Taking the Leap

Reflections from a programming newb

There’s a huge disconnect between saying you want to learn to code and actually taking the leap. The “wanting to learn” part is simple, it’s dichotomous. You know nothing now, but at some specified time in the future you’ll “know how to code” (even though you don’t know what that means yet) and everything will be great. If you just finish that lesson in Codecademy you’ll be building complex websites in no time. But if you make it far enough you’ll realize that’s not the case.

Learning requires diving head first into an unknown world of functions, HTTP requests, databases, the command line, and a whirlwind of other unfamiliar concepts. It’s kind of like culture shock. It’s not as simple as “learning a language” - it requires wrapping your head around an entirely new way of conceptualizing things. It can be intimidating, but you’ll only get better if you put yourself out there. Ask a dumb question on stackoverflow. Attempt to speak the language. Make yourself vulnerable.

Things will get messy, and you’ll realize it’s not as black and white as knowing and not knowing. Its an ongoing learning curve, and the best way to get better is to build something, even if you have no idea where to begin. I followed some tutorials at first, but at a point I found myself blindly copying and pasting code. The best learning has come from building projects that I want to use. The first Rails site I built was this silly little app called Codecation, where users could post a discussion topic related to programming. Then I got a little more fancy with an API directory, a sort of Yelp for APIs.

No matter what you make, you can always keep improving. Let users create an account. Improve the UI with some Ajax. Add a new feature that makes everything break before it works again. Depending on how you look at it, your app is never finished. Like the process of learning to code, it’s a constant work in progress. Sometimes the process makes you want to throw your computer up in disgust. But if you push through those moments, you’ll see it’s exhilarating and you’ll never want to stop.