As a general rule, when I consume a lot of something, I want to know how to make that thing to some baseline level of competence. Whether it’s food, music, literature or film, this principle has generally held. So much of my recent life has been connected to computing, computers, software, and the software industry-- and although I’ve started learning to code a number of times without really going all-in, I’ve never forced myself to sink or swim on a coding project. It’s time to change that.
I’m excited to make progress in ICM towards knowing how to code beyond a conceptual level. I’m excited to make mistakes and debug even when I want to stop. I’m excited to write functions, learn some of the weirdness of JavaScript-- and hopefully to be confident with my ability to learn more complex concepts and languages after this semester ends.
As someone who’s sat on the “non-technical” side of software companies, often in roles that hybridized design, product and business development, I’ve had to learn how to work with engineers and explain technical concepts without actually building them. After ITP, maybe even after this course, I’ll want to cross the line into the “technical.”
But I could have gone to a bootcamp if that’s all I wanted. Being at ITP means that I’ll have the space to wield code as another medium among many. In this course, I want to use code in conjunction with music, video, data and/or text. I want to keep my mind open to the specific projects I might undertake, but regardless of what I do, I’d like to make use of the freedom to be weird and explore the non-practical while outside the confines of the workplace.
I love making music. I love teaching. I love cooking. I’m a fan of music videos, animations, and informative, playful uses of data. Maybe some of these will come together with code this semester. But with each day, as we have stimulating conversations and rapidly add new skills and perspectives, I’m just as excited about creating something I wouldn’t have expected from my September 10, 2019 perspective as I am about anything I’m walking in the door with. Let’s go!