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The Code Was a Means to an End

Code Platoon, week 15. Graduation is tomorrow, and I'm writing this during lunch after not logging on today. Yesterday I felt terrible. After a bunch of meds and sleeping pretty much all afternoon, all night, and again this morning, I'm finally feeling a lot better.

With almost everything behind me, I've been thinking about the biggest thing I learned this summer. It's going to feel like a crappy lesson to take away from a coding bootcamp, but it's the truth: I need the ability to write code by hand less than I thought I would.

Highs and Lows

Code Platoon, week 15. Third to last day. Yesterday I said it was fucking done. Today I spent another two hours redoing part of the presentation, felt too sick to sit at my screen, and found out I was the honor grad for the class.

Highs and lows. Oh, highs and lows.

It's Fucking Done

Code Platoon, week 15. The final week. There are still a few days left, but today I feel like I'm done. The group project is finished. The presentation is finished. The last big lift is over, and I'm fucking overjoyed.

The Middle Meets You There

Instead, the whole community grew frantic searching for the missing middle while two pointers found it by running the same road at different speeds—again. Today I understood that idea better than I could demonstrate it. After four days of sleeping three or four hours a night, I volunteered to solve a familiar linked-list problem and basically blanked out. The algorithm was simple. My brain was not.

The Shape of the Problem

Beneath the overpass, I realized the monster I had spent four or five hours fighting two months ago had returned as my savior. Today, I recognized the same machinery inside a hard Codewars problem, pulled up that earlier solution, adapted it, and finished in 45 minutes. The biggest improvement was not typing faster. It was knowing that I had seen the shape of the problem before.

Attention Is Part of the Work

Never mistake attention for a harmless guide: it may illuminate the work, expose its weakness, or pass judgment that transforms its fate. A working application does not guarantee an audience will understand it, just as mostly correct logic does not guarantee a function will run. Today put both lessons side by side: one variable name broke my Codewars solution, and one deliberately produced presentation made the work behind my project impossible to miss.