Today I used my beautiful new technique of explaining code to myself

I learned this technique not last Friday but the one before. I owe so much of it to my former boss. 

I got a vague ticket and I am trying to get better at working with those (still not crazily super vague but vague by my standards). And I struggled with it at first. It was a very new type of work for me.

But he said to me: “explain what the code is doing.” And he let me write it out to him.

And that was when I realised - and we both realised - something groundbreaking. 

I believe. We realised that I read code like I read text. If there’s a bit of it I can take it in. But if there’s a lot of it -

If there’s a lot of it, well then I haven’t actually read it and processed it until I have written it out and explained what it is saying. And I can do that. Well I’m a blogger right? Writing about code comes naturally to me.

And of course I do it in work channels and not on my blog. 

But my boss’s kindness and his love and compassion meant that: he gave me the space to write out what the code was doing.

And only after that was I really able to understand it. I have solved tickets like this flawlessly. I have solved several AI tickets with zero comments. This process is beautiful and a life changer to me. This process is absolutely life changing.

This process is beautiful and I love it so so much