Beginner's Mind

A.K.A. What coding taught me about learning. And about comparing myself to others.

After trying to pick up coding for a while, I’ve attended a 3-month coding program at Next Academy in Kuala Lumpur. Why Malaysia? Well, check out the fees of other bootcamps in San Francisco, New York or London. These are my reflections.

Leave your pride at the door.

You fail at coding every day. Everyone does. No one just coded straight away without failing miserably numerous times. No one. Always keep that in mind. This is also the beauty of this discipline. Everyone in the community knows the struggle and therefore is incredibly supportive. I guess it’s comparable to musicians and entrepreneurs. They all know exactly how it feels like to start from zero. The business world would be much more prosperous if more people realised helping others first will let them achieve more. Welcome to the service economy. Welcome to the 21st century.

I tried to mentally prepare myself for the feeling of knowing anything. However, experiencing it is still different. I left a job where colleagues or customers tended to asked me for advice. Suddenly, I was the guy who asked thousands of (stupid) questions. I switched roles completely.

This uncomfortable situation reminded me that not trying anything new is a guaranteed way not to grow. Most people with ten years of work experience don’t have ten years of experience. They have two years of experience and eight years of practice. Most people stop challenging themselves, so always keep this in mind when you are hesitating about asking your mentor a “stupid” question. Ego is the enemy!

For me, one major challenge was to decide when I should stick with it by myself and when to ask mentors. Once, I was stuck and finally decided to ask for help after two hours. Within five seconds, the mentor said: “Oh, I see. You missed a space here.” I could have hit my head against the wall. But again, it’s part of the learning process.

Understanding the theory vs. just doing.

This was a tough one for me. I like to challenge beliefs and understand the whys behind things. Maybe it has partly to do with my German upbringing. You learn the fundamentals first and then try it out.

In coding, you frequently google around, write a few lines of code, break it and fix it again to understand what is going on behind the scenes. It was a new experience for me. Hence, the first weeks were quite hard. I left school every evening with a sense of frustration.

Regardless of your learning type, the more you practice, the better you get. This is true for all things in life but particularly in programming. There are no shortcuts mainly because programming is in a sense like plumbing. You face a challenge, try one thing, try another until it finally works. And there is this one moment every newbie will encounter, sooner or later. The moment it clicks. A minute ago, you had no idea what you were doing and suddenly the lightbulb moment is there. It makes sense now. A great moment.

In the past, I thought that coders were so smart and unique that I am admittedly not this kind of person. Don’t get me wrong; there are brilliant coders out there. But most coders just put in many hours to practice their craft. And they are very methodical thinkers. One great comment from a mentor was: “If you are overwhelmed by a challenge and don’t know what to do, you simply haven’t broken down the problem small enough.“ I love this. It’s a simple concept which takes a lot of work to get great at. It’s just like poker. The ideas and rules are easy to understand, yet hard to master.

A lot of beginners think they aren’t good coders because it takes them hours what others do in 30 minutes. That’s normal and not the problem at all. The only question you should ask yourself is if you like it. If yes, keep going. You don’t have to be a genius to get good at it. What you do need is countless hours at practice. Then eventually you will get better and quicker. There is no doubt about it.

Never compare yourself to others, except one.

Comparing yourself to others is never a good idea. As mentioned above, programmers have a very structured, detailed oriented way of working. So if you want to learn these crucial skills, I can’t think of any better subject.

I genuinely believe, and newer research proves my point, that the brain can change significantly even as an adult. That means you can practically learn anything you want if you are willing to put in the work. You might not be world-class in the chosen field but still. And of course, it would be unfair if you could be world-class in a discipline in no time in which others invested thousands of hours to become real experts.

Here is what you probably came through your mind to some extent in the past. I’m admittedly guilty of it:

“I am not good at math”... maybe because you’ve never studied.

“I am not good at writing”... maybe because you’ve never written before.

“I am not good at public speaking”...maybe… you know what I mean.

Just because your classmates picked up a topic quicker than you doesn’t mean you can’t learn it. And here is the punchline.

There is only one person you should compare yourself with: your younger-self. If you told your younger-self that you'd be able to learn such things, wouldn’t you proud of yourself? I thought every programmer is a math genius. If you told me a few years ago I’d attend one day a full-time coding course, I would have called you crazy. And this can be applied to any subject. So let go of the past and start focusing on what you can do.

Conclusion:

What an experience. On our first day, they made clear that the goal of this program was to make us independent. I can surely say they accomplished their mission. “Next” enabled me to get into data science. After the course, I have been self-studying statistics with Udacity while also getting into Python with “Learn Python the Hard Way”. I wouldn’t dare to call myself a programmer yet, but the time in Kuala Lumpur enabled me to tackle the areas I don’t know yet. Coding is for the mind what is exercising for the body - hard in the beginning but very rewarding when you see results.

And it was more about proving to me that I can learn it. Knowing how to learn is much more valuable than knowing, especially in this century. So I’d like to ask you: what is the one skill you always wanted to learn?