As I’ve spent the last few weeks and months building up my new, baby company, one thing has really stood out to me about development. It’s like parenting. Well, that makes no sense!? This is what I mean... As a parent, you feel like you know what you are doing, and then suddenly life throws something at you that makes you blink and say, “What?!” Development, well, coding in general, is like that too.
"Does anybody have a map? Anybody maybe happen to know how the hell to do this?
I dunno if you can tell, But this is me just pretending to know
So where’s the map? I need a clue
‘Cause the scary truth is I’m flying blind
And I’m making this up as I go." - Dear Evan Hansen
I’m not sure how coders did it before Google. A lot of memorizing, I suppose. I very rarely sit down to work on a project and whip the entire thing out from my own stores of knowledge. I can do that with quilting, with piano, with running an ad, but there are so many different things you can do with development that I can’t imagine I’ll ever know it all. And that is what makes it so great!
I’ll often sit down to work on a page and maybe I’m doing some CSS to change how elements on the site look. I have a lot of CSS properties and their values memorized because I use them so often. However, without fail, there is at least one property, or more often a property’s value, that I can’t remember the specific syntax for each time I code. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I forget the text-transform property and its uppercase value every time I need it. (I’m going to blame it on there being so many text-based properties. Is it text-transform?? Text-decoration?? Who can remember??)
I think the constant “not knowing” would frustrate some people. I love it though. I love how it stretches me each time I work on a project. I love how it means no two projects run exactly the same. I love that it lets me constantly learn something new when I get requests from clients to build something a particular way.
“Continuous learning is the minimum requirement for success in any field.” – Brian Tracy
I LOVE learning! I love the ease at which I can learn in the current state of technology! Any information I can imagine is right at my fingertips. I don’t have to know how to do all the things. What I do need to know is how to find the information, the tools, that will help me. I believe that is one of the most valuable things I’ve learned about development and coding – if I don’t know how to do something now, I can learn!