How I learnt to stop worrying and started to love computers … and programming.
By: Gareth Whitley
Tags: Web Development, Information Technology, Programming

Photo by Amelin Orenge on Unsplash

When I was in primary school I loved playing with ‘things’ and finding out what made them tick, flash, move or otherwise do. As I got older this fascination shifted to computers and other electronic devices. Once I played with the first BBC Acorn computer and saw house the boxy mouse moved things in the screen and that you can PRINT things, you know, like a real-life book (not like a real-life book at all) I was hooked.

Soon my dad had found a cheap ZX Spectrum and a Commodore 64. The Commodore accessed its games and programmes via a small tape player and the Spectrum came with a massive spiral-bound manual that was a bit like a catalogue for games. Except, you had to manually enter the game’s logic line by line, with no errors. Created a bug? Start again. I enjoyed learning Q-BASIC for a while.

Before long I’d hit my first bout of frustration, ‘why won’t it work!’. Then came a long our first PC with Windows 3 and 3.1. Games came on the front of a magazine in small diskettes and the printer was now an ink jet, although, the dot matrix was fun because it sounded like a robot.

Before long I became the person who knew about computers. But there was always that one other boy who knew more about computers than I did. I could get them to work, but he knew how they worked … you know … inside.

This was always my envy.

Into secondary school and again, there’s that other boy who knows more about computers. I discovered electronic systems and developed a knack for explaining technical things to people who had never experienced anything technical before.

Then along came university and computers started to slip away. Instead, I found new depths to investigate in philosophy, politics, International Relations and other people. I enjoyed learning about all the intricacies and problems of the World and how so many people are trying hard to find solutions to help others at the same time as so many others who are trying hard to find solutions to help themselves.

‘Eventually it seemed like a done deal …’

When I was growing-up I had investigated web development when GeoCities was a thing, TuCows was a search engine and you could AskJeeves or Encarta for answers for your homework. I’d learned how to build and deploy websites by wondering how other people had done their ‘things’, by reverse engineering, making mistakes and by trying different ideas.

My parents had encouraged me for a while, then they thought that looking a computer screen wasn’t good for me so would try and put me off unless I could seemingly make a ‘business-case’. I happily created some websites for people and helped others with their tech problems.

Eventually it seemed like a done deal that I would just do something with computers as a career and people started to define me by them. Stubbornly, I was put-off. I didn’t like how people thought they knew what I wanted to do and tried to push me down certain routes that didn’t feel comfortable. By the time I had reached university I was prepared to do something different. Time went on, the Internet and the Web developed without me. And I was fine with it.

A few years would go by and many life events would happen, some good, some bad, until I found myself looking back at a computer screen typing the familiar characters: <html><title></title><body></body></html>. After looking around the web, I realised so much had changed. So many new technologies, so many new ideas and so many new concepts that I had no clue about.

I did well in sciences at school. I had never excelled at maths, unlike some cousins and I had never taken computer science seriously enough to discover it. Now, I wish I had. Mathematics is the door to seeing what’s around us in ways that can unpick the fabric of whatever it is that everything is made of and holds endless wonder. It would also help me develop computational thinking and to put pragmatism to thoughts and concepts and functions that I want to build.

‘I had been worrying for a long time’

I had been worrying for a long time: ‘why do they want me to do this?’, ‘would I get a job good enough in computers?’, ‘how could I be what businesses expect me to be?’, ‘will I ever know as much as the guy who knows more about computers than me?’. Instead of believing in myself, in my experiences and in the directions that I knew I could go in, I listened to the doubt. This doubt would overcome me and push me into places that I didn’t want to be.

One day I gave myself some space and gave myself permission to be good at something and I convinced myself that I can do things if I try — sometimes, I just need to try a bit more than I did last time or than other people for various reasons. But I just need to try. If I don’t, I won’t and that isn’t good enough. As soon as I started admitting to others that I am good at computers and that I do know about these kind of things, the guilt started to disappear and I started to become myself again.

Now, I may still not know as much as some other people over there who is spinning up full-featured React Redux single page apps but I know enough. I know enough to learn, to help others and to continue my journey to improving myself and perhaps, one day, I’ll build that application or system that will improve upon someone’s situation.

I may not work at Google, Facebook, Intel, IBM, Cisco or Microsoft. But, I enjoy doing what I do, pointing others in the right direction with their IT problems, creating web sites for people and learning new technologies.

Now, I try to remember. Stop worrying; be good to yourself and others; believe in what you know you can do; try to reach; ignore other people’s doubts for they doubt themselves too much to be happy for you. There is time and there is space, even if there isn’t much money.