When studying programming languages, even in 2021, a serious student of computer programming is likely to start with the core of the most popular programming language ever, which is C. For the last 30-40 years, C has been the at the core of many hardcore techies’ life. Then, when they go on to learn any other language that have been largely built on C itself, including C++, C#, and a lot many that derive strongly from C itself, such as Java, PHP, etc., it is a much easier deal. And with C, one can do so much more at a deeper level. For a language born in 1973 or so, it really has stood the test of time in the tech world where things change so fast.
If you are wondering why we are talking about a computer programming language in a column about love and relationships, hang in there -- you will see the point soon enough.We are not really machines and the code that drives us is in one sense really far more complex than any computer, even with artificial intelligence and machine learning becoming so good that one may not realise for quite some time that one is chatting with a bot. People are also constantly changing.
We are not the people we were even five or 10 years ago, and certainly as a society, we are way different now than we were a decade ago -- just travel back to a town you haven’t been to in a while and you would see that. When we meet people from before we were in any sort of relationship, we often quickly go back to who we were then. They know us in a way that is very different from how our partners might know us, and that can become quite the conflict -- sometimes with old friends telling us we are too changed for comfort, and at other times with a partner saying they hardly know us at all and maybe even accusing us of putting up a front.
The question is this: Are we, at the core of us, still the same even if we have grown through all the things that life and love bring? Or, are we so far into our new life, that we can’t even recognise our old life? Love and relationships are life-changing, but do they change who we are at a basic level? In other words, is there still the good old C deep inside us, even if we are all fancy with Python, PHP and Ruby now? How much of our core identity stays with us even as we change? If we were C before, are we C++ now, or something else altogether?
In ordinary circumstances, one might wish to just see everything as adding on to the core of who we are, that life is making us richer, more connected. Every now and then though, we might still need to be something else altogether -- like learning Scala.(The author is a counsellor with InnerSight)