When Coding Consumes You
So I wouldn’t consider myself a great coder by any means. I pretty much hack away and piece together from others code and build something that’s useful and works for the task at hand. Nothing elegant, nothing from pure memory or knowledge that I have stored away. I just chop and hack until I make it work.
That may seem like a good plan but it’s a big problem I have. Now I was never big into coding classes in college and only took the few I needed to. Why code a bunch of made for “Hello World” programs. Boring. But for some reason, I really get into coding at certain times.
This happens to be one of those times. And when I say I get into coding, I mean it. When I have a problem that needs to be solved via coding a computer or in works case, a microchip. I get consumed by it. I hate it when things don’t work. It ends up being all I think about. When I’m driving to work, washing my hair, talking to my fiance. It’s all I do, is think about what little solution I’ve missed.
I’ll end up reading through a hundred different tutorials just to figure out how to fun a for loop. It just eats at me, and right now, the Paypal IPN system is eating at me. I’m working on implementing it having the hardest time figuring out which route I want to take. (Plus I figured out that it will also solve another problem I was having. Crazy)
So right now I’m back to learning about PHP, HTML forms, javascript, MySQL, and Paypal IPN. I hope to have a few php scripts written and testing by the end of the week but we’ll see how far I get. I’m a bit fried and just realized that I’m also trying to run a blog network, Youch!
Do you get consumed by coding, or is it just me. Am I a geek because I think it’s fun?
Comments
Comment from Erik
Time: December 15, 2006, 5:06 pm
Yeah, coding is fun. I admit.
I’ve taken a little break because the 9-5 is taking longer than 9-5.
I’ll be back to it soon though.
Comment from Marc
Time: December 16, 2006, 11:34 am
If you’re not good at coding, it’s just not worth your time. Focus on spending your time on what your good at: writing great blog posts and concepting ideas for online revenue generation. Go to getafreelancer.com and have some kid do this for you for $30 or so. And then take those 6 hours you’re spending on this and write 20 blog postings or come up with some new revenue schemes.
Comment from Webomatica
Time: December 15, 2006, 2:11 pm
I’m not a coder by any means but can do Flash ActionScript and JavaScript… I would say that yeah, it can get pretty consuming. Especially when you have a specific task to accomplish, it is a challenge to get your head around a problem and find the solution.
I would say, yes, you are a geek, but there are many other situations where the challenge and solution that I described can occur… knitting, painting a building, getting a car to run.