Let’s Talk About Process
What has your experience learning to code been like so far? What would you change about it?
For a creative artist, developing a solid process with the end result in mind is crucial towards reaching a professional level of craftsmanship. In theatre or film, the job is to tell an honest and believable story that centers around the relationships of characters and events in which they go through. It is all based on action, and the actions lead to other actions which cumulatively result in a well told story. Every detail, if executed correctly, is paid its due attention and the end result is a story that has greatly affected the audience in a way that causes them to think, feel, and undergo an experience.
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” — Mahatma Gandhi
For the audience, it feels magical, as if this experience just happened out of thin air, but for the artist, it is all meticulously planned and based on a refined process. This process is always focused on the end result, which is to serve the story and the audience who will receive it.
Mahatma Gandhi once quipped, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” As an artist, I have fortunately lost myself to serve others, and as a developer, I find myself once again doing the same. Albeit, honestly in the beginning stages of this new craft, I find that I am more… well, lost, trying to make sense of what the process of a professional web developer should be. After this week, however, I’ve become a fan of wireframing, the careful planning of a website. It reminds me of staging a play. It’s the rough draft and initial concepts of what goes where on a site, the code to use, and more importantly what the site does for the person(s) using its service. This truly has been a breakthrough moment for me as a developer and I’m excited to see how my skills can evolve in this aspect alone.
With that said, I’m not sure what I would change about coding. I’m still too new to the practice. What I would like to pursue is the craft of other developers. I believe that studying the process of other developers could be extremely rewarding. I would even go as far as to say that becoming familiar with the methodologies of developers would be similar to that of an actor learning the techniques of Meisner or Uta Hagen.
How do you describe the DOM, as you know it so far?
The DOM, or the document object model, as I currently understand it is the organizational hierarchy of a webpage. It’s how the information of a page is structured concerning its code, and this is done by creating parent-child relationships. A parent element will have child elements, and because of this relationship, the child element can then be told what to do or how to look concerning styling for example. So, rather than code being arbitrarily thrown into a file, it has to follow the parent/child and tree like structure of the DOM. Once you can become extremely familiar with this “tree of life” analogy, you can then tap into the numerous possibilities of what to create.
What does coding look like to you in your mind?
Coding and I are in the beginning stages of our relationship. Sometimes it’s farfegnugen (this is a good thing) and at times it’s like the opening of the Flintstones (I’m clearly Fred). I’m working though on a more Sherlock Holmes perspective with code when something goes awry. But for now, coding looks like a sandwich. You of course have the outside (the body) as a nice whole wheat or challah, and you then start focusing on the main ingredients in the middle. Meats, cheeses, and veggies, or titles, content, and images. For the most part though, I think coding is starting to develop into something creatively satisfying the more the overall process of development continues to unfold.
Where do you see yourself working in 365 days from today? What do you want to be working on?
In a year from now, I see myself working with a team of developers on app driven content and tools. I would ultimately like to work on an app that provides a legitimate service for its customers, but also keeps educating its audience at the forefront of its mission. Whether this is working for a mental health app like Calm, or a productivity app like Evernote, these are two great examples of companies that know how important their service is to people, but also pay attention to educating their users on how to improve their everyday lives.
