Everyday reminder about Impact

Everyday I get emails from readers of my books that makes me wonder: Am I continuing to make an impact everyday? Can I have the same impact again through my work? Maybe, let’s see.

But still, it’s difficult to top this:

I’m a 16-year-old boy from Guangxi,China.

Thanks for the book named A Byte of Python of yours.I learnt lots of things from it.

And this:

Dear Sir,

I have never been able to program before but with your byte of python I actually managed to not only write the small programs but even understand. For me this is good because I am 57 years old and I always gave up any programming I attempted to learn before no matter how desirable a goal it seemed. The real problem I run into is what the words mean. I consider myself fairly literate but when I run into a special word I do not know the meaning of, it frustrates me, especially when I cannot find a definition, and there goes the understanding. Also, there are gradients of knowledge that are skipped. One minute you’re riding along nicely and the next minute you’re behind the 8 ball. Along the way, one quits. You, on the other hand, seem to have undercut this better than anyone I have encountered before. Your explanations are clear and concise and you define words well so I understood more of python than I have of any other language including Basic which I tried and gave up on years ago and the understanding flows very well. And you’re giving hope to an older person who really wants to learn to program!

Thanks so much

These emails are enormously humbling and reminds me to continue to focus on the impact of what I do.