For fun!

So the last post was a bit of a downer, right? I thought I’d get it down while things were still fresh in the mind.

But things aren’t bad at all. Makers remains a lot of fun - if you’re in a bit of a funk the general environment of fun just pulls you through. With running (yeah, back to running) you’re not just interested in making the distance - running in and of itself is fun. Believe me, the best days of running I’ve had are ones where I find a comfortable pace and just see where that quiet country lane will take me. Preferably in beautiful sunshine.

Likewise coding. No, really.

A few days ago Martin Aspell from Deloitte Digital came in and gave us a lunchtime presentation. The lunchtime presentations at Makers are one of the best perks of being here. You sit on beanbags while people from the industry come and talk to you for twenty minutes about what they do. This can be as diverse as data security, insurance databases, restaurant bookings and - I’ll write about this later - and a fantastic talk from Rozemary King from Pivotal labs about Product Management (amazing insight into how an agile process is managed in the trenches).

But back to Martin. He gave a talk about his life, what he’s done and worked on and a little about Deloitte Digital as well. What stuck with me most was something he said about his relationship with writing code: he comapred it to an addiction. He finds it relaxing - he said it calms him down in the evening, like doing a crossword or sudoku.

I thought it sounded a little mad, but he’s right. The last few days I’ve been taking breaks from the course by rewriting the Battleships project, playing around with ideas and seeing what works. And for fun!