Live Coding

I performed my second student presentation today.

Wow! What an experience. I felt the same as I did after the first one last Thursday - like I could run a three-minute mile or bench-press a thousand pounds.

The first time around, I presented on git. Specifically, how to use git as an engineer and transition it from being something that you occasionally -- and clumsily use -- into a tool that's seamlessly incorporated into your workflow and that enhances your productivity.

I intended that first session to involve some live-coding, but it wasn't to be. In the lead-up to my speaking slot, I couldn't code effectively. My nerves had gotten to me, and I had less than zero confidence in my ability to code for an audience. So I improvised and instead delivered a talk covering my main points - committing and pushing frequently.

I was disappointed to fall short of my expectations that day, but I took it as a lesson. First, that when people make it look easy - they're way better than they look. Second, to get that good will take practice. But I'll note that I was proud of my ability that day to improvise and to deliver a presentation that I think was worth listening to.

Today I was scheduled to speak to the same 60+ group of peers on maintaining an engineering journal. But a couple of hours before my time, I got a tingling to try to live-code. So I started rehearsing the presentation that I bailed out of last week, and it flowed infinitely better than it had at the same point a week before. Was I going to do this?

With an hour of rehearsal under my belt, and an hour to spare - enough time to put together my thoughts on the would-be journaling presentation - I committed. I was going to live-code.

It was a big deal. To step up and put myself out there in a way that I wasn't able to a few days prior. To accept that things might not go smoothly and that I might make some embarrassing errors in front of my peers. That was dreadful thought. At the same time, accepting that it's ok to not be perfect and that if I wanted to improve, that this was the inevitable next-step -- that was enough for me to commit. If not me - who? If not not - when?

Live coding is hard. It's intimidating. There's a reason I haven't seen someone code live since the first week of the program. And that that person was one of the founders of Hack Reactor.

But today was my day. And it went well! Sure, there were some errors - but guess what? I was demoing git - a tool for working with errors. And I think I did a nice job of working through it and presenting a transparent demonstration of what it might look like for the juniors to use. To not be intimidated by it. Instead, to harness its power and be willing to make mistakes in order to learn it better and grow as an engineer.

I certainly did that tonight.