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Christoffer Wallenberg
Christoffer Wallenberg

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Creativity and imagination in programming

When i was a kid i often immersed myself into the world of books. Early on it was the comics of Donald Duck, later on the marvelous world of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. I carried around the books of Harry Potter and wanted to know everything about Duckburg.

I always liked the idea of people creating worlds and stories around them. Lego was another thing i immersed myself into. These bricks opened a new world for me to build from my imagination (and later in life build things from Harry Potter with my younger brother) and build things out of my own ideas.

Let me give you an example. A couple of months before my birthday i really wanted a pirate ship but since my birthday was far away i decided to build one with myself with the Lego i had. Even if it looked like any other ship, i remember i was really proud of having built that by my own.

This is why i love programming because you can create purely based on your ideas and imagination.

It's also a powerful tool for creating solutions to problems (and sometimes to problems that don't yet exists).

I think Albert Einstein sums it up pretty good.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

― Albert Einstein

When i teach i try to tell my students to be creative problem-solvers and not just focusing on learning the latest JS framework.

I'm curious on how you view programming, please share in the comments!

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