TRYING TO PASS MY BELT EXAM (AND BEING DEAD STUCK)
“Mustafa, you have 27 minutes left on your timer!” Alexa chided.
I was stuck.
Dead stuck.
mucking through intellectual sludge of anxiety. while my ominous on-screen timer was ticking away.
Counting the fleeting seconds of my final coding exam.
(Also known as a “belt exam.”)
A comprehensive exam symbolizing the culmination of everything I’d worked so tirelessly for the past 18 weeks.
An exam…I wasn’t going to pass.
I could feel the weeks worth of progress slip away.
I needed help.
HANDING OVER A TANGLED HAIRBALL (AND HAVING IT HANDED BACK)
“How have you SYSTEMATICALLY tested through this problem?” – Mike, my lead instructor, queried.
I blankly stared.
fumbling through some half-witted response:
“Oh! I tried in my CONSOLE…” I trailed off.
The real answer: I hadn’t.
I had “tested” just not —“systematically.”
I didn’t know how.
(Or as I would later discover, I thought I didn’t)
the whole issue seemed like a tangled mess.
A giant tangled hairball of a mess.
Meanwhile, Mike grabbed his digital whiteboard.
He drew out four numbers.
1 => 2 => 3 => 4
He put a large X through 3 & 4.
“You KNOW that three and four don’t matter because the data isn’t even getting there. So you don’t have to worry about them.”
“Eventually, you are going to get there but for right now you don’t need to worry about it.”
He proceeded to underline 1 & 2.
“Think about where it’s broken.” he directed me.
“C’mon you already know this.” he supportively nudged.
“You already know the pieces, you’re just overthinking this.”
Blank.
Each nudge chipping away at my confusion, but my mental car was still stalled.
Still sensing my confusion, he offered the final push!
“Isolate the problem.”
CLANK! A mental gear shifted.
USING PEBBLES TO FIND MY WAY
“A problem that is too complex to be solved in one step has to be broken down into subproblems that are easy to solve and whose solutions can be combined into a solution for the overall problem.
Set up systematic tests, (“breadcrumbs”) along the way. Use the feedback from breadcrumbs to show you what part of the process is broken. Eliminate the parts that are irrelevant. Narrow down to stages and work from there until you reach the next checkpoint.
“If I know I don’t have to worry about 3&4, Let me focus on 1 & 2.” I uttered to myself.
Just like a doctor, runs tests put the pieces together, I did the same.
“Okay, if this is broken here, use this to test it.”
Boom. I found it. There is was!
The simple mistake that was standing between me and my programming dreams!
Just 3 words. THREE!
So I typed them in, ran the code…AND VOLIA… Nothing!
“Wait—NOTHING?!” – I mentally exclaimed.
WHYISN’TTHISWORKING?!
I was redlining.
I was going to fail. All this hard-work, for nothing.
LEANING ON YOUR PROTOCOLS
“I don’t know what’s wrong.” I exasperatedly stated.
“I don’t know what’s wrong either.”- Mike claimed back. His experienced, calm demeanor the polar opposite of mine.
“I haven’t seen this type of error before.” he followed on.
“What gives?!”
“I’m absolutely gutted.“
“ISOLATE THE PROBLEM FURTHER.”
Instead of spazzing and handing the hairball to Mike, I leaned on my newly formed protocols.
- “Okay, test this here— Tested.” Working fine.
- “Okay, test this next. This is working.” Done.
- “Okay, this text…Hmm. Not good.” Error Message.
“What’s going on?” Then I saw it!
“I had missed 9 characters— DAMN!“
I quickly typed in the missing characters.
Finally, the answer displayed.
I let out a deep sigh of relief.
I passed.
But that wasn’t all…
LESSON: EMPOWERMENT SHOWS UP IN DIFFERENT WAYS
LESSON: IN LIFE, EMPOWERMENT CAN SHOW UP IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS. IN WAYS WE DON'T EXPECT BUT THE FEELING OF BEING ABLE TO RELY ON YOURSELF, BECAUSE YOU HAVE A METHODOLOGY, A SYSTEM, AN APPROACH CAN BE FREEING!
Passing the test wasn’t the victory.
Dissecting the hairball—with my own emerging skills was.__
To have the confidence to know:
“Hey- I might now know the upcoming situation holds and that OKAY. Because what I do know is— I’ll have an approach to test and figure it out. and, if I don’t figure it out, when I share it with an expert or expert/s I’ll be able to provide my best reasonable guess as to why this isn’t working. To be able to isolate down to the root causes.”
Mike didn’t rob me of that gift.
In turn, that moment, turned into to one of my defining moments from the entire bootcamp.
SITTING IN THE (DEFINING) MOMENT
“I saw you had a breakthrough so I wanted you to just sit in that moment.” – Mike proudly stated.
“I want you to be independent. Since I’m not going to be there for when you deal with algorithms or (coding) interviews.”
“Thank you for mr. Miyagining me. Without even Mr. Miyagini-ing me.” I graciously thanked him.
Mike was teaching me computational thinking—without me even knowing it!
In the process teaching me individualism.
Specifically:
A digital form of rugged individualism.
A form many of us can embrace AND…
^^You don’t need to be a computer scientist to do it!. ^^
So, when you are dealing with a problem.
Setup a series of tests to test it out systematically at first.
Just like Hansel and Gretel.
COMPUTATION AND HANSEL & GRETEL
“Systematic problem solving is one key characteristic of computation.”- Once an algorithm
“Computation is a process for solving a particular problem.”
If fact, this section from a book Mike recommended, “Once a upon an algorithm” says it best, using the well known Children’s story, Hansel and Gretel:
“A problem that is too complex to be solved in one step has to be broken down into subproblems that are easy to solve and whose solutions can be combined into a solution for the overall problem.
“The problem of finding the way out of the forest can be decomposed by identifying a sequence of intermediate locations that are close enough to each other that one can easily move between them.”
“When combined, they yield a movement from the starting location in the forest to the home.
At times, we will have to go into the unknown!
Fields that we know nothing about and make sense of them for our survival.
Setting up a series of small experiments to get there can be the way you get there.
WHAT’S THE POINT OF THIS PIECE?
Struggle in life is inevitable.
Struggle is good.
(Assuming it is the optimal struggle.)
From that optimal level of struggle, your defining moments will emerge.
From you defining moments, you will have growth beyond your wildest beliefs.
Allowing you to grow into a stronger person than you could have imagined.
A person whose strong enough to deal with the next “hairball” of struggle they are given.
Untangling that knotted mess, to find the thin, sinewy thread of a silver lining.
The silver lining which empower you to charge onto the next thing in the future knowing…
You can handle that!
Because… you’ve dealt with something similar.
That “something similar” linking to what you already know is your PERSONAL ALGORITHM.
An algorithm’s utility defined as:
For an algorithm to be useful in such situations it must be able to solve a whole class of problems, which means that it must be possible to apply the method to several different, but related, problems.
Once upon an algorithm
So go out there and build your personal algorithms today!
And share them with the world.
Subsequently, helping yourself and empowering others to do the same!