The Zen of Coding

Interlude: Gold From Straw; Reframing Everything I write this while in a sit down from doing the gardening. 👩‍🌾 ridiculous I know. Today I made my gardening debut. Aged 30.  It’s beautiful. I love it. One of my colleagues refers to himself as “the destroyer” when he deletes lots of code.  This is me when I delete lots of weeds; delete all the overgrown plants; and delete everything that’s blocking the front steps back at home at my house in Luxembourg. A few big realisations happened today.  I have become re-obsessed with Tibet; that obsession is never very far from me thank goodness.  View from where I am sitting right now; front garden.  I am watching a documentary on it for the 6th time but for the first time in the big tv we got during Covid (our old one was tiny and this one is just pretty normal nowadays) and I am re-watching seven years in Tibet and then I started listening to some Tibetan music I was obsessed with while I lived in Liverpool and then ev...

Tao Te Ching, Verse XIII: Doing Software Engineering Because I Love The World So Much "Love the world as yourself; then you'll be able to care for it properly." This is from the Brian Browne Walker translation; and this has been one of my favourite quotes for many, many years. Now that I am in Luxembourg my heart is absolutely filled with love. I love each and every last tree that I see. I love each and every pylon, each and every utility tower. I love each and every utility tower everywhere I go, though. It reminds me of what I know and it makes me feel sure. I am coding in the right discipline for me.  I am coding in the perfect field for me.  Thank you thank you thank you. I am so privileged and so so blessed to be coding in utilities. This is the privilege of my lifetime and I love it with all my heart. I am so lucky and so privileged to be doing this. Thank you. But why stop there. On the way home from the airport I called in at the cafe.  Except that I didn’t; the l...

Tao Te Ching, Verse XII: Find Your Path, Find Your Passion, Follow Your Heart, Follow Your Destiny This verse is basically telling you to look inside of yourself. When I decided to become a software engineer, what did I have? I had so little. At the point of completely making the decision, I had been working in Product for two and a half months. I had written in SQL. Maybe a tiny bit of Ruby. I'm not even sure if I had done Python. But I knew. I knew with all of my heart that this was meant to be; I knew that this was what I was meant to be. I knew that this was what I was meant to be doing. I know with all my heart that I had a life path and that I had a life purpose and that I had a life passion and that I had to follow it. I had so little experience but all the signs were there. I kept bumping into software engineers everywhere. I kept randomly meeting people by random coincidence who were telling me that this was what I was meant to be doing. I couldn't let go of this. I co...

Tao Te Ching XI: We Are Good Enough Just As We Already Are I don't really stop and I know that I should. I try to stop but I can't and besides this blog is "Good For My Self Esteem". And I really need that right now. By God, do I always need that. I really like internet towers and I really like wind farms. When I was 17 I went on a school trip to the South of France, near Spain.  There were so many magical internet towers, high up in the mountains. They might have been phone masts you know.  It's all the same thing to me. Sorry.  I can't really distinguish between them. It feels like the internet towers are all still speaking to me from back there. I love them so so much I love them. What can we learn from this Tao Te Ching's verse? Again this isn't my favourite translation. I believe that it is Brian Browne Walker who said "It is the empty space that makes things liveable." I was exhausted (although I just ate breakfast - at 12 noon in spite...

Tao Te Ching, Verse X: Seeing The Perfection In Absolutely Everything For no specific reason in the world writing this blog improves my self-esteem (which is extremely valuable and extremely rare with neurodivergence). More so than the other two blogs. The other two I do out of love. Love for software engineering, love for the code. This one I do too. But it significantly improves my self esteem. To the point of where I want to keep on doing it. Every day, almost. Ahem. Let's see. Can you cleanse your vision until you can see bliss in every direction? I don't really understand or like this translation. I don't really like it or get it (the one below). I am just using it because it's the most readily available version on the internet - if you are looking for a book do Stephen Mitchell or Brian Browne Walker. Hands down. They are the experts. So I know that one of those two has the line - oh yes and there is the match in below - "Can you cleanse your vision until you...

Tao Te Ching, Verse IX: Leave Some Space Empty As I write this I feel completely exhausted. I've been ill for a week. I have some home stuff that I need to do and I urgently need to do it. Maybe I shouldn't have spent the whole weekend doing Python. Whoops. But I was ill and so the blogging was easier to do. I think it's stopped raining so I should run to the shops. But anyway here I am so nevermind. I should eat too before going shopping anyway. Blogging and content creating can feel like screaming into a void Sometimes I wonder. Who is reading? Is anybody reading? On LinkedIn I get comparatively few likes - it's completely unpredictable - but it seems like so many people read. Like people stop me. I have been stopped by strangers who read my posts.  Or people who have never reacted go "Oh my god I love your posts I read them all." Anyway I don't do it for that. I do it for the love of software engineering. If my journey means anything to you or if you...

Tao Te Ching, Verse VIII: You Are Already Perfect I can't even start with this one.  Or where to go. It is a classic. It is so beautiful. "The highest good is like water". It is good for all things. "The Highest Good Is Like Water" When I found my passion and life purpose of software engineering, I knew that I had to do it, and I knew that I wanted to be doing it for All Things. Like water I strive to bring good into everything. "In meditation, go deep into the heart" I can't even stress to all of you how much I love meditation. I can't even stress to all of you how peaceful and how happy it makes me feel. In meditation, we simply come back to One. We simply come back to who we are.  We simply come back to what were already were, to who we are all along. And that's it. Meditation is resting in joy, resting in eternal bliss. Meditation is resting in peace and in eternity. Meditation is resting in peaceful eternity. Meditation is resting in l...

Tao Te Ching, Verse VII: Through Selfless Action, She Attains Fulfilment "The sage stays behind, thus he is ahead." Slow and steady wins the race. Throughout my coding journey I have always done things gradually but consistently. I have methodically learned every language I ever learned, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript and now I am methodically learning Python too - very methodically indeed, too. I combine Codewars problems, with rigour and thorough analysis, with Codecademy courses - I try and do a 50:50 split (this is in my evenings and on my weekends, in my downtime, on the train, and in moments when I am desperately blocked and cannot proceed at all without help - thank you so much). I was rigorous at all points of my coding journey and always consolidated things: on my blog on linkedin in my 1:1 doc with my manager (I had a learning updates doc for the first four months of learning on the job before bootcamp and I maintained it rigorously ). I guess what I'm trying...

Tao Te Ching, Verse VI: Go With The Flow "Use it; it will never fail." I am getting closer and closer to talking about this on my platforms and for some reason it seems that maybe today is the day. I have spent the last 15 years of my life suffering with an extremely debilitating health condition. That's it; the cat's out of the bag. I was expecting to reveal it some day but maybe not like this. I have spent the last 15 years of my life suffering with really serious non-epileptic seizures; they have definitely lessened in recent years and that's why I can work; they have improved dramatically in the last year or so as well and apart from a recent flare up they have been infinitely much, much, much, much better. I don't take anything for granted. I don't take the ability to walk down the street for granted. I don't take the ability to work for granted. I didn't take the ability to study for granted and I probably should continue not to take the abil...

Tao Te Ching, Verse V: Hold On To What You Love (in my case it's software engineering) I have been putting this one off four weeks. It's so hard to write about and to apply. But so it is.  I am taking every verse of the Tao Te Ching and applying it to software engineering, this is one of my favourite texts of all time, and software engineering is my deep great passion. I might even do part 2 of this text the "Hua Hu Ching" as well one day. ps. yes I am off sick today.  It's quite hard being off sick with ADHD - it can be really boring. I still want to do what I love. So I am doing some gentle blog posts but no real work work. I might do some Python courses though. What's this verse about then? This is not my favourite translation but this translation is readily available online so yeah there you go I'm using it for this blog. I would say "hold fast to the centre" is a very important thing. Really to me it means holding on to God, and holding on t...