- PPF Points
- 2,888
Remember when learning to code meant hunching over a fat textbook, scribbling in a notebook, and basically praying you’d catch your own bugs? No Google, no Stack Overflow, definitely no ChatGPT to bail you out. Not saying I want to relive the dark ages—my back hurts just thinking about it—but I kinda miss how slow and, weirdly, satisfying it was. Being forced to wrestle with stuff on your own, for real, not just hopping between ten browser tabs or following tutorials like a robot. You had to marinate in the problem. Let it annoy you. And honestly? I think that made my brain way stronger.
Some of my best “aha!” moments happened when I was totally cut off. Like, stranded on a bus with zero signal, or stuck at home during a blackout, just me, my battered notes, and a laptop clinging to its last 10% battery. No distractions. No shiny new frameworks to chase. Just pure, gritty problem-solving. Was it frustrating? Sure. Did I occasionally yell at my screen? Obviously. But it forced me to actually understand the logic, not just copy-paste some random answer. That kind of struggle? It sticks with you. Builds grit. Makes the eventual “holy crap, I got it!” moment feel earned.
Everyone’s obsessed with speed and instant access now—yeah, cool, but I think we’re losing something. Sometimes the best learning happens when you’re forced to slow down and go deep, not just skim the surface of a million things. I still tell folks: unplug now and then. Seriously. Print some docs, shut off Wi-Fi, try coding from memory for an hour. See what you really know, minus the training wheels. And as pros, we should be thinking: how do we give people space for that kind of deep, offline work, without tossing all our fancy new tools out the window? There’s gotta be a balance, right?
Some of my best “aha!” moments happened when I was totally cut off. Like, stranded on a bus with zero signal, or stuck at home during a blackout, just me, my battered notes, and a laptop clinging to its last 10% battery. No distractions. No shiny new frameworks to chase. Just pure, gritty problem-solving. Was it frustrating? Sure. Did I occasionally yell at my screen? Obviously. But it forced me to actually understand the logic, not just copy-paste some random answer. That kind of struggle? It sticks with you. Builds grit. Makes the eventual “holy crap, I got it!” moment feel earned.
Everyone’s obsessed with speed and instant access now—yeah, cool, but I think we’re losing something. Sometimes the best learning happens when you’re forced to slow down and go deep, not just skim the surface of a million things. I still tell folks: unplug now and then. Seriously. Print some docs, shut off Wi-Fi, try coding from memory for an hour. See what you really know, minus the training wheels. And as pros, we should be thinking: how do we give people space for that kind of deep, offline work, without tossing all our fancy new tools out the window? There’s gotta be a balance, right?
