Into the Void

Here’s one thing I’ve learned over the past few weeks — in programming, there’s rarely anything more intimidating than a blinking cursor on a blank page.

You sit there, staring at those few pixels flashing on and off, and you wonder, *where the hell do I start*. How can I possibly create something from nothing? How do I turn a few words that look like gibberish into a program? Well, honestly, I don’t have an exact answer; but I do know that all it takes is a single keystroke.

I suppose it’ll take confidence to overcome this fear of the ‘void’, but that is largely easier said than done. It comes back to knowing yourself and how you approach problems. It’s about knowing who you are and working that to your advantage. There’s no cookie cutter template for this stuff, everyone is different and I still think we could be doing more to acknowledge that fact.

Take me for example. Here at DBC, we were asked to research our learning style with the ‘Gregorc Thinking’ method where you select from a group of words and it creates an associative/dissociative readout matching you within four variables. You can be either, Concrete Random, Concrete Sequential, Abstract Random, and Abstract Sequential. I split between Concrete Random and Abstract Sequential. Some of us are just… transient. It’s possible that one day we fit in here, and the next day we don’t. That’s okay, I say one should embrace that. But how will I be able to use this to my advantage?

Over the past few weeks, I have begun working on exploring what it means to learn, and what methods I need to embrace to better improve my ability. I’ll skip over all the minutia (such as using both red *and* black ink when taking notes) and get right down to what I have found to be the most challenging — overcoming my social barriers.

Some of you might know the feeling. You can be speaking to someone directly in front of you, but it feels like there’s this giant wall between you and them. You are unable to penetrate it. Unable to climb it, and sometimes, feel as though it will someday crash down on you.

That wall is a familiar sight for me. Perhaps it relates back to my childhoo… I don’t know, I’m not psychologist. I’m here to talk about how that wall makes collaborative coding difficult. With programming being just as much a collaborative experience as it is singular, it’s imperative that one is able to communicate effectively. And at times, I feel as though I am not.

During collaborative sessions, it often feels as though I’m devoting 50% of my brain power just to maintain a conversation. I can’t process what the other person is saying, because I’m too busy thinking about how I will respond. I usually finish my sessions exhausted and frazzled not really sure what I just accomplished. The other side of the coin doesn’t fair too better; when working on problems, I’m usually able to come up with a solution through a tangled web of inner thought, but I’m completely unable to verbally explain to my partner how I arrived at the solution. There’s a disconnect from what happens in my mind to what I’m able to say.

With all that being said, it doesn’t mean I’m incapable of collaboration — far from it. Only that I know my weakness, and I can structure and work hard on a plan that corrects it. Or, at least makes it easier. The wall may someday come down, but I have to start with the first brick.