📝 Slapping It on the Wall: What the Invention of the Sticky Note Taught Me About Coding

bramwelM — Tue, 26 May 2026 19:59:12 +0000

A while back, I stepped away from my IDE and onto a stage at Pint of Science Kisumu. If you aren’t familiar, Pint of Science is a global festival that brings researchers and techies out of their labs and into local spots to talk about their work over a drink. No jargon, no dense slide decks—just raw stories of discovery.

My talk was titled "Sticky Note."

Initially, the audience looked a bit confused. Why is a developer talking about stationery?

But as it turns out, the history of the humble sticky note is the ultimate metaphor for the chaotic, beautiful reality of building software.

The "Failed" Project

In 1968, a scientist named Spencer Silver was trying to develop a super-strong aerospace adhesive. Instead, he ended up with a weak, sensitive glue that could barely hold two pieces of paper together.

The project failed. It was discarded as a failure.

It sat on a shelf for years as a useless mistake. It wasn't until years later that his colleague, Art Fry, frustrated by his bookmarks constantly falling out of his hymnal during choir practice, remembered the "weak glue." He applied it to the paper, and the world’s first Sticky Note was born. Even its iconic canary yellow color was a complete accident—the lab next door just happened to have a stack of yellow scrap paper lying around.

The Illusion of "Seamless" Code
Lately, I’ve been diving deep into logic and system architecture. One major thing I’ve discovered is the massive amount of hidden detail that goes into building any functioning system.

From an outsider’s point of view, a finished application or an elegant script looks seamless. It feels automatic. But as anyone who writes code knows: everything you see is highly intentional.

Behind that smooth user experience is a chaotic trail of:

Fatal errors and broken loops

Hours spent staring at a terminal screen

"Weak glue" solutions that didn't work the way we expected

The real magic of engineering isn't about getting it right on the first try. If it were, none of us would have a job. The magic lies in having the patience to stare at a mistake, slap it on the wall like a sticky note, and look at it from a different angle until we find its true purpose.

Don't Delete the Broken Script
My main takeaway—and my encouragement to the crowd last night—was simple: Do not stop.

When you're working on a feature and the logic completely breaks, or when your data looks incredibly messy, don't just panic and scrap the code. Development is rarely a straight line. It is a process of accidental discoveries disguised as bugs. If we delete our work the moment it goes wrong, we might just be throwing away the foundation of our next big breakthrough.

I am incredibly humbled to say that the audience voted my talk the People’s Choice for the night! 🏆

It was an amazing reminder that whether you are in a high-tech research lab or debugging a local server in Kisumu, we are all just trying to navigate the chaos of creation.

The next time your code crashes or a project falls apart, embrace it. Trust your process, look at the error from a new perspective, and keep pushing forward. Your greatest bug might just be the feature that changes everything.

Have you ever turned a massive coding mistake into a successful feature? Let me know your best "accidental discovery" stories in the comments below! 👇

Confessions of a Git Beginner: Why the Terminal Stopped Scaring Me

bramwelM — Sat, 23 May 2026 12:49:07 +0000

When I started my coding journey, I thought writing code was the hard part. Then I met Git and the command line. At first, it felt like a series of incantations I had to type perfectly into the terminal, or my entire project would vanish. But after breaking a few things and pushing through the confusion, I realized Git isn't just a tool only, it's also a mindset shift.

To be completely honest, the terminal terrified me. It felt like a cold, unforgiving void where typing a single wrong character could accidentally delete my entire project or break my machine. For the first few weeks, running commands felt like shouting magic incantations into the dark and praying everything didn't blow up. But a funny thing happens when you use Git every day: the fear fades, and the mindset changes.

I’m still very much a beginner, but Git has completely changed how I think about building software. Here are the four biggest lessons version control has taught me so far.

1. Making Mistakes is Part of the Process (The Safety Net)
Before I started using Git, writing code felt incredibly high-stakes.

Git completely flipped that script. It taught me that software development, it’s about having a safety net that allows you to fail safely.

Realizing that I can ruthlessly experiment, completely mess up a file, and then simply run a command to discard those changes and reset back to safety was a massive breakthrough. Git didn't just save my code; it gave me the psychological freedom to break things on purpose just to see how they work.

2. The Art of Breaking Things Down
Git forced me to stop, breathe, and think modularly. It taught me to break big problems into micro-steps:

Isolate the feature:
Instead of working on everything in the main branch, I learned to spin up a dedicated feature branch for a single specific task.
Work in tiny increments:
Fix a small bug? Commit it. Format a file? Commit it.
Write meaningful histories:
Wrapping my head around why git commit -m "fixed stuff" is a bad idea made me a better critical thinker. Writing a clear, structured commit message forces you to explain what you changed and why.

It made me look at projects differently. I now view coding as a series of small, manageable stepping stones.

3. Communication & Collaboration
Even if you are working on a solo project, you are never truly coding alone. At the very least, you are collaborating with Future You.

There is nothing quite like looking back at a project you wrote three weeks ago and trying to figure out what your past self was thinking. Git taught me that code isn't just written for computers to execute; it's written for humans to read.

Maintaining a clean Git history, naming branches logically, and writing a solid, detailed README.md file aren't just administrative chores. They are essential communication tools. Git taught me that being a good developer means being a good teammate to whoever reads my repository next—even if that person is just me in a month.

4. Navigating the "oops" Moments

Git will throw errors at you that look like complete gibberish at first. You'll run into an unexpected merge conflict, a permission issue, or a 403 Forbidden error when trying to push to a remote repository.

In my first week, those errors made my stomach drop. I assumed I had broken everything beyond repair.

But navigating those "uh-oh" moments taught me the most valuable lesson of all: senior developers don't have fewer errors; they just have more practice solving them.

I learned to slow down, read the terminal logs closely, check my remote configurations, and realize that every single error is fixable. The terminal isn't an enemy looking to punish your mistakes; it’s just a tool waiting for clear instructions.

Repetition Builds Muscle Memory
If you're a beginner reading this and you still have to look up how to update your branch from main, delete a local branch, or fix a detached HEAD state—that is completely normal.

I still keep a cheatsheet open on my second monitor. The commands don't stick overnight, but the confidence does. Git stopped being a scary obstacle and became the ultimate developer tool. It keeps me organized, gives me permission to make mistakes, and reminds me that every big problem is just a collection of tiny, committable pieces.

If you’re hiding from the terminal, take the leap. Type git init, embrace the errors, and let yourself break things. It's the only way to learn!

DEV Community: bramwelM

📝 Slapping It on the Wall: What the Invention of the Sticky Note Taught Me About Coding

Have you ever turned a massive coding mistake into a successful feature? Let me know your best "accidental discovery" stories in the comments below! 👇

Confessions of a Git Beginner: Why the Terminal Stopped Scaring Me

🛠️ What was the most terrifying Git error you ran into as a beginner, and how did you fix it? Let's swap horror stories in the comments!