“Never assume. It makes an ASS out of U and Me”

– Anon

Most people will tell you that preconceptions, prejudices, assumptions and biases are totally not cool. I prefer to think of them as educated and imaginative guesswork and part of a system of trial and error.

Assumptions enable you to make quick ‘near enough’ decisions when lacking the time to collate the necessary information to make a fully informed decision.

When I decided that I’d learn to code at Makers Academy, I relied on assumption and preconceived notions (coupled with a hefty dose of idealism and imagination) of what it would be like to be a computer programmer. After all, I had never been a computer programmer, so how could my decision to spend all my savings and the next four months of my life learning to do something I’d never done before be anything other than an ‘uninformed’ decision?

Here’s a post-rationalised list of the assumptions and preconceived notions I had of coding that informed my uninformed decision.

What coding is:

Everywhere.

Pretty much everybody has come into contact with something that has been programmed.

Magic.

Nobody seems to know how computers work. That I can access any information in the palm of my hand, whilst remaining entirely ignorant as to how and why, is pure wizardry.

Difficult.

Get your head around this.

You tap a small silver box with a black ‘U’ on your iphone, then tap a box labelled ‘set pick up location’ hovering above a map with a blue dot signifying exactly where you are and tap where you want to go on that map, then, within minutes, a nice person arrives in their new smelling immaculate car at exactly the point where you are standing to drop you off at exactly the point where you tapped on the map, then departs without having to ask you for directions or even money.

Imagine understanding how that worked.

Then imagine being the person that made that work.

I can imagine that’s what being a genius feels like.

When coders say “anybody can code”, this reads to me like a well-intentioned humble-brag. It’s well intentioned because it keeps the dream alive, reminding us that it’s not impossible. But at the same time, if it were actually easy then saying “everyone can code” would literally go without saying. Nobody would say “everyone can code” if it really were that obviously true – it would be like saying “everyone can breathe.”

Therefore coding is difficult, challenging and thus rewarding.

Objective.

Whilst few know precisely how their computers, iphones or PS4’s work, even fewer care – until the moment they cease to work. The programme either does what it’s meant to do, or it doesn’t. It either works or it doesn’t. The Uber driver either arrives at the right place, or he doesn’t.

Feedback is vital in ascertaining whether you have been successful at something. If you’re a performer, feedback comes in the form of applause. As a programmer, your code works or it doesn’t. And you know straight away.

One word: Dopamine.

Meritocratic.

In most other careers, success is based on being subjectively good at your job. Objective feedback is rare. Many succeed through navigating office politics seamlessly – which, don’t get me wrong, is a skill in it’s own right, but just not one I find as rewarding to develop. I can play politics, but it just feels a bit false.

Your computer doesn’t not like you if you don’t listen to the right music, or if you’re a smoker, or chew too loudly when you eat. It only likes you if you get the code right. Your boss will like you, first and foremost, if you get the code to work efficiently. Your boss may also like you if you laugh at their jokes, but, for some reason this feels less important for a programmer.

I feel that people accept that programmers might get along better with computers than real people – it seems to come with the job.  I only know two programmers, and this seems to be the main reason they like their jobs. They say there are some politics, but usually, when you’re one of the few with the pre-requisite knowledge to make things actually happen, people prize your knowledge over and above your personality.

I’ve sat in appraisals where my worth to the company has been based on pretty much everything other than my tangible achievements. Although they say “don’t take this personally”, given the lack of objective reasoning as to your contribution to a team, you can only ever take it personally.

In the rare occasion of your value to a company being more objectively assessed, it can feel like success is pretty much luck. Let’s face it, there is no exact science to knowing why people might buy one book over another, or why some people like some music and not others, or why some people believe renationalising the railways is a good idea and not others. You never really know why you’ve succeeded in doing your job ‘better’ because you don’t really know how much you, doing your job, has contributed to whatever metric of success you are being measured against.

You know if you’re getting better at programming because you can make more complicated things work, more efficiently, faster. And the computer will tell you. With no bias.

The better you get at programming, the more languages you can programme in, the more problems you solve, the more efficiently you solve them, then the more you’re worth and the more responsibility and money you’ll earn.

Who codes:

An insider club.

Coding feels like an insiders club. They have insider jokes (which I’ll dedicate a bit of my blog to, because they are just so brilliantly esoteric) and insider knowledge that bonds them together. They’ve connected across time-zones and continents, forming a tightly knit community with it’s own quirks and charms born from a common insatiable desire to solve problems.

Collaborators.

They use their own time and expertise to help others master coding, most of whom they’ve never met and will never meet, for free and for fun

They spend hours trawling through StackOverflow to answer other coders’ questions. I’ve never seen a troll on StackOverflow.

They make coding puzzles for other peoples’ enjoyment – www.codewars.com being my favourite.

They helpfully point out bugs, they collaborate on open source projects.

They make websites that they’ve clearly spent hours and hours working on to help people learn to code FOR FREE. https://rubymonk.com/  or https://www.codecademy.com/ or http://learnrubythehardway.org/

They defy the laws of behavioural and economic physics. They do all this work for free, to help other people, for free.

The humble.

Despite being an elite group of super-humans that not only understand the mysterious world of technology but actually built it, they never see themselves this way.

They are the unsung heroes behind some of man’s greatest achievements. You probably have no idea who Margaret Hamilton is – you definitely know who Neil Armstrong is. Despite being rockstars, they’re usually only ‘famous’ amongst other coders.

There are a few reasons why only the humble can code.

1. The more you know, the more you realise how little you know. It would be near impossible to know everything about coding, to learn every language. The more you know, the more you realise that there is much, much, much more to know. You never can feel like a know it all. You have to be happy about dealing with uncertainty and not knowing.
2. Computers tell you ‘no’ all the time. There are no marks for ‘effort’, or ‘nearly there’ – you get nasty error messages in angry red type if you’ve screwed up. You have a man-made object telling you that you’re doing it wrong every few minutes, and you can’t dispute that it is ultimately your fault.
3. You stand on the shoulders of giants every day. You didn’t make the Ruby coding language, you aren’t Alan Turing. You are NOTHING in comparison.

Often coders aren’t looking for fame or recognition. They just want the code to work – this is their reward.

The next generation.

I remember watching my Dad spend 45 minutes trying to send an email, muttering about how technology is meant to make things easier and angrily tapping away at his keyboard using just his index fingers.

In just a few years time, I will be like my Dad, unless I learn to code.

Coding is now being taught in schools.

There are pre-pubescent kids who have made millions from apps that they have programmed, all by themselves.

I refuse to be left behind.

Mostly men.

Women are chronically under-represented in coding. In fact, females in tech are considered such an oddity that the BBC felt compelled to make a documentary about young girls learning how to code. It was also the most patronising piece of guff I have ever watched.

I can’t see any reason why women can’t code or why this bizarre thought has even entered into discussion.

And neither can Makers Academy – which is why they give a nice discount to women taking the course. They want to make more female coders to dispel this awful myth that women can’t do it.

I’m the kind of person who will do something just because people think I can’t do it.

Bring it on.

Just Preconceptions…

At the end of my course at Makers Academy I’m going to come back to them and grade these preconceptions out of 10 for their varying levels of naivety, wishfulness and downright misguidedness.

Do let me know if I’ve got it all wrong in the comments below: