Hong Tran

Engineer. Entrepreneur. Innovator

August 26, 2019

Curiosity, code, Lambda
and the unexpected

This summer I got into Summer Hacker Program at Lambda school sponsored by Jessica Livingston - Cofounder and Partner of Y Combinator because I shared her mission in testing a hypothesis that this will broaden the pipeline of female startup founders and it may take her several years to measure the impacts. Yet as a participant, I am more than grateful for her to give me this opportunity and I can already share small lessons which have very big impact on me:

  • Learning to code, I’ve learnt the PAIN and the GAIN of being a software engineer: having no contact with engineers before, I had no idea who are they. Now, pretty much what I can say is that: they are the smart, the curious, the hard-working, the cool, the detail-oriented and the practical folks. They are the ones who can spend most of their life to solve a specific problem that they are passionate about. They are the ones who may not talk much but can make things work. They are the ones who have been stared at the computer long hours just to find a small bug what stops the entire system from working. They are the ones who only care about what one can do more than everything else, don’t talk nonsense to them =)). Not to mention, they play cool stuffs, have cool hobbies and very nice as well, don’t hesitate to approach them. Sometimes, they may talk in the way you don’t understand, don’t be surprised, it’s just because their thoughts are much more than their words, and so help them :]
  • Learning to code, I’ve got to practice RESILIENCE:Having no exposure to programming at all before and having focused on business majors, I was told that I was too crazy to learn programming, I was challenged why I chose this, I was promised that I would not like coding, and I was reminded many times by my inner voices that “why it has to be this tough, I may not break the keyboard but I would definitely quit at some points ”. However, at those challenging moments: I have my Team Lead and my classmates at Lambda who are always willing to support anytime on anything and to share those challenges with me. They have inspired me to continue because if someone can overcome it, why not me and they have given me strong hands as a promise that I can overcome it with their support. Thanks Lambda and Lambda’s community! There are always bugs but if there is a willing heart to solve them, nothing else matters ^^ Above all, if you gave up, nothing would be created. Ask which ending you want is as important as why you started.
  • Learning to code, I’ve learnt how to stay CALM: as a hustle, I was so annoyed and so hot-tempered whenever my code does not work. It was very funny, just very human and it did not help obviously since the more I am like that, the more I am stuck. While I was getting angry, I was surprised why my TL and other TLs are so calm. From that, I learnt because they are calm, they can manage their emotion to focus on solving the problem. This is one of the biggest learning and transformation for me. Over time, I surprise and inspire other people by how calm I can be to focus on the most important things and that’s the moment I cheer myself up and am proud of how much I have grown from coding. In fact, you can't code if you can't stay calm.
  • Learning to code is learning to be BRAVE: without being brave, you can’t even write your first line of code simply because you don’t know where it will take you to, hell or heaven or the unknown…
  • Learning to code, I’ve learnt what does it mean by PROBLEM-SOLVING (PS):before, I was exposed to logical reasoning in business to solve some problems and in life, I have been exposed to troubles which need solutions but none of these has given me in-depth understanding about PS till I started learning coding. Before writing any code, we need to figure it out what are the objectives we need to reach, imagine in our mind how it’s gonna look like, that’s our destination, in other words, the problem we need to solve. And then from there, we map out steps by steps, all the steps need to make sense and need to feasible, yet there is always the unclear along the way and bugs we can’t avoid. However, for a coder, bugs are not bad, bugs waken us, bugs push us to find a better way to solve it, and bugs give us hope, something is better than nothing. Eventually, the moment we can shout it out “it’s workinggggg!!!”, that’s the victory, that’s more than solving a problem.
  • Learning to code, I’ve again learnt about COMMUNICATION:at first, I did not know how to ask just because I don’t know how to use code 'language' to describe my issues, in other words, I had not understood code enough to make others understand what I was saying but I got advised that it takes practice. And yes, asking code stuffs is a type of communication. However, as it’s usually said, “code is easy, people are hard”. Having been in the projects with folks from different backgrounds, different geography, different ages, one of my biggest gain is communication skill. Why? Because I learnt how to talk to a data scientist who just talks data, to a machine learner who just talks complex stuffs, to a UI guy who just cares about beauty and hates the beast, to a Back-end guy who gives us key to the server, to many other engineers who considers coding is everything. Yes, they are normal people, they just care about different stuffs and connecting them together to make something work is just so powerful. Although, it takes effort to make others understand what you communicate, not letting others aware of what you are working on or not awaring of what others are doing either is the worst case happening in a product team. No communication, no collaboration, no result!
  • Learning to code, I transformed my mindset from “ask=reveal to others that I am weak” to “ASK=LEARN”: as a beginner in learning programming, it had been extremely challenging for me to catch up with code and how it works, so in the projects, getting stuck is normal, however, what is not okay is that I was so afraid to ask while I could ask. Why? Because I did not want to say to the world that I am weak and most importantly I did not want to accept with myself that I have no idea about this, these were not okay to me, not at all. I thought I am a failure if I ask. And that is very funny since over time, I realized that I missed opportunities in learning, without asking, I kept being stuck and ended up not accomplishing anything. Later on, I tried to throw my ego away to ask from a specific person to a group and bigger group and I have learnt so much from other people’s problem-solving techniques and from sharing with others who have the same issues as me so that together we solve. In fact, asking is the fastest and most effective way to learn something!
  • Learning to code, I’ve learnt we need BETTER CODES: from not knowing how to code to being able to play around was already an achievement to me. However, it’s not enough and it’s nothing at all. Because forgetting you are a cool engineer, think as a user you will see even how much effort you put into coding and how cool it may come work, it’s useless if users are confused, don’t understand, don’t know where to start or don’t find it helpful anyhow. Therefore, through experience, I stop acting cool every time I complete building something and try to think more about how to make it more intuitive, friendly, insightful, efficient and valuable to users.
  • Learning to code, I’ve learnt we learnt the truth about WOMEN IN TECH: There have not been lots of women in tech, yes, but it does not mean women are not capable. Being a woman and being with other women to learn to code, I learnt that we have thoughts and we are willing to learn to build things as well. And building a supportive community among women should be a question to challenge the stereotype, otherwise, they are missing real talents.
  • Learning to code, I’ve relearnt the basic lesson of STARTING building a product: From Babson, I have carried business lessons of starting by asking these basic questions:
    - What is the problem you are trying to solve?
    - Who are your customers/users?
    - Why should they choose your product among existing ones?
    - How do you make money?
    And here having been exposed to cool prototypes/MVPs, I got reminded of the lessons because those have no market fit or even a strong reason why it should exist. Please do not bother developing something like that!
  • Learning to code, I’ve learnt about all the COOL things from COOL people: being able to learn and talk to experienced engineers and experts who are my instructors is an enormous privilege for me. They are just so cool from what they talk, what they share and what they teach us. Not to mention, knowing that every student around me is trying to build something cool is so exciting. We all have the same ultimate goal which is to building the better by coding.
  • Learning to code, I’ve satisfied my CURIOSITY: I used to be named as an asker and Miss.Curiosity just because I always ask lots of questions and here in coding, I got to live that spirit even more. From getting a blank web to a web that has something, then a web that can interact, my mind has been blown how the computer works, how the logic has been played and how to build more as well as create more. I have been the one who ask most of questions in the project and I love that everyone welcomes me to ask here at Lambda. I believe asking is thinking and thinking is leading to action which creates things, then better things.

  • Last but not least, the unexpected: when started by learning how to build a nice web, I was like “nice, cool” and then “so what”, this ‘so what’ brought me to learn how to build an interactive web that relates to user’s behaviors, and I was like “it’s so cool, I’ve learnt so much”, but then that did not stop me from being even more curious about what to do with data collected from users, how to manipulate the data, how to build an API and do something from it, what’s actually going on in the serve and most importantly, I want to build more advanced features, please let me know HOW and so it changed my original purpose of joining Lambda as to learn new thing and to understand codes, surprisingly the more I code, the more I want to code more. My journey with coding in general and with Lambda in particular does not end here... Thanks Jessica, Thanks Lambda for giving me this opportunity. This might be another dot among many dots in my life but I am sure it’s connected to the other ones ;)

    Oh, and if you have been curious about what a Lambda student can do after 3 months learning (with 0 experience in coding before), check this out: Abcxyz. Otherwise, never mind

    After all, I totally agree with Steve Jobs that “Everybody…should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think”.

    Me debugging in an afternoon, lit!