Thoughts About Old School Coding

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2 min read

I have to finally admit it. I’ve been working in technology now for thirteen years and I’m still very self-conscious when it comes to coding. I started creating websites when I was a teenager, but I didn’t truly focus on coding until I took a community college class sixteen years ago.

When I start to code, I get really nervous. Before I can even begin to process the problem, I tense up and let fear take hold of me. Who was I kidding? Back when I was in school, flowcharts were required along with my coding assignments. I was told to think about writing the program first before actually typing out anything on a console. Most students, of course, wrote their code first and did the flowchart after. I was a much more strait-laced by-the-book student. It helped me organize my thoughts and breeze through writing the actual code when it came time. When I look at it now, I feel like I’m overthinking it. People don’t do that anymore. They laugh when I bring up flowcharts. At least I had whiteboarding to fall back on in coding interviews. Now, with virtual interviews, due to COVID-19 restrictions, I didn’t even have whiteboarding to organize my thoughts.

The fact that my early fundamental classes were more than a decade before makes me feel like I’m an imposter more than ever. How do people do it now? What have I missed? How can I keep up pretending I know the ins and outs of Python, when most of my years were focused on C++ and Java? How do I even begin to reconcile and learn to be confident with coding in our current environment?