So, I stumbled upon this thing called “Code Rugby” the other day, and I thought, “Why not give it a shot?” I’ve been trying to level up my coding skills, and this seemed like a fun, albeit slightly chaotic, way to do it.
First, I needed to get the lay of the land. What is Code Rugby, exactly? It’s basically this idea of super fast-paced coding, where you grab someone else’s partially-written code and try to make it work, or add a feature, or fix a bug – all in a very short amount of time. Think of it like a rugby scrum, but with keyboards instead of, you know, bodies.
I decided I was doing this for the time-box, so to start I fired up a timer. I mean, the whole point is speed, right?
Next, I needed some code. I searched some Open source projects, and quickly just grabbed a random chunk of code that was marked, that’s important. You could use any code, I guess, but it has to start marked.
I pasted the code into my editor, and… well, it was a mess. Honestly, I had no idea what half of it was supposed to do. There were variables I didn’t understand, functions that seemed to come out of nowhere, and comments that were more confusing than helpful.
I started by trying to just get the thing to run. That was challenge number one. I added a bunch of print statements – you know, the good old “Is this even running?” kind of debugging. Slowly, painfully, I started to see where the code was breaking.
After I get it to work, then I figure out, what could be added, I decided to tackle a small feature that was listed on the project’s to-do list. It was something simple, like adding a new button, But even that felt like climbing Mount Everest in this context.
I fumbled around, tried different things, googled like a madman, and eventually, somehow, I managed to get the button to show up. Did it work perfectly? Nope. Did it look pretty? Absolutely not. But it was there, and that was a win in my book.
Finally, my time was up. I stepped back, took a deep breath, and looked at the code. It was still a mess, but it was a slightly less messy mess than before. And, I had learned something. I had pushed myself to work faster, to think on my feet, and to deal with the unexpected. It was like a coding workout, and I definitely felt the burn.
