Show Your Work

Do you remember being encouraged, and sometimes hounded, by your math teachers to show your work? Suddenly it wasn’t good enough to just get the right answer — they wanted to see how you got there. In many cases this technique is used to ensure that the student isn’t cheating by just copying the answer and for a long time I thought that’s all there was to it.

By utilizing succinct and practical comments while writing code, we can better connect the human and the machine.

In January of this year I began learning how to code and after not hearing this elementary phrase for many years it made it’s way back into my purview. When it comes to coding, one element of showing work is effective documentation. By utilizing succinct and practical comments while writing code, we can better connect the human and machine.

Good code necessitates good documentation.

Most people seem to have the idea that coding is a lonely, solitary endeavor. While there is a certain degree to which this can be true depending on the project, the most complex and revolutionary systems oftentimes require a great deal of collaboration. Good code necessitates good documentation. You want a new set of eyes to be able to make sense of your work, to be able to use it and even build on it. By contributing to the community in this way, we advance it as a whole by providing transparency and reproducibility — and, in doing so, hopefully make the world just a little bit better.

This blog will be one such method by which I hope to contribute to that vision. I plan to document and share what I’m learning as I continue to pick up new skills and understanding in this space. I’ve begun to see how showing work doesn’t have to be something done begrudgingly, but rather it can provide an opportunity to play a part in something so much bigger than myself.