We shall never surrender!
I remember perfectly the moment I heard “Aces high” by Iron Maiden, it was at their concert in Mexico City, back in 2008. I only knew “Phantom of the opera” from their repertoire, some friends convinced me to go, I made the mistake of wanting to find them inside the huge area in front of the “foro sol” arena, just when the call I made to them managed to get in and they were about to tell me where they were, the concert started right with “Aces High”, I remember perfectly the speech with which the band opens the theme, the voice of Churchill, how he narrated what was coming, how he encouraged his forces to fight with their hearts, not to give up on the enemy, enlarging their spirit no matter how small it may be his island compared to the invader’s territory, I became a fan at the instant. Right at that moment, I felt scared, because people went crazy, I was alone in the crowd, dressed only in beige pants and a blue shirt, it was a lot of contrast with the majority of the public who wore black shirts with covers of the “Iron Maiden” albums, black, denim or camouflage-print pants, I started with fear as I said before, mainly because I did not recognize myself with most of those people, in addition to the stress it gave me to be on my own, in the middle of the song I decided to just enjoy the concert, I liked the music so much that I decided to try to get as far forward as the multitude allowed me, the result of all of the above was that almost all the way to the front it felt very hot, a person next to me offered me his beer, despite the fact that I didn’t drink at that time, I accepted, never has a beer tasted as refreshing as the one this random guy gave me that day, after that, I felt more comfortable. The people around me accepted me into their circle of friends, there was even a disoriented one who became aggressive, one of my new friends lifted him with his incredible strength (because I did not feel that he made any effort), and one of the security guards took out of the concert, I made friends in a space that he thought was hostile and it turned out that he was surrounded by friendly, empathic and I would even dare to say, affectionate people.
You may be wondering why am I telling an anecdote about a concert in a space dedicated to what I learned in the world of technology this week?
Well, what happens is that this week some of my colleagues have left my workgroup to emigrate to another where their work situation is better, therefore it is not a bitter farewell, quite the opposite, I am quite happy for them and It is my wish to join them in the short term. However, the attitude of them and in general of all my colleagues have reminded me of that friendly massive guy that I met at the “Iron Maiden” concert when I was only 18 years old (as I write this I am 32 years old) when I started in my current workgroup all of them seemed too smart, very different from me in the sense that I feel like a novice and these people already had years of programming experience, so I felt out of my comfort zone. My surprise was huge but now that I think about it, familiar, when expressing some technical doubts I received personal messages from these people trying to help me, I created an immediate connection, they made me feel confident to the point that there were times that I asked them to explain a difficult concept to understand and they did it with pleasure.
To all the above I can only say: incredible.
These last weeks were a stage where we had to contribute to an open-source project, in fact, we had to have at least 4 contributions and for me, this became a very complex task, since these tasks couldn’t be minor contributions such as a typo or documentation, since the programming language I feel most comfortable with is “python”, I thought it was a good idea to try to support a project that was written in it. A big surprise hit me when I discovered that most projects in python have reported problems of a complexity that was far beyond me, just trying to understand them was an undertaking far beyond my current skills, when I decided to switch to JavaScript the thing was a little better, unfortunately, the project I chose was not accepting changes because the maintainer wanted to keep the project simple and my attempt to collaborate added complexity to it.
I began to struggle to find a challenge that was neither too simple that it was considered forbidden nor so complicated that I was unable to solve it.
After much struggle, I found one that seemed simple, but it wasn’t, when I moved a line of code in a file, I needed to modify another 4 files that were related. I must say that I began to suffer from complexity, fortunately, my friends were there, to every question I had, they had an answer, sometimes it was the solution, other times it was the support to seek the solution with me.
There was only one constant, they didn’t stop supporting me, giving me encouragement and ideas to defeat the blockade in turn, they even taught me shortcuts and resources that I’m sure will be with me all my life.
Thanks to all the support I received, both from my peers and from my mentors, I want to say that the best thing I learned this week was to never give up, to always ask for help and that just as “Iron Maiden” says in “ Aces High”, “Won’t you run, live to fly, fly to live, Aces high”.
I am infinitely grateful to all those people who have shown me their best side, they’ve helped me not only run but also fly, it is thanks to them that I now understand that the best way to learn is by doing, thanks for not letting me give up.
Without any doubt, entering a new place is unknown, it’s uncertain, but with the help of good friends, everything can be resolved sooner or later.
