Programming as Meditation

Craig Mod, writing for Wired:

A little over a year ago, as the Covid-19 lockdowns were beginning to fan out across the globe, most folks grasped for toilet paper and canned food. The thing I reached for: a search function.

The purpose of the search function was somewhat irrelevant. I simply needed to code. Code soothes because it can provide control in moments when the world seems to spiral. Reductively, programming consists of little puzzles to be solved. Not just inert jigsaws on living room tables, but puzzles that breathe with an uncanny life force. Puzzles that make things happen, that get things done, that automate tedium or allow for the publishing of words across the world.

I’ve been hacking on personal side projects a lot more over the last year, and the above really explains how it makes me feel. “Puzzles that breathe with an uncanny life force” — that’s it. That’s how programming has felt for me ever since I got my first BASIC program working back when I was a kid. Even when it was just me going up to the Commodore 64 display model at Kmart in the 1980s and typing:

10 PRINT "KMART SUCKS!"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

and then scurrying away with uncontrollable giggles — which I did, religiously, every single time we went to Kmart — I got that thrill.

★ Tuesday, 13 April 2021