A Prologue to Coding
Hi, everyone! Hope you're all doing great. This is my first time writing here, so I must warn you — it might be a slightly meandering journey while I get to my point.
Although this is my first blog, it's certainly not my first time writing. Writing is something that's very close to my heart — I've always loved it, from back when I was a kid and would scribble pages and pages of what I was convinced were revolutionary ideas to guilty nights in college (somehow always a night before exams) spent writing and writing, my laptop my only unfortunate witness.
So, writing isn't new. What's new is coding.
I'm one of those people, I'm afraid to say, who took up engineering through a rather crude process of elimination — I didn't want to do geography, economics bores me and I find biology somewhat sinister. Math it was. I never truly enjoyed my courses much either — I'm not certain why. Maybe I just never put in the effort to truly enjoy it, instead of simply running after the scores.
Nevertheless, when I started coding this summer, I was almost shocked to find out that I love it. I've never liked math or science much beyond feeling good when I do well in their exams and it's strange but for the first time in my life, it feels as though I know what I want to do. I love programming. I love the problems, I love the little edge cases, I love the slight twist in the end when you realize that there's still a tiny little thing you're missing. It's like any novel worth its salt — it's going to push you, it's going to make you feel things: a rush, a frustration, a sinking.
This is not to say that I'm an expert. I'm learning. I'm slacking off sometimes. I'm picking the pace back up. I'm loving it. I'm hating it. I feel like crying when it's been two hours and the problem is a wooden block in my brain. I'm alone in my room, cheering for myself when I hit submit and it finally says "Accepted."
So here's a little something I can say just in case you've reached till here: keep flipping the pages. Sometimes you're going to put the book down because it's exhausting.
Just don't forget why you bought it, is all.
