It isn’t about coding — what a word, ‘coding.’ Coding in my line of work is structuring a website, developing a design, or I may compare it to diagramming a sentence, working a puzzle, building a lego town.
While good clean code is often called poetry, and rightly so, it isn’t the code alone that matters.
No, not coding, but the people. It’s the people who use the code that matter. The people who read the words or use the design.
They matter because you care, and because you need to connect with people. Otherwise the ‘code’ doesn’t work.
There are people that use your work and people your work represents; there are people you work with and work for, (‘with_whom’);
…one of my favorite projects was creating a playbill for the Unique Lives & Lecture series. I was working in the marketing department of a regional newspaper.
These speakers changed my life. I wasn’t working directly for the presenters, but in the process of researching and learning about my subject while creating the playbill, I was influenced.
My manager assigned me the project and let me go to the presentations where I setup a floor display for the event, and afterward met the speakers backstage. It was an enriching experience. My manager cared and it mattered to the creative team.
And every project has a team, a circle of people. It may just be me and the client, or a team of professionals and the client.
The team helps to build something the client needs, the person needs. While this need varies from project to project one aspect of need remains the same because it’s someone’s livelihood, their passion, and what makes them tick.
When creating each project we all learn more about people and about ourselves, and what our world needs to function.