When you’re thinking about how other people will think about your code, it changes the way you code a little, doesn’t it?

I am in the really early phases of Complykit, so I have the freedom and the luxury to do whatever I want right now. I can just go straight to code, I can use some modeling software, and I can dig around in my backpack for that wadded up piece of paper I scratched some ideas on a few weeks ago while I was getting my oil changed. I don’t care where the ideas are or how I wrote them down as long as I don’t forget them.

But now that I have Github set up and I’m checking things in now and then, I’m not feeling quite as care free as I normally would. It’s like I’m having a conversation with some mythical, hypothetical, nonexistent stranger—maybe even a hostile stranger much smarter than myself (not hard). Maybe the reviewer will misunderstand and see my kludgy, temporary stuff out there and assume that it’s the best I can do. And that thought makes me just a little insecure.

I may have been sitting by myself in a bagel shop writing code, but I suddenly felt like I was under the harsh glare of scrutiny “social coding” and the git push. For now, however, I just want to think in code, make a bunch of mistakes, have a bunch of half-baked ideas, write lots of kludgy but fun stuff just so I can see it working. I don’t want to care about what you think right now but I don’t want to not check in until it all looks “perfect.” There will be time to make it all pretty later, for now I just want to play.

I’m going to pretend nobody’s there for a while.