What is coding?
Welcome to the 3rd episode of What its like series. It’s time to talk about coding!
I have been seeing a trend from people around me getting into the software industry without a concrete understanding of what coding actually is.
Hence I would like to share my personal view about coding at the conceptual level, without getting too technical.
Hope this article can give a clearer image to those either interested in coding or have experience in the field to see in a different way.
- Coding is another way of thinking
2. Coding is a tool for problem solving
Mathematics is a tool that we human invented to formulate the nature, help us understand the world we are living in.
Coding on the other hand, is a tool we need in order to harness the speed and accuracy of a machine by giving them precise instructions.
Most of the time we don’t actually need a computer to get the job done, but it will take a way longer time. Especially in some repeatable task such as data manipulation, pattern searching.
Unlike human, modern computers are capable of performing over 1,000,000,000 calculations per second, 24 hours a day without a single complaint and mistake. It is clear that why computer exist at the first place.
To utilize the power of a machine to solve our problems, we must tell them what to do in a language that they can interpret, which is (surprise surprise)code 💻!
3. Coding is an creative art
There is no absolute right or wrong approach to solve a coding problem, one can write 100 lines or just 10 lines, but still have the exact same results.
The difference is the elegancy of one’s solution, a balance of readability, performance, side-effects and sometime laziness 😛.
Because there are many factors we must take into consideration while coding our solutions, this is what makes coding different from solving a math problem.
How to fix this bug without clutter up our code? How to maintain performance while scaling up? How to add a new feature with minimum changes?
We often don’t relate coding with creativity, but what make a painting & code so stunning is the hidden harmonies between lines and shapes. It requires a tremendous amount of creativity to produce.
Every line of code is crafted with ❤️ don’t take them for granted.