There is Background Noise in Real Life
While walking down a busy avenue in Mexico, I listened to a conversation in Spanish. I'm not fluent in Spanish, but I have 4 years of high school classes and ~2 more years of real world experience. Spanish is not spoke in a bubble. It needs to be practiced to be learned. I put much effort into listening. There is much more I have to learn. Typically, I try to compensate for some lack of skills with intense focus. Sometimes I know what is said and more often I am closer to guessing.
On this walk down the street, I attempted to listen to my friends speak. In the back of my mind, I was frustrated because the noise of the cars going past us and a city in motion made it near impossible to hear the words. Similarly, attempting to listen in a bar, party or anywhere playing music is very tough.
I used to think, "if only it was more quiet!" while walking and straining to hear what my friends said over the noise. Today I had an epiphany: there's always background noise.
A difference between textbooks and real life: there's usually noise in the background.
We should embrace practicing and growing our skills because there will always be "noise". This is a tidy metaphor for distraction and our focus bandwidth. In the lens of coding, the "noise" might be skill deficiencies and lack of understanding, other co-workers, unimportant projects, meetings, social media, games and anything that misdirects us away from our primary goals.
It's easy to get annoyed when there is excessive noise. It makes it way harder to hear what is being said. Nonetheless, I don't have to let the noise distract my effort and intention to learn. So it is with programming and all skills. There will always be "noise". Embrace the noise and lean heavily on your intention to practice.
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