The Increment of Improvement

Learning to code takes time, like anything creative

Pliers, window, code and my version of a woodcut of a man using a nokogiri saw

I was hitting errors on a coding project one afternoon in June like a fly bouncing its face against a window over and over. I stopped when FedEx delivered our new vice grip pliers. We wanted to install the air conditioner in our bedroom, but a child guard blocked the window, and the pliers were our key to cool.

In New York City, you only need the guard if you have children, but these bars are impossible to remove without a special tool. You can’t ask the super to do it, because the bars are “permanent.” I was already sweating over my laptop, so I breaked to tackle the window.

I Googled a refresher YouTube on vice grip pliers. Then, I clamped the pinchers onto the millimeter-tall side of the first screw head, which was the only way to grip it. You could saw the screw heads off the guard bars, according to the Internet, but we wanted to avoid destroying anything. So, I twisted against the rusty threads.

I’m learning to code through the Flatiron School’s online boot camp, and my biggest epiphany so far has been that programming is building in the tiniest increments. You write code, hit enter, the program says, “Error!” and you fix it over and over. Soon, you have a beautiful web app.