Crossing the Line before the Finish Line. Also the line before that.

As the end of my coding boot camp can be seen just over the yonder horizon, I can look back at the experience of building something from scratch. Now, with 4 projects done ("projects" being a loose term for "A bunch of code that somehow works for the most part"), I can remember the initial experience of overwhelming dread at seeing the size, scope, and complexity of the job ahead. Many minutes, and hours if I were being honest, were lost just sitting in front of my computer and not knowing what to do. The task seemed simply _impossible _for my meager talents.

That's when the first line is crossed. Simply starting. Doing something, no matter how small of a task it may be. One of the things I would tell my previous non-coder self would be to pick something small and start there. It doesn't matter what sometimes because anything is better than your hands hovering over a keyboard without producing the clickety-clacking of the first strands of error, bug-ridden and nearly indecipherable scribble that are sure to be produced by your initial attempts at making any amount of code do what you want it to do.

But persistence is the key that opens the door. I've struggled to do even the most mundane of tasks, and I'm sure I will continue to do so in the future. One step will eventually be successful, and it will lead to more utter and abject failure. And the process will continue more or less like so.

But there's one more line to cross that isn't the finish line. That's when somehow, some way the impossible has happened. Your code is working. After gallons of energy drinks and you're surrounded by the empty plastic wrappings of whatever terrible food you had been consuming until this point, the things you want to happen actually happen at the time you want them to. It's a mystifying result and looking back is almost like turning around to see that the road that leads you here is very hazy and blurry. You're not quite sure how it all got to this point, but here you are, and the picture of a clown eating a cheeseburger on your app is somehow being displayed appropriately and in the proper proportions!

How? How did this happen? Persistence. Now the possibilities that seemed non-existent before now turn into dozens of idea pop-corning inside your Mountain Dew fueled brain. First you didn't know where to start, and now you're thinking of all the possibilities. _That _is the point where I feel success. The finish line itself is just icing on top.