THE ‘HELLO WORLD’ LOOP
I realized a couple of weeks back how lucky I am to understand tech and how to program. I predict learning to code will become a necessity or a basic need some time in the near future. We have been here before. In the 1900’s the computer networking landscape changed from being privately held to being released for use by the public. If I well remember history class, computers during their early phases were used in military spaces or secret and highly guarded institutions. Fast forward a century later and I find myself writing this article at the comfort of my phone, once regarded a ‘kabambe’ used only for SMS and calls hence my case in point.
Personally, I wish programming was introduced to me at an early age. I know of friends, very smart people who have gone to Ivy leagues, the likes of Harvard, MIT, Yale to pursue computer science for their undergraduate. They speak of being in class with students who started learning the craft before they knew how to walk. These guys were toddlers and by the time they were teens, they understood complex algorithms. Now if you’ve ever been in a computer class and a new algorithm was introduced, you’d wish you had a bottle of whiskey to soothe your burning brain. So to learn this at a younger age and understand it seems quite daunting, right?
We might say they are a somewhat clustered percentage of brilliant minds that’s why they are in Ivy schools. Well, yes and no. Over the past year, my team and I have had the opportunity to collaborate with some developers oversees on various web systems. Before this, I actually regarded myself as highly skilled and was quite confident that I would be able to match up. I term this a ‘developer’s curse’. A few months down the line, I was amazed at how much I still had to learn, never mind the ever-changing eco-system of frameworks and programming. This experience has not only left me humbled but also confident if not excited by all the new concepts I can learn.
If you are one of those people who have recently started to learn how to code or are thinking of joining our vast community, I’m not here to discourage you. In fact, quite the opposite. Something that has helped me to date is never to be worried about how your code will be, there will always be a better programmer and one who writes more efficient code. Strive to get a solution to the problem you face and afterward make it efficient. Most programmers I know are quite welcoming to share their knowledge and how to go about problems. I, for one, have been a beneficiary of this. I’m one of those people who over complicate things, that’s one of my weaknesses but a strength that negates this is my willingness to listen and learn and not being afraid to say that I don’t know a concept (I struggled with this for a while). At the end of the day, you aren’t competing with anyone so don’t try too much to impress to the point that you stress and burn yourself out. As we always said back in high school; ‘Jishinde Ushinde!’
