Syntax of Self — Mumu Li (n3xta)

But during the process of tinkering with this ‘trash,’ I was happy. I realized I was creating something, and I was so close to being able to truly bring something from my mind to life. I enjoyed coding because I enjoy creating.

I never truly wanted to “study computers”. I was simply fascinated by how they operate, how they create complex interactions with humans, starting from the two value logic of machine code. These machines build intricate systems capable of decision-making, problem-solving, and even learning like a human, all from simple binary instructions. And I also wanted to create by building something that only computers can make possible.

——From my blog post Why I picked an Art school to study computers

I can’t quite remember when coding became one of my ways of thinking. Writing code is a unique form of self-dialogue—unlike other forms of creation, it demands that you stand before an unflinching mirror, constantly ensuring you’re not lying to yourself.

If your reasoning is flawed, your program won’t cover for you. It won’t gloss over gaps with vague language, nor will it disguise logical holes as clever rhetoric. It will either fail outright, throwing errors mercilessly, or worse—it will run quietly, producing a cascade of outputs you can’t control. This brutal feedback mechanism gives me both comfort and fear. Comfort, because the truth will always reveal itself. Fear, because when it does, there’s no escaping it.

But coding doesn’t stop there. It’s more than just a process of self-correction; it’s a tool for transcending the limits of your own mind, a custom-built exoskeleton for the brain. Human thought is inherently fuzzy and intuitive; we excel at snap judgments but struggle with tedious calculations. Coding changes that. It teaches you to craft your own rules in a digital world and uncover patterns invisible to the naked eye.

For instance, want to know which letter is the second most common to end English words when you are playing wordle? That’s just a few lines of script. Or perhaps you find it tedious to manually copy course names from the IMA/ITP website? Write a program to scrape it for you. (I did, for course selection 2025 Spring.) You’ll find that as code begins to tackle problems better suited for machines, your mind becomes liberated, able to focus on the more complex tasks only humans can handle.

Of course, the joy of coding isn’t always tied to “thinking better.” The pure satisfaction of creating tools is just as significant. Some people think off-the-shelf tools are too generic—I feel the same way. So, I build my own tools for notes or planning. Maybe it’s just some Markdown, JSON, and an HTML-based PDF renderer, but it perfectly fits my needs. I set its rules; I gave it its form—and that’s enough.

I think back to the happiness I felt tinkering with those seemingly meaningless fragments of code. Even then, I knew I was creating something, and that “something” was enough to take me from nothing to a simple but profound idea: to make the thoughts in my mind real. That joy is simple but genuine. Code isn’t the answer to life, but it might just be the way I find my answers.