commitment, but I thought I would try it and see where it took me. My thought was, any time spent learning on FCC was not wasted. I will be honest, up until that point, I pretty much hated JavaScript. I would do anything I could to emulate front end functionality with back end script (PHP) which was painful and bad.
It turned out that I really liked FCC. The exercises were just challenging enough and progressively built on each other. One of the problem with wallowing around with PHP on my own for 10 years is that I had no idea if I was trying to do something simple or hard or even possible.
I really didn’t know much about Bootstrap or jQuery or GitHub. There are so many languages and sites out there, how are you supposed to know where to spend your time? Or how to go about learning. Fortunately, FCC gives you a road map for these things. Sometimes it feels more like The Hunger Games than camping, but the cannon hasn’t gone off for me yet.
Infinite Loop
I have spent more than my share of time programming in circles. One day, it dawned on me that maybe I wasn’t very good at solving problems. I eventually stumbled upon a Hungarian mathematician and teacher named George Pólya who wrote a book called How to Solve It. It describes a 4 step process to solve any problem:
1) Understand the problem
2) Develop a plan
3) Execute the plan
4) Review and reflect
Pólya says that understanding the problem is the most important step and the one that most people generally skip. He suggests looking at the problem from multiple angles, breaking it down, and assuming nothing. This seems to apply quite well to programming. You might have to start again with “Hello World!” but at least it works.
I can’t tell you how much time I have spent Googling, trying something, and Googling again. After a few hours, I can’t even remember what I’ve tried or even what the original problems was. The purple visited links in Google are the only road map for my descent into madness.
Elon Musk says it is very important to ask the right questions. If you can’t find your question on Google, perhaps you’ve found some esoteric wrinkle in the space / time continuum. Or maybe you are not focused on the right problem or the right solution or you are not asking the right questions. Sometimes all you need is a little “Hello World!” to get you back on track.
Bottom line, this shit is not easy. It isn’t for everybody. Every time you start a new project, you’re faced with the distinct possibility that you will get stuck. You feel useless and stupid. It seems like you are wasting your time. You’re not. Every minute you are working on a problem, you are learning. You know more than you did yesterday and you will know even more tomorrow. Nothing worthwhile is ever easy or is done without effort. But when your code does finally work, it is pretty awesome.
