PSA: That moment when a stranger on a bus taught me about functions

I was riding the 23 bus last Tuesday on my way home from work, feeling stuck on a coding problem. A guy maybe 60 years old saw me staring at my laptop and asked what I was working on. I told him I was trying to figure out how to reuse a block of code without copying it a million times. He just said "sounds like you need a function, kid" and showed me a quick example right there on his phone's notepad. It was the simplest thing ever, just a few lines of Python, but it clicked in my head. He told me he learned coding in the 80s on a Commodore 64 and that functions were the first thing that made programming make sense to him. Has anyone else had a random person break down a concept in a way that just stuck?

1 comments

1 Comment

jade_butler1mo ago

That moment when a stranger taught me about functions" reminds me of when a guy at a coffee shop showed me how for loops work by comparing it to making coffee for everyone in the office. Sometimes the simplest real world examples are what make things stick!