Mandarin to Portuguese to Pepper

At the end of my first coding bootcamp a classmate remarked that coding went from feeling like learning Mandarin to learning Portuguese with the hopes of it one day making it to English.

I've described coding as akin to assembling Ikea furniture in the dark with Japanese instructions.

Long story short, it's hard. Why is it hard? How many reasons do you want?

At the end of the day, for me, it comes back to a combination of having no mental picture in my mind to revert to. The first time you travel to a new place it seems to take a long time and you aren't quite sure when you'll get there. The next time you make the trip you see markers along the way that remind you of your progress and you get a better feel for where you are in the journey. There may even be some muscle memory built up from the turns you've made.

In the beginning, coding is like that first road trip. My goal with The Wheelhouse is to align the unfamiliar (coding) with the familiar (baseball) so that it can sink in a little faster and so I can have a richer set of images to associate with coding's abstract ideas. Think of this like the memory of loci, but instead of homes we're using baseball to strengthen our coding memories and abilities.

I'll get into the basics (what is a variable? what is a constant?) and gradually dig a little deeper into Swift and iOS programming minutiae. We'll also get into more general stuff that I've found helpful along the way. Each post will address the following in bite-sized portions:

1) What are we addressing?

2) Why is it important?

3) When do you use it?
4) How does it work?
5) Provide an example of it for readers to see what it looks like (in code and live)

I don't like to make promises, but here is one that I will do my best to observe: I will refuse to use the words easy, simple, basic or obvious when describing any of the concepts or steps ahead. It drives me nuts when tech writers use these words as they make an assumption that may be false while, at the same time, potentially insulting and frustrating to their readers. I still remember what it's like to be that reader which is why I'm writing The Wheelhouse. If I do use the words easy, simple, basic, or obvious in non-sarcastic ways, you have my permission to remind me of the promise I made.

Deal?

Good.