The Strays

Can you suck without shame?

October 2, 2025

A few days ago, I saw a TikTok where a wife recorded her husband playing in a men’s basketball league. Her caption, along with his familiar combination of lock-down defense, board crashing, and general sense of panic on offense, clued me in that he hadn’t played much organized basketball.

And yet, no one cared! Unfortunately, the world of basketball, sports writ large, and really any space that involves people doing some activity or learning to do it is not always a welcoming space for amateurs.

And yet again, the vast majority people who try anything new will suck at first! Unless you’re LeBron James or the LeBron James of violin, knitting, gymnastics, the International Math Olympiad, etc., you will suck! Or at least, not be great. But if you can avoid any shame associated with that, perseverance will push you to improve, grow, and maybe be great! Or at least, not suck.

Now I’ve had the good fortune of trying to get good of lots of different things over my life. And I would even argue I’m pretty good at a few! And I’m definitely…less good at others. And what I pondered after seeing that video is what worked, if anything, in those communities I spent time in getting better and growing versus ones where I didn’t. Did I feel too much shame being bad that I gave up; too afraid of making a mistake to push my limits enough to improve?

We cannot control what the members of our communities of practice bring with them. We didn’t raise them, determine their size, or any other innate ability they may or may not possess. So we must focus on what we can control, and I think a very important thing we can control is how our comrades feel when they fail.

I’m gonna discuss a couple skills I’ve developed either as hobbies or vocations and how supported I felt by my community of practice when I inevitably made mistakes.

Programming and Software Development

I do this both as a hobby and for a living. In fact, I’m doing it right now, as I write this post on my day off. Now I’ve unfortunately heard tale of some incredbily toxic professional and hobbyist coder communities. Fortunately, my personal and professional coding communities always made me feel welcome, supported, and safe to make mistakes and ask questions.

Personally, I am part of or have attended events for several Baltimore/DC area coding meetups including Baltimore Tech Meetup, Black Code Collective, and Baltimore Black Techies. I do not have a degree in CS and came to work in software through a series of exceedingly technical roles. For the many self-taught programmers that enter IT and software this way, welcoming communities for newbies are essential. More experienced coders at the meetups I attended shared details of hiring processes and technical interviews, answered very in the weeds questions about everything from SQL to DevOps to what makes a good portfolio. I remember telling an experienced data engineer I wanted to upskill so I could apply for those roles, he proceeded to write a SQL query on a whiteboard of which I understood maybe half. We stood their for about 10 minutes where he went through all the parts I didn’t understand and pointed me to resources where I could learn more.

Professionally, I landed my first job on a traditional software engineering team filled with people like those from my meetups. Our lead and senior engineers reviewed pull requests with a fine tooth comb and questioned everything. “Why is this named X when it is really doing Y?” “No need to keep this extra variable, you can execute this on one line and maintain readability” “You didn’t touch this function, but it looks like it’s not being used anymore, so we can probably delete it” “I think we need an extra unit test to cover this logic, I’d put it this test module” But those engineers never demeaned you, never yelled at you, never called you names, and would never hesitate to jump into a pair programming session to unstuck you or explain their comments on a PR. I grew so much in that first year. I came in as a mid level engineer and now, 3 years later, I manage the same team with many of the same people!

Learning Foreign Languages

I have a degree in Arabic and I minored in Spanish, having studied Spanish since middle school. I’ve on and off studied languages other than my native language of English for over 15 years at this point. And I’ve once again been a part of some great language learning classes and communities. I think for this skill particularly, I’m going to give a list of tips based on my experience and my studies.

1. Only correct people if they ask for it and/or if it is genuinely interfering with comprehension

Speaking a foreign language or not, everyone has an accent. And language learners are especially anxious about it. So if that person you work with or that foreign exchange student is slightly mispronouncing something, leave it be unless you really can’t tell what they’re saying or they’ve told you to bring the hammer down on their diction.

2. Mistakes are super essential to the process, so grades can be a real hinderance

This is most relevant to those learning in school. One of the reasons, in my opinion, many kids learn to speak their native language without much direct instruction is that they just make mistakes all the time and everyone just accepts that it’s part of the process. Maybe you gently correct a child, maybe you just turn it into a funny inside joke. If we could bring this same energy to adult language learning, adults would have a lot more success.

However, you can’t make mistakes with reckless abandon when you’ve got to take a midterm or an oral language test. Now teachers need to test to determine student progression and current ability, but I would encourage educators to include as many low-stakes or completion-based assignments as possible to provide the necessary time where students can make mistakes without fear of tanking their grades.

Basketball

I’m a pretty average basketball player. I didn’t start playing beyond gym class or the backyard until my freshman year of high school, which was also the year I decided to try out for the JV basketball team after a summer of going to a court and playing pickup. I was about five foot five that first year, so…that didn’t go great! But I kept playing pickup and local rec league games and eventually intramurals once I got to college since three of my closest friends loved to play.

As you can imagine, competitive pickup or organized basketball at any level can get pretty toxic. Now no one likes to lose, this author included. So I can understand, and even accept, a certain level of intensity from players in HS or College basketball and beyond. Though I’ll never accept demeaning or belittling behavior regardless of how high the stakes. I’ve played on teams, pickup and organized, where teammates yell at each other, straight-up don’t want certain players on the court, or will refuse to pass to certain people. And I’m going to go out on a limb and say not many people enjoy playing any game in an environment like that. Though I can’t speak for others, what really strikes me about those environments is that I, personally, never grew as a player hooping around people like that.

I really started to grow as a player once I got to college, and I started playing as a way to hang out with people who I am friends with to this day. It certainly helped that those friends were nothing like the toxic players I’ve encountered on other teams. But, I never felt anxious on the court with those guys. Almost always, I was having fun! I knew how they played and they knew how I played and we helped each other get better. We’d of course bust each other’s chops, but always from a place of love and respect.

Let People Suck! The End.

Wow, this post really stretched! This is a thought that’s been tumbling around my brain for a long time, so I’m glad I’ve finally put pen to paper on it.

But to sum up, when you’re searching for a community of practice, ensure your fellow practioners make you want to get better and are happy to help you fix and understand your mistakes. Run for the hills at the first sign of toxicity! If you are looking to build a community of practice or already have one, make sure beginners and experienced practioners alike aren’t anxious about making mistakes! Sucking at the beginning of the journey and making mistakes along the way are how we grow. Moreover, people tend to stay part of communities that make them happy and help them grow. So you’re not just doing charity work by welcoming newcomers and clearing space for growth, you’re helping the community survive, thrive, and grow!

Thanks for reading.