LOVE IN THE TIME OF CODING
♬ Listen to this Story or Read it in German, French, Spanish
Being an older brother is one of the best experiences I never knew I was going to have. Growing alongside your brother opens your eyes to the world around you unlike anything else.
This is a story about me watching my brother, Hugo, overcome.
Hugo has always been a bit of an enigma. For a while, the world would have referred to him as an indigo child. A child of passion. And while the textbooks couldn’t hold his attention for long enough to make a dent in this grades, he had something else. He saw beauty in things that others didn’t. He could listen to a song on the radio and replicate it in a matter of minutes on the family piano, because he understood a language a lot of people don’t.
A couple of years ago, he started studying Sound Engineering. And while he was doing well in his course, he got a bit of bad news that threw him off course. He was diagnosed with Vitiligo; a rare skin condition that cause large portions of skin to lose its pigmentation. Specialists told him that there was no cure, and that it is likely to spread to his face within a year or two.
So here’s my little brother, already not fitting in with the status quo, being told that not only does he think differently, but soon he would look different too. He didn’t take it well. His confidence and ambition plummeted. After dropping out of his sound engineering course, he got a job working at a pizza restaurant and, later, a DIY store.
The worst thing was, none of us knew why this was happening. He kept the Vitiligo a secret — that didn’t help us understand what he was going through. It’s tough to keep someone motivated when you think they’ve given into laziness or bad influences amongst his friends.
After some time, he managed to gain a little bit of confidence back when he became a draftsman at an engineering firm. A huge step up from where he was, the position keeps his mind busy — he was learning every day. That said, he still wasn’t working with passion. He wasn’t following his heart.
Recently, he discovered what that was; and that’s where his story gets interesting.
Do you remember the first time you discovered something that completely captivated all of your attention? Something that evokes child-like wonder. Something that intrigues you so much that you stop doing whatever you’re doing at any time, just so that you can go back to doing that something? That something just happened to be one of the most useful hobbies someone could have these days.
Hugo started learning how to code.
Watching your brother turn from a shy, young man with no ambition — into someone with purpose; someone who literally can’t sleep from the excitement and wakes up in the middle of the night to learn more — to do more.
I’ve always thought that the incredible power of coding lies in the fact that you can create experiences from a couple of characters — you have the power to make something from nothing. Ironic that this is what coding did to Hugo.
After an early adult life often spent alone, I started to see him going out, hanging out with his friends, having fun, meeting new people. There was a new-found energy in his life.
Only a few weeks ago, he received an inbox on Instagram from a German girl taking photos of Cape Town for a stock photography site. She had seen his (@hugo_prinsloo) photos featured on some of the bigger travel accounts and asked if he’s keen to meet up for a coffee so that she could get to know the CPT better.
What started out as a friendly coffee, soon turned into a summer that changed everything. You see, she (Carina) only had six weeks left in the Cape. Even though they knew that they had a limited time together, they didn’t want these three weeks to slip by. So they made a bold choice. A choice to make the most of every minute available to them, together.
With Hugo’s energy and confidence already on the up, Carina’s involvement only did more good. As I said, she was in Cape Town on a business trip. She needed to work every day. He decided to keep the momentum. We all know how passion and energy don’t come around often, we need to grab these opportunities with both hands. So every day, while she was at work, Hugo was at his computer. Learning how to code. More specifically, he was learning Swift — a language for iOS, OS X, tvOS, and watchOS.
As their time together ticked over, Carina didn’t know that Hugo was documenting everything they did for one of the most romantic reasons digitally possible.
After an incredible summer in Cape Town, the time came for Carina to fly back home. Although both of them had been holding off that reality, Hugo’s wiser part had planned for it. He had secretly spent all of her working hours working so that he could code an app — just for her. An app that he downloaded to her phone without her knowing.
As she sat on the plane, ready for her 12 hour flight, he send her a message that read “ There is an app on your phone called Flash Back. It should keep you entertained for your flight home”.
He had created an interactive diary of their time together. A password-protected, vault of the incredible memories they had made. Pictures, videos, voice recordings and anecdotes that he had gathered without her knowing. From the sound of their glasses clinking on one of their many dates, to the Afrikaans word she had learned over the time and even an hour-long film that he had edited. It was all there for her, whenever she wanted it. Have a look at the video screen-grab.
Now, I’m not sharing this with you all because it’s one of the most romantic things I’ve seen. I’m sharing it with you because I truly believe that it’s these times in life that change everything. Hugo found the kind of momentum that many people never manage to find. Stories like that are worth sharing. The more people who know what kind of man my brother has become, the more opportunity there’s going to be for him to become even more.
And besides, isn’t this just the most awesome sign of the times?
Update: My brother received a great offer yesterday. He will be joining the iOS development team of one of South Africa’s leading e-commerce companies from 1 April.
