What happens when you delete all the code you have ever written?

Last Saturday, together with Frederik, I participated in the Global Day of Coderetreat in Utrecht.

Retreat!

For those learning about Coderetreat for the first time, here it is in a nutshell:

  • Clear your schedule for Saturday
  • Gather with a bunch of IT people
  • Sit down for 5 times 45 minutes of pair programming sessions
  • In each session, you will implement Conway’s Game of Life
  • But each session is constrained in a unique way

And oh yeah, after each session you are kindly yet enforcedly requested to delete your code.

Screenshot of a video on YouTube about a Conway's Game of Life simulationYouTube: "epic conway's game of life"

These Were Our Tests

For challenge and great fun, each session has constraints. In our group, they were as follows:

  1. Freeform
  2. Silence (no talking, just typing)
  3. Evil pair
  4. Methods with <= 3 lines of code (don’t delete code yet)
  5. Add zombie cells to legacy code (from session 4 (and… delete code!))

Before each session, we picked a fresh partner. This was great because I got to see 5 different ways of coding, communicating, and social conduct, all in a condensed little package.

Once again confirmed: every human being is different.

Deleting Your Soul

The hammer strikes. The soundbite fills the room. Apocalypse, Now!

You delete your code.

That beautiful work of art, painstakingly crafted during those 45 minutes, will not find its place amongst the gods of the olympus.

And it is the best thing.

It makes me think of all those countless trial-and-error repositories that, although discarded, still clutter my storage space, because I do not delete them. Is this because I feel that they may “some day be of use?” Am I too lazy to clean up my code? Has the concept of deleting something you created never been accepted in my mind?

The Past

In primary school, I used to make drawings all the time. This may or may not have predicted my “success” in school later in life *couch* but oh well.

I also discarded most of them immediately after drawing, and I never second-guessed this behaviour.

Then one day, our teacher handed me a stack of once-crumpled-now-carefully-unfolded paper, with my drawings. Probably from that day on, “not throwing anything away” became a habit.

Why did this teacher do this?

The Present

These drawings must probably still be somewhere. Have I looked at them since? No. Maybe when I’m 40? Who knows. But at least they still exist. They exist to clutter my mind.

Once again I am thinking about minimalism.

The Future

What are my takeaways from this Coderetreat experience?

  • Every human being defines things in different way
  • Stating your opinion is contagious
  • Silence nurtures curiosity and empathy
  • Silence is deeply traumatising to some people
  • Deleting your code is probably one of the nicest things you can do for yourself

Looking forward to next year’s edition! 🚀