I know I know… for all the experienced coders out there, “challenges” and “Python” don’t mix. So up until now, that’s been a true statement. I’m currently enrolled in a Python course with Coursera, an online learning platform, where the material is 100% developed by Googlers who execute these tasks daily.
So what’s the problem? As I work my way through these problems, I think it can be described as “relative distance to the problem”. If you’ve seen the movie “Social Network,” you might recall the scene where Justin tried to introduce himself to a coder, and Jesse says, “He’s wired in…” If you’re not a coder, ‘wired in’ is like saying you’ve achieved a symbiotic relationship with the code, and you’re at peak problem-solving efficiency, which in my opinion, all coding is.
I’m realizing that working in an environment where that link with the code can be disrupted slows me down quite a bit… almost like tripping a marathon running midway through a race. To mitigate this, I’m starting my coding work super early in the morning and gliding down to a more relaxed afternoon, so interruptions are less likely to have a critical impact on my work.
I’m hopeful that after the first course, literally called “Crash Course on Python” things will steady out a bit.