On Coding Projects as Experimental Creation
By Jenny Zhi
Last Friday, I opened up Atom at midnight to begin polishing the functionality of some features in the mobile application I have been working on over the last two quarters for my human-computer interaction project classes (CS 147 and CS 194H, if you’re wondering) — and coded for fifteen hours straight, until 3:30 in the afternoon. That wasn’t the only instance I coded through the night for this project (I did it a few times last quarter, too). Of course, my body was never too happy about the all-nighters (pro tip: if you have time for a quick nap, chug a lot of coffee right before. The caffeine kicks in after twenty minutes, by which you’ll probably be asleep. When you wake up, you’ll have a couple of hours of sleep and caffeine — the dynamic duo — to help keep you a little more alive throughout the day. The coffee nap, a godsend).
That said, I always found the quiet, focused hours tapping away at my keyboard, producing, creating, strangely enjoyable. And there’s something to say to the act of creation: it originates from the Latin creare, which referred to the almost divine action of bringing form out of nothing. Under this context, invention and production and creation truly are really exciting, and that’s enough to keep me inadvertently working on projects for hours at a time.
I love working and making progress on coding projects, whether substantial or small, silly or not, personal or academic. My favorite (and my first) project was Flappy Bird Goes to Stanford, an extraordinarily laggy and unresponsive rendition of the popular mobile game. It was frankly quite terrible — but it showed me that with the skills I was learning in class, I could make things. Projects are a chance for you to “flex your programming muscles,” as one of my professors likes to say. Computer science doesn’t just have to be theorized about in a silo as it often is in classes, but can be used to create — to bring form out of nothing.
Some other highlights: the abovementioned app, called Flutter, which builds on an user’s communities to help them declutter, a goal-tracking Android app for research with the Stanford Human-Computer Interaction group, websites for myself and student groups, a social service web application called Enroute (which I created with some WiCS friends as a part of the WiCS Innovation Fellowship ❤️) that helps high school students with ideas connect with like-minded students, and a bunch of random and objectively rather useless Android and React Native apps that I built in the process of learning these technologies. And that’s another benefit of relentlessly working on projects — you get to constantly practice, improve, and sharpen your programming skills.
And, projects are especially helpful in opening up opportunities for underclassmen with limited relevant experience. When the “experience” section of your resume is lacking, the “projects” section can show that you not only have relevant skills, but are also proactive and one to take initiative, which is always a plus. When I was applying internships during my freshman year, my rudimentary version of Flappy Bird topped my projects section. I was really proud of the work and problem solving I had put into building it, and I expressed that with real passion as I talked about it during my interviews.
These days, I keep a note in my phone titled “apps I want to make.” It’s a list with some ten-odd random ideas — for when I am itching to create. And with that, I wish to both you and myself: happy coding!
