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A Week of Isolation Made Me a Better Coder — and a Much Worse Communicator
How programming alone rewired my brain in ways I didn’t expect
I write clean, elegant code. Explaining it out loud? Not always as seamless.
The panic rose from my stomach to my throat as the silence stretched across the video call. My fingers went numb on my keyboard while 12 faces waited for my response.
A week of intense programming, deep focus, and relentless problem-solving had dissolved into an incoherent fog. My body remembered the work — my hands could probably still type the solutions I’d discovered — but my mouth couldn’t form the words to share them.
Beside me, Winston let out a soft sigh, shifting in his dog bed. He lifted his head, ears perked, sensing something was wrong. Winston, my ever-loyal corgi, had been my only company all week, watching me pace between my desk and the whiteboard wall covered in diagrams.
He had an uncanny sense for when my brain was overheating, dropping his ball at my feet whenever my muttered problem-solving got too intense. But now, as I sat frozen in front of my team, the clarity I’d maintained in my solitary conversations with him had deserted me.
