Coding: Builder vs. Creator

I really enjoy coding, but don’t think I’d be happy working as an engineer for someone else’s company. If I though I could be happy doing that, I’d be enrolling at Flatiron School or General Assembly in a jiffy. I took part in the pilot class of Codecademy Labs back in the winter of 2015, and had a fantastic time learning – now I’m even helping out with the Codecademy Advisor program. It’s a lot of fun, especially because I feel like such a beginner, but I love to teach and feel that it greatly enhances my own learning experience. I’m not a fast learner at all, and I oftentimes need a concept explained to me numerous times before I really get it. So, I’m happy to offer exactly that to people I work with. I’m happy to explain something as many times as I need to for the student to understand.

I do love building, though. I write music– I studied music composition in college – and the creative process is strikingly similar. I never paid much attention to all the buzz about how math and music go hand in hand, because I never got caught up by math, but I do think programming and composing are very similar. They both have concrete tools, guidelines, appreciation for beauty and minimalism and design principles, and endless way to create a gorgeous end product. So, I find myself approaching composing and programming very similarly. In both, it’s hard for me to find the discipline to work consistently every day. I tend to work in spurts, for 4, 6, 8 hours one day, and then break for days on end. When I do make myself code/compose consistently, however, I find that it results in my best work.

I don’t think I could be a programmer for someone else’s product, but I am full of fire to create my own. I need to figure out a way to balance how much I’m learning with my awesome day job and find the discipline to code consistently. I have only just scratched the surface of what I can create with code.