Ode to Developers

It's the culmination of many things,

Of many Google searches,

Of many Twitter ramblings.

It's many occasions of trawling through blog posts and YouTube videos,

Of sifting through examples and demos,

Of crawling through the source code,

Of wading through the docs,

Of much frustration,

But much reward.

Many aha! moments,

And a whole lot of curiosity.

I didn't learn any of this in a classroom (not that you shouldn't).

I never got a CS degree (not that you can't).

I never had a teacher (unless you count the browser).

I never had any classmates (unless you count the other users out there).

I never had a curriculum (unless you count the Bootcamps and the MOOTS and the DEV.to recommendations).

I never had a reading list (unless you count the Twitter recommendations).

I never had a group project (unless you count the Pull Requests).

I never had a class discussion (unless you count Slack and Discourse).

But, of course, you do count all of these.

Who said that it has to have four walls and a whiteboard to call itself a classroom?

Who said they had to be presenting a deck in an auditorium to be your teacher?

Who said you need a piece of stationary to prove that you've learnt something?

Who says the browser is not a classroom?

That the users are not your classmates?

That Twitter is not your class discussion?

And, that GitHub is not your group project?

If "education is the great equaliser",

Then technology is the embodiment of that statement.

There is still bias, technology is not immune - to think otherwise would be naive.

Regardless of knowledge and expertise, some will still be overlooked,

By men, by ivy leaguers, by straight A students.

But what technology does do,

Is it does equip you with tools,

The tools to do something about it.

If someone won't let you play in their sandbox you can create your own sandbox.

Create your own sandbox.

---

Originally posted to my blog