“It changed my life” — ” this something we hear often here at Makers — but what does this actually mean? Recognising a change not just in your day or your week but your life moving forward, it’s a big statement. Igor Ryabchuk is a recent Makers graduate set to begin work in his first position as a junior developer. Here, we caught up with him to hear his Makers experience and understand what “life-changing” means to him.
“It’s a very complex experience. It’s a life-changing experience. What it means I think is a significantly bigger question. Something that I’m still processing. It’s a very soul searching question. I loved [Makers]. I still love it. It’s a rollercoaster. I was very happy to find a tribe with a similar mindset. Which is pretty difficult when you come to think of it, even given the way the world is connected.
Igor Ryabchuk, Makers graduate. Igor spent 20 years working as a barrister, today, he works as a developer at Tesco.
The main thing was reaffirmation of the philosophy that I have, my philosophy of life. Seeing it in other people. Seeing it live. Immersion in the code over a long period of time gave me a particular appreciation of the journey that humanity has travelled from which I didn’t really appreciate before and also the amount of knowledge that has accumulate and come together in this sort of field of knowledge overall. Computer programming. Software design. That distillation of knowledge over the years. Understanding on that perspective was life-changing.
My outlook on life has changed in the sense that I’ve met with people and I’m surrounded by people who are open to new ideas who are encouraging in their outlook on life and, it’s not hard its new. That’s what it is. I couldn’t put my finger on every single thing that’s changed.
You find yourself in a tribe of people. It’s not a community. It’s not a family. It’s bigger than those things. You find yourself in this tribe, it’s the only way to describe it, of like minded people who are like you and not like you at the same time.
There’s a huge variety of people. You get to interact with fantastic brains and at the same time they’re not like you they don’t think like you so you have to adjust to be able to stop assuming things of people and just enjoy it.
The whole experience, you need to take it as a package. It’s not just the coding. It’s learning about the code. Learning to learn. Adopting a particular mindset to the whole concept of facing a problem and translating that into practical steps. It’s the people you’re with. It’s the variety of the people you’re with it’s the way your preconceptions are challenged by the experience. By the coaches. By the variety of the coaches. The profession I was in before requires a particular… conformism. I worked there for thirteen years so, when I got to Makers I was very happy about the level of human variety that you experience while being here. I was very happy to experience diversity. I enjoyed the entirety of it. The people the experiences the different view points. I find it very liberating. I get to talk to people I’d never talk to inside my own environment.
It’s very important to have an open mind. Having particular preconceptions isn’t useful. When it come to learning how to learn it’s very important to come in as a newbie. Not discarding your knowledge if you have any but your knowledge may be out of context or out of practice. For example, you may have done coding but you don’t understand what TDD is. When you first come across TDD it’s entirely counter intuitive, it makes no sense so if you were set in your particular way you’ll find the transition very difficult and there’s many other similar concepts that if you have preconceptions and your mind isn’t open you’ll find very frustrating.
Now I’m finished, I’m a bit scared. A bit excited. I want to go and learn more. I think it’s a learning path that never finishes. I’m looking forward to meeting all the beautiful brains. This is the one thing you can count on, genuinely, in this field. Meeting new people. Learning new stuff. It’s bigger than just coding.”