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If You’re a Shy Bee, You Might Want To Ignore This Newbie Coder Advice

Attending as many in-person workshops, events, and meetups as possible is not always the best approach to learning how to code.

Gracia Kleijnen
4 min readFeb 13, 2021
Toddler touching the Apple mouse, looking up at a computer screen. The young one barely reaches over the tabletop.
Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

The magic of the Black Box

She pulled the door closed behind her. Awoken from his afternoon nap, he met her in the hallway. “I got us some Club Mates”, she tells him and hands him one of the bottles. He stares at it and recognizes his favorite flavor. “Nice.” Still lethargic, he slouches toward his ergonomic chair and drops himself on it. Here complex queries are crafted to exist in harmony like the chords of a catchy song. Just a few test runs in, and all bugs from the day before have ceased to exist. He exterminated them. Because that’s what programmers do.

Hello World

Mystery attracted me to coding. If you did well, I knew it could lead to a fat paycheck too, as in any profession. The allure of controlling your computer (and if you’re crafty, your neighbor’s computer too) from a Matrix-like black box with lines of code was too strong to ignore. They call the box the command line, and for good reason. You are the commander.

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Gracia Kleijnen
Gracia Kleijnen

Written by Gracia Kleijnen

Google Sheets & comic creator. Words on productivity, self-development, relationships & mental health in 49+ pubs. 2x Author. https://linktr.ee/graciakleijnen

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