Coding. A word that strikes fear in the hearts of millions – well, maybe not millions, but me for sure. I “learned” coding during my Masters program at Stirling University way back in 2012. I put learned in quotes because it was a very long time ago and my tutor was not, how to put this nicely, adept at coding which then set me back exponentially. Much like my third grade math teacher who was on the road to retirement and couldn’t be bothered teaching a very confused 9 year old cross division or whatever it’s called, but I digress.
Paul, however, has a much deeper understanding of coding as well as the patience of a saint (Saint Paul, ironically, is the patron saint of writers). We had an introductory class a few days ago that left me feeling neutral about the subject as opposed to completely floundering. Today, however, I am back to floundering. My best friend may as well be Ariel because I’m a Flounder. (Queue laughter). I followed along as closely as possible, and even pointed out an error I found due to a missing squiggly parentheses (or brackets as the Brits would say) as well as the “command K” function to open files. These felt like successes in the choppy sea of characters on the screen. There’s nothing remarkable about them, they’re just parentheses, letters, and numbers, but, when put together in a certain order they create incredible images.
I tried to come into this part of the course with an open mind, but in the back of it was that niggling little voice saying, “you’re going to fail.” Coding to me is akin to math, which is something I have struggled with my entire life. I had a tutor during my master’s program ask me if I had dyscalculia, which apparently is dyslexia but for math, to which I responded, “it took eighteen years for someone to make me aware that this was even a thing?!” I was highly unimpressed to say the very least, but it made total sense. In my mind, coding plays into that learning impairment. To me, people who can code go to MIT or Yale, people who are so right brained they’re sure their left brain doesn’t exist, writes silly little quips and creates art. Intimidation is the best way to describe it. After being in the tattoo industry for almost a decade, there are very few things that intimidate or surprise me anymore, but, coding is one of them.
Today’s workshop left me feeling adrift without a tether, but instead of treading water, I have a bit of a life preserver. Like, one made of glued together styrofoam, but it is better than nothing. We started at the absolute most basic of basics, which is making a white point on a screen of black. Which was exactly how I was feeling, if we’re going to get existential about it. A single little point in the void. But, slowly, the dot grew. It became a line, then a circle, then a square – the “primitives,” meaning the most basic of shapes. We then added line wight and fill, two things that I am very familiar with and made sense to me. The final stage was making the lines dance across the screen, limited only by the boundary of the 900×900 square, creating a visual spectacle that was completely unexpected and would take some serious work to do by hand.
Although Saint Paul led us step by step through this journey from a single point to dancing lines, I still managed to get lost along the way. I think the best thing for me to do is to play around with it, which feels like stepping into the den of a dragon and trying to get it to play fetch. So, this very lengthy “blurb” about my first impressions of coding are almost exactly what I expected: a lot of attempts to hide my fear in humor and words, and admitting to myself that this is going to be a challenge. This will be great practice in not beating myself up when I don’t get it right the first time. Here goes nothing…
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