May 18, 2017

Thinking of coding

I wrote my first piece of code when I was 6 or 7, I think. My best friend’s father – a Maths teacher – was approved by the Romanian Communist Party to buy a Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer. I remember that between playing games, he showed us how to put our name on the screen (and keep it there indefinitely, until the Scroll? message – or something like this – would appear):

10 PRINT “Bobby”
20 GOTO 10

Having access to a computer in communist Romania was really difficult, to say the least. I was lucky that I found out they existed while I was young enough and that there was a computer club at the “Pioneers’ House” where you could go and learn to program in BASIC (using ZX Spectrum clones that looked like WW1 phones).

Years later, I learned to program in PASCAL, then C. I also dabbled in PHP. Then I started to write content and I started companies. So I stopped programming.

But I miss it. I miss being able to think of something and being able to put together the lines of code to do it. I want to be able to create the MVPs for the ideas I have.

This is why I decided to relearn programming. Following suggestions from some good friends, I chose JavaScript. It allows frontend programming, as well as server side (through node.js) and I can use a wrapper and put the result in the mobile app stores. So, the perfect tool for an early MVP.

I found an applied course of JS and I’m starting from there. It’s nice because you basically follow on-screen examples and I’m better learning through hacking rather than going through the fundamentals first and so on. Another good way to learn is this described here by Derek Sivers. It’s not really for me, though, even if I reached the 6th or 7th chapter of the book he recommends.

What do I want to build? Nothing in particular, but keep an eye here to find out as the ideas come out :)

Oh, I don’t have that much time to dedicate to this, so progress will be slow. But at least there will be some progress, I promise you!