K. Sabbak

My first programming class was when I was 17. It was also my teacher’s first time teaching a programming class. It was in Java and we used a library called Karel J. Robot, which felt like it was aimed at much younger kids, and I remember having a hard time matching what I was learning from the separate textbook and what I was building with Karel J. Robot. I also remember that a lot of my classmates were taking the class because they knew they’d be able to play games online for a whole class period. What I’m trying to say is that it was not the best programming class ever.

Whether or not I learned Java is a little unclear, but what I did learn is that programming was interesting and powerful and I loved it. I also learned a second lesson, which took much longer to surface, but that was that you don’t have to be an expert to teach something. That even just knowing enough can make a huge difference and change people’s lives.

If you’re anything like me, and I know I am (who did I steal that from? It’s awful), change is hard. There are probably studies done that make a case for why this is, but regardless of the why, change is just really hard.

For me, learning design principles in writing code is basically on par with changing how I believe the world works. It’s hard and uncomfortable and this is how it goes:

Today I was reading Test Driven Development: By Example, by Kent Beck and following along with the python example. I had hit a few snags when copying directly from the book, but nothing I wasn't able to fix in about 30 seconds, but then I ran into a huge problem and it took me the better part of an afternoon to sort through.

At first I was very upset about it.