"If you want to [program] better, stop [programming] for two years"

• Personal

This advice actually came from a photographer: “If you want to take better photos, stop taking photos for two years,” he suggested. The suggestion seems paradoxical, but it makes perfect sense. Here’s how I understand it: the technique is there, but you’re missing the subject, the substance, the heart—that extra bit of soul. You’re just taking technical photographs.

Ouch.

Well, it’s clear that the idea remains just as valid if you replace “photography” with “coding,” or with any activity that requires technical skills to master. We also understand that the timeframe isn’t set in stone: it might be three months, a year, or longer if necessary, and it also depends, of course, on your financial resources—a reality that can’t be dismissed out of hand.

Let’s start with this scenario anyway: you’re taking a break from programming. You distance yourself from anything that even remotely resembles a keyboard, from anything that could compile, and above all, you make sure to lose your Jira password. You give up—for a while—on that relentless pressure to do better and faster. And you do something else. Read, talk, observe, admire, experiment, touch, knead, look, smell, listen—whatever you want. Anything but programming.

Life is a succession of desires and boredom. You have to let the desire return. Once you’ve thoroughly explored the subject and meditation holds no more secrets for you, you may feel that something is missing. The need to create, in this case. Many of us feel driven by this urge, this desire to build beautiful things—our own little intellectual cathedrals.

Then the time will come to sit down at a keyboard again. This moment is likely to be disorienting, since your automatic habits will have disappeared. But the silver lining is that you’ll be an outside, impartial observer of the developer you once were: “Huh, why did I do that that way?” Or, more bluntly: “Who’s the c** who wrote that?” You, of course. This will be an opportunity to question your old habits and take a fresh look at your work. A dizzying yet beneficial exercise.

But, more profoundly, this time away will have allowed you to explore the world a bit and take an interest in realities beyond the world of computing. Don’t get me wrong: computing is wonderful; it’s exciting—but for the thousand and first time, computing is not an end in itself. Computing is there to solve “real-life” problems—the kind where elderly people are lonely, where working people sleep in their cars, where people discover too late that they have cancer.

You get the picture: computer science—what’s the point? It’s a bit like a midlife crisis applied to computer science, but it’s a necessary and essential phase. You come out of it with a sense of urgency to do something useful and the conviction that you could always learn more, but that’s not what will make the difference.

Do you see what I mean?