Coding Out The Chaos
Puzzles have always been one of my favorite things in the world. From Rubik’s cubes to crossword puzzles, I have consumed them my entire life. They have a way of quieting the chaos in my mind. Every year over the holidays, my family has a tradition of completing a diabolically hard jigsaw puzzle together, and it is without a doubt, my favorite family tradition. It gives us hours together to chat and catch up on life without the distraction of all the technology we let consume our lives the rest of the year. I believe it’s one of the things that has kept us all so close over the years.
This morning I watched a new movie called Puzzle, starring one of my biggest Hollywood crushes, Kelly MacDonald. It centers around a suburban mother who discovers a love of jigsaw puzzles that turns her “normal” life upside down. While it was definitely an entertaining movie for a puzzle fan such as myself, what rang most true was Irrfan Khan’s character’s explanation of his obsession with puzzles:
“Life is messy…It doesn’t make any goddamn sense. It’s just random…There is nothing we can do to control it. When you complete a puzzle, you know that you have made all the right choices. No matter how many wrong pieces you tried to fit into a wrong place, at the very end everything makes a perfect picture.”
These days, coding has become my puzzle of choice. I get zoned in and focused with code in a way I find hard to do with most everything else, and I can sit at my computer for hours solving algorithm problems with no concept of time passing by. Each new problem is a new challenge that I know has a solution, and no matter how long it takes to get there, I am filled with a sense of accomplishment every time. While I love coding in a deep zone with my headphones blasting, my time at Codesmith has made me realize how much fun coding with others can be too!
This past week not only put us over the halfway mark of my time at Codesmith, but it also kicked off the production project phase of the program. Over the next month, my talented group of four will be spending our days building what we believe will be a ground breaking tool to help other coders manage their own chaos a bit better.
So far it has been a really great experience working together in a group. As much as I love putting on my headphones and zoning out into my work, it’s been so beneficial working through the blocks together as a team. Our team has a very good dynamic as well. We have stand-ups several times a day where we discuss our progress individually and make sure we are all still moving in the right direction. When one of us is stuck, we rally around one computer and get the problem solved together. We each get to focus deep on the one thing we are working on, but then get exposed to all the other pieces of the puzzle by working together through the hard times.
Just like working on jigsaw puzzles with my family, coding has proven to be much more fun and productive when it’s done in a group. As I wrap up my studies and start to look for a full-time position, I can only hope I am able to find a great team to be a part of to continue growing as a coder and have a lot more fun along the way!
