The Joys of Learning How to Program as an Adult

Wednesday 14 March 2007 - Filed under programming

I can’t even begin to count the joys of learning how to program as an adult. It’s a wonderful world of discovery and self-loathing. One of the biggest joys is the wonder and excitement of writing your cherished program. The reason for this is you never know what exactly you’re doing so the program always explodes in creative and exciting ways. Even a routine variable assignment in the hands of a newbie can turn into an explosive bug.

On the flip side you find yourself writing code that’s so amazing in its complexity that when you come back to it, you have spend a good deal of time staring at it to figure out just exactly what it does. Sometimes it just works. It’s the most convoluted and unnecessarily complex method you ever saw that shouldn’t work but it does. This is usually the product of cut and paste coding mixed with random stabs in the dark.

Whatever the mess of spaghetti code I create is the sum total of a twisted mind trying to hurt itself in new creative ways. It’s the product of a sluggish brain revolting against the evil overlords trying to coerce a new way of thinking into it.

Despite the wordiness and output of this blog I find myself with a serious case of writer’s block when it comes to writing programs even if they are simple web projects.

Will I overcome this writer’s block and still live to unveil my secret project? Only time will tell.

Kids, try this at home. You need to start early. Really. The biggest obstacle in my opinion is the fear of making a fool of yourself when in fact you’re already the walking definition. It’s much better to keep running into a brick wall because at least that’s progress. If only programming was as easy as they make it look in 24!

2007-03-14  »  baron