Entering the Arena: Learning to Code at 30

print("Hello World")

That was all it took.

It has been almost a year now since I wrote my first program, that wonderfully simple and beautiful python program written above. I've been obsessed with coding ever since. Unfortunately for me, a year ago I was turning 31, not 13, the age I wish I had been when I discovered coding. At 31 I've already been through college, law school, and started a career. I have a wife and, at the time of this writing, a seven-month-old son. As I'm sure anyone in a similar situation can attest, adding one more hobby to my plate for fun is usually just not worth it.

Every once in a while, however, we "busy" people come across something compelling enough to make a new pursuit worth upsetting the status quo. After the initial discovery, we enter into a honeymoon phase where we are learning fast, achieving new milestones, and doing so at breakneck speed. Then, we hit a wall. Suddenly, the amount of time we need to spend on the pursuit to accomplish a goal or achieve a new milestone skyrockets, and questions and doubts begin to arise: "am I too old/young for this?", "do I really have time for this?", "will my choice be accepted by my family and friends?", etc. Then, eventually, we have to make the choice; do we pursue our new goals with the fervor they require and deserve, do we dabble just enough to get our feet wet but never enough to learn to swim, or do we just maintain the status quo and hope we don't regret it. If you're anything like me, you'll put off really committing to a choice for fear of making the wrong one. I was afraid that the lack of a degree would make me look illegitimate, I was afraid that my friends would tell me I was crazy, I was afraid that people would tell me I was too old, but I also felt like God had granted me a small portion of the powers of creation and that turning it down would be nothing short of crazy.

When I was trying to make my decision to commit to coding or not, I came across the following quote and I haven't looked back since:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." -Theodore Roosevelt

I came across this quote while reading a great book called Daring Greatly by Brené Brown, which focuses on having the courage to essentially "put yourself out there." Not all endeavors are worth pursuing, but we can't let the fear of failure hinder the pursuit of the ones that are. Maybe I will never be the best, maybe I will never create the next [insert killer app here], and maybe I will never become a developer, but the only certainty is that I will never accomplish any of these things if I don't enter the arena.

Coffee Break Coder is my journey, my struggles, and my triumphs in the arena.