Momentum and Software Development
In our world, momentum is an essential part of survival. And I don’t mean that in literal terms… momentum might be one of the most important things that keep people’s passion up. While this write-up is specifically targeted towards software developers (traditional students, bootcampers and grads), the lessons can be beneficial to those outside the tech field.
In physics, momentum is an important part of Newton’s second law of motion which states that “the time rate of change of momentum of a body is equal to the force acting on that body.” This might sound too technical for some people but for the purpose of this write-up, I’ll focus on the words “force” and “change.” Now, think of momentum as what you get when you’re walking, jogging or running during one of your cardio sessions in the morning. It’s easier for someone to “push” and “change” your direction when you’re walking up to them, not so easy when you’re jogging and a lot harder when you’re running towards them. When you’re not moving, it’s super easy to knock you over.
In the same vein, lack of activity can lead to deflection from previous interests. As grads, one of the most important things to do is keep up with our coding skills, learning new skills and doing side projects. Getting those github squares green is no easy feat, added to the already tough software development program we have had to go through. But I’ve figured that one sure way to lose steam is to stop doing everything else. The good thing is that momentum can stem from anywhere and can be carried on to other engagements. What I mean by this is that if you could begin something new and make it a stringent daily routine, it might be enough to spur you on to actually creating some time to code. In effect, when you lack momentum about something you used to love doing, it might well be that you just don’t have something else new that you dedicate time for daily. This is because being idle is the greatest way to lose passion or desire for anything else. Get busy on other new involvements today and you might see some renewed passion to code.
As grads, the goal is almost always to find some place to work and get paid. When this doesn’t happen in our own timeframe, we lose some steam and stop growing our coding skills altogether. On the other hand, when we dedicate some time to other daily routine, it’s less harder to actually plan on picking up coding from where we left off. I’ve seen this happen in my journey outside the bootcamp where some days I feel like actually working extensively on algorithms and data structures while on other days, after certain disappointing outcomes from interviews, I simply do not. I would wonder the need for constant practice when I haven’t seen the positive results. One day turns into days which then becomes one week and at that point I’m struggling to get back on track. Even when I adopted the mindset of “the journey is the goal, not the result”, I still struggled to find that drive. But when I pick up some new routine, I tend to carry that drive through to coding.
Activities like morning jogs, going fishing, meditation, being in nature, taking up a self-defense class, and sports can help to refocus and give a sense of drive which can be carried over to coding. Daily involvements in all of these can re-ignite interest in coding again.
