TL;DR: I got into Stanford's Code in Place, the free intro-to-coding course I'd wanted for a long time, and I'm stepping away the day before my fi...
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I always like your visual creativity and your simple communication, the image is instant tell the core of your story!
When I look back I also feel some outer pressure, but thanks to Lord somehow I can survive and finally I'm able to communicate my exsistencial jurney in 10 sec:
TS + |> to hack JS
because that is show, how can I balance in those two well + real world activity.
Thank you, Peter. I’m glad the image worked for you. Thank you for sharing your own journey, and I’m glad you made it through the pressure. Your list shows how you balance both wells and the real world, with the house and the code side by side.
"Free still costs time, and this week I don't have any left." That line is the whole post. Your subconscious decides what you notice through a filter called the RAS, and when it's been fed a year of "drink while the well is flowing," it gets very good at spotting the next free room and terrible at spotting when your plate is already full. So every invitation starts to feel like a countdown instead of a choice. Writing back and stepping away the day before section one was new data going in. The filter does not calm down because you found a safer calendar. It calms down because you took one clear action that proved you can protect your capacity without the world ending.
You already wrote the slide for Friday: stop when the evidence says stop. That was the mission. Keep feeding the filter outside the work too. Genuine compliment to a stranger. When that is easy, add a bit of conversation. Does not matter how it lands. The action is the win. When one room gets easy, find a harder one. Good luck with the talk and the reapply.
Appreciate the luck with the talk and the reapply. Yes, the signs of being terrible at spotting when my plate is full have fully arrived. And you got me, quoting my own slide back to me. Stop when the evidence says stop. This time I had to take my own advice. “Protect your capacity without the world ending” stuck with me. It’s the first time I’ve put on the brakes, so I’m still figuring out what that means. And maybe, I can contemplate not figuring it out at all!
Thank you, Earl. Putting on the brakes the first time always feels strange, because the filter has spent a year treating every open door as something you'll lose. Not figuring it out is a fine answer. You protected your capacity this week and nothing fell apart, and that's the new data. Rest up and enjoy the talk.
Thanks @christopher_jakob_acda8fa !
the line about the talk slide saying "stopping when the evidence says stop" and then applying it to yourself the same week is the part that landed. curious whether you asked for a later Code in Place cohort before declining, or decided the whole plate had to lose something that day either way.
Hi @posting-dude Yes, I did ask for a later cohort for Code in Place. If I don't get a response I'll keep my eye out for their next recruitment and will reapply again.
I think the well will probably change before it dries up. Companies may keep funding hackathons and tool-specific events because those are relatively easy ways to get developers experimenting with their products. Long-term learning is a different investment, though.
Your point about not being able to read all the code AI produces really stood out to me. A weekend hackathon might help you ship a prototype, but building enough Python knowledge to debug it, question its assumptions, and maintain it without relying entirely on AI takes sustained effort.
At some point, choosing one learning path and actually finishing it might be worth more than collecting five more opportunities. The hard part is that saying no to something genuinely valuable can feel like losing progress, even when you're making room to go deeper.
Thank you for this. Good point about the pivot. The well might change before it dries up. Most of what I’ve done at these events is experiment, and that’s different from going deep or building real expertise in one subject.
The one learning path part is where I’m stuck. I don’t know if the path is the traditional one, reading code well enough to spot the bugs, or the newer one where knowing the tools well is what counts. Probably a little of both, and that’s what confuses me about where to start.
Your table makes the recurring commitment stand out: a weekend event ends, while a course needs space every week. The piece I'd want to preserve for the next cohort is the weekly section, since you identified accountability—not access to another set of lessons—as what was missing. Would choosing which current commitment ends before accepting the next course make the decision easier? That seems more concrete than deciding whether the supply of free opportunities will last.