My Takeaways from 10 Days of Learning to Code

Using the Power of Habit to Change My Schedule Slowly

*I shared this post on Medium on March 13, and I thought I'd share it here because it's motivating me during the depression of quarantine.

Having spent the past 10 days tweeting about coding on Twitter’s #100DaysOfCode, here are my takeaways:

1. Coders are super friendly and generous.
   It may not seem a big deal, but the level of support people give when you’re struggling, or even when you’re doing well, is so heartwarming. In no other community of people do I feel such a level of comradery.

2. Learning to program is like learning a new language.
   At first, you have no idea what people are talking about. By the fifth day, you can figure out the gist of what some people say. And each day, you learn a little more. It’s like going into a dark room with a lamp that’s getting progressively brighter.

3. You’re still a massive newbie.
   Even after a couple of days of spending 1 hour or more on focused learning, you still have a LOT to learn. You’ve only got the syntax down, and those people who put up their projects/games on Twitter still seem like gods.

4. Coding everyday is becoming a habit — and an addiction.
   You get bored playing games and watching YouTube videos. After the ‘aha’ moments of figuring out a small coding problem, passive activities seem blander. You’d rather spend your time outside of learning talking with people or doing chores. Or reading. Which you haven’t done in a long time now, come to think of it.

5. Coding helps inoculate you against doing hard things.
   In a world that’s obsessed with easy victories, you now begin to grasp the lure of working hard at something for a long time — and the utter satisfaction of wrestling with a problem until you solve it.

6. Coding is a deeply social activity.
   Google is your friend. Asking for help on Slack or reading things on Stack Overflow or Medium becomes second-nature. Sketching on others’ GitHub repositories is a thing. These things all enable you to learn more than you could on your own.

7. Everyone should learn to code!
   I don’t know if I’m in the early romance stages of my relationship with coding or what, but I’m excited. Maybe a little too excited…