I went to the TriPython Chapel Hill Project Night on Wednesday to get myself to finish previous assignments that I didn’t turn in on time. I’ve been getting behind on stuff that I needed to do and the meetup was the perfect atmosphere to catch up on it and re-energize to finish out the semester. Just the fact that all of these people chose to be here on their own time to work on coding was so cool to me, I’ve never worked on code that wasn’t for a class so it was interesting to see the things these people were doing.

My idea of a programmer was pretty limited and narrow; I thought everyone there would be a 20-something year old guy in glasses coding for their job or start up, but the range of people attending was, for lack of a better word, cool. Besides the few of us from class (another surprise) everyone else there was an adult that either was there for work or just to program because they were interested in it. I felt really humbled by the people there; I didn’t get an opportunity to speak to most of them since I arrived later and I’m just not good with strangers in general, but from the conversations I overheard they all seemed great.

The biggest take away I got from the meeting was a strong sense of community and support. I think I’ll start attending more of these since they host one the second Wednesday of every month, and may even meetings in other cities in the triangle as well. I definitely want to talk to more people next time, not even just to get help on something but to hear about what they’ve done. I didn’t have any life questions answered or enlightening experiences, but overall it was a good place to get work done with people who also wanted to get work done.