hello__world

for readers who are not interested in programming, hello world is typically the first program one writes when learning a new language. you are following a tutorial or reading a book, you download the software, you type in a few lines of code, compile/run and voila. somewhere or other, the computer says hello world.

there is something uniquely satisfying about that moment for me. there is no real effort involved, yet when i first see the words it's as if i've struck gold. i liken it to digging into a mountainside. after you start it opens up into a cavern. there is still an entire mountain to work through, but simply seeing the open cavern holds the promise of how much more you can achieve. a whole world to explore.

really, i have these feelings whenever i start something new. without seeing the code on screen, though, it can be difficult to notice when it happens. it's easy to miss the excitement.

a friend of mine shared a quote with me: people overestimate how much they can do in a day, and underestimate how much they can do in a year. basically, small gains over time add up, and every day is going to be a small gain. even when you achieve something big, it is only a small gain standing on a hill of older effort.

when i first quit a full time job, i started learning a few new languages. when writing the hello world code for one, i replaced the words with this is the start of something new. it felt a lot more exciting than it was. it was a lot more profound than it felt. sometimes i would look back at all the times i've written hello world and think that so many of them ended up being a complete waste. i don't use those languages anymore. but it's never a waste. it's just a small amount of effort that will add to something larger later.

my most recent mentality has been about doing all the hello worlds i come up with. i've always had a hundred ideas a day. now i'm trying to start as many. most will fail, some i'll get bored of. but i figure that eventually all these small efforts will add up. and instead of building a program, instead of each hello world leading to a module of code, every hello world will be a another piece of me. i won't find myself, i'll build myself up.

here's to my latest hello__world.