Day 4: Mid-Week Ruminations

Chard on 2021/04/01 05:05 of Paper Dragon 31

When we started out doing PyWeeks back in 2007 it was very exciting for me. I was not really a programmer, I didn't think of myself as one at any rate. I had messed around with PyGame and I'd heard about PyWeek and decided to take part. I had no idea at the time of the difficulty there is in taking an idea for a game and realising it. I was very fortunate to have friends willing to help out; friends who were much more experienced programmers than I was. It was a great experience overall and while I didn't properly acknowledge it at the time Adam and Martin carried me through that event. Thank you, guys.

Back then it was the three of us, coders all, in the same room, on various computers. We were doing things and talking about what we were doing and every time someone got something to work it was always a point of interest for the rest of the team. Being together fundamentally meant that we were working together and the successes of others kept each of us motivated and interested and powering through. Cementing all of that we had Carrie, the fourth and final member of our team, who made us a different pie every day of PyWeek, highlighting once again, being part of a team is a lot more than the work you do, it's about how you support each other. Thank you, Carrie.

Which brings me back to 2021, where the world is so different and where so many people have had to get used to the idea of working in their own little isolation bubbles. On the one hand I definitely have a lot more experience than I used to. I know how to create and ship a simple and probably quite silly game in a week. But this isn't really the point, is it? Put simply, if we can't work together, how can we work together? Because it seems like for that to happen we need to be doing something more than merely the job that is in front of us.

I'm going to avoid moralising here, but it's definitely food for thought. One thought that I had was that it can be easy, especially when a project has a compressed time frame, for us as individuals to get tunnel-vision. It can be easy to end up so focused on your part of the endeavour that you forget about the parts others are playing in it all. It can be easy to forget to check in with your teammates and say "Hey. This thing you did, nice work!"

Anyway, thanks for reading. Be good to each other everyone.