Getting better

“You are the same person today as you’ll be in five years except for two things, the people you meet and the books you read.” — Charles ‘Tremendous’ Jones

I’ve seen the above quote used on many personal development sites, but does it apply to ones qualities as a software developer ?
ie You are the same developer today as you’ll be in five years except for two things, the people you meet and the books you read.

At first glance doesnt sound unreasonable, but lets examine this statement.

“you are the same developer today”

I would argue that software development is a field where, in the worlds of old man Bono, you are running to stand still. Its a constantly changing landscape, so I would have to argue that you would be a worse developer than you are today if you made no effort improve yourself.

Five years ! Thats an age, five years ago, not many had used Rails or even Ruby. Douglas Crockford hadnt written JavaScript the Good Parts, heck MS hadnt released a MVC framework, I think for a web developer that timescale has to come down to one year, probably even less.

The people you meet, no offence to other proffesionals I work with, but for me its all about the developers I meet. I meet many developers and all of them improve me as a coder. It doesnt have to be just at work either, user groups, conferences and dojos have made me the developer I am today. You can learn a lot from a good developer (and even more from bad ones)

And the books you read, I like to think I’m in the “voracious” group of readers and although I dont always read about software development, I do like to keep up with the greatest hits.

Davy Brion has written more and better that I on the subject, check it out http://davybrion.com/blog/2008/08/software-development-books-investing-in-yourself/
So has Jeff Attwood http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2004/02/recommended-reading-for-developers.html

With software we of course, we have more than just books that we can read. There is the code itself.

as Uncle Bob said
“So here’s the deal. If you want to learn to be a better programmer, then you’d better get your wading boots on. Because there is a lot of code out there to learn from, and there is not one of us who can claim to be too good to learn from it. You can learn by writing code; but you can’t complete your learning without reading a lot of other people’s code”

http://butunclebob.com/ArticleS.UncleBob.WadingThroughCode

How about hanselmans weekly source code, pretty good place to start :

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CategoryView.aspx?category=Source+Code

Or an open source project or two off of GitHub perhaps.

And of course there is no substitute for writing code, in a recent exchange on Twitter between @timrossinfo and @llevera there was an exchange on the value of certification that contained this gem :

@timrossinfo Thats how I have learnt ruby and *nix style development. Got nowhere just piddling about with “getting started with” guides

 

So we get from :
You are the same developer today as you’ll be in five years except for two things, the people you meet and the books you read.

To :
You will be a worse developer in a year from know, except for, the developers you meet, the books and blogs you read, and the code read and write.

Yep am happy with that, what do you think ?

Vj

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Going to the Opera in Prague

A and I were recently in Prague and while we were there we decided to break up our beer drinking with a cultural trip to see the Prague State Opera perform Puccini’s Turandot.

So how did we arrange a visit to what is listed by the Lonely Planet as the 435th out of 645 best ‘things’ to do in Prague. We booked our tickets online via Bohemia Tickets which seems to be semi official as the prices are about the same as the local ones, and it is linked through the main opera house website http://www.opera.cz/.

The booking process was quite simple with the standard ‘pick you seat’ format favoured by many of the UK theatre booking websites. They sent us an email which we printed and took to their office in Prague to exchange for a ticket. (Turns out we could have used the email as an eticket and gone straight to the opera house to).

The building itself is amazing http://www.opera.cz/, a grand old central european building from the nineteenth century, and the production was excellent. There are drinks and snacks available during the intermission, and subtitles are in Czech and English.

Prague state opera house.

Its easy to find, next door to the National Museum and just a stones throw from Wenceslas Square (Map).

Here is a video from Tripadvisor with more pictures :

If you are in the Czech Republic I would highly recommend it, and it will make up for any less cultural things you might do while on holiday.

Vijay

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if its better to be happy than rich

If its better to be happy than rich why do we spend more time doing things to get richer and less time doing things that make us happier ?
Recently, I was following a discussion on twitter between Nic, Adam and Andrew on the concept of ‘fuck you money‘ (fum) and it got me thinking.
When it comes to money, I dont use credit cards, or have mobile phone contracts yet I spend thousands travelling every year. I like to think that how I spend my money makes me happier.

Of course wealth and happiness are not mutually exclusive, financial writer Jonathan Clements describes at least three ways that financial independence can improve our well-being.

  1. If you have money, you dont have to worry about it
  2. It leaves you free to persue your passions
  3. It can free you to spend time with friends and family

So its important to save and invest to reach your own personal fum goal. Of course there is always a balance and personal preference is a large part of that.

Personally, like the couple in this NYTimes article, I’ve been a long time believer that spending money on experiences buys you more “value” than spending on things.

One major finding is that spending money for an experience — concert tickets, French lessons, sushi-rolling classes, a hotel room in Monaco — produces longer-lasting satisfaction than spending money on plain old stuff. ‘It’s better to go on a vacation than buy a new couch’ is basically the idea,” says Professor Dunn, summing up research by two fellow psychologists, Leaf Van Boven and Thomas Gilovich. Her own take on the subject is in a paper she wrote with colleagues at Harvard and the University of Virginia: “If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren’t Spending It Right.”

I’m very wary of lifestyle inflation and am confident that I will reach my definition of fum (mortgage paid off + passive income of 25K) before I retire, will you ?

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Musker and the social contract

Last night I attended the leaving drinks for Craig Musker, one of the best managers Ive ever had the pleasure to work for. He instinctively understood the value of a social contract.
Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational; The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions , describes two different two different worlds, one with social norms and one with market norms. Within a social norm, if I help you move house this weekend, I dont expect you to come over and help me move straight away. The exchange is warm and fuzzy and provides pleasure for both sides. Within market norms, we work forty hours a week and we get paid, then we go home and “live our lives”.
He says

“If corporations started thinking in terms of social norms,they would realize that these norms build loyalty and—more important—make people want to extend themselves to the degree that corporations need today: to be flexible, concerned,and willing to pitch in. That’s what a social relationship delivers.”

To some extent both exist these days and we work because we get paid, but also because we have a semi social relationship with our managers and coworkers and we want to do the best by them. Some manages grok this, others dont, Craig did in spades.
Tony Hsieh descibes in Delivering Happiness how he sees the “culture” amongst the employees at Zappos as being as important, if not more important than what they are paid, or what fancy titles you hand out. In fact they offer all new employees a choice in the first four weeks, stay and work at Zappos or $2000 dollars to leave.
Zappos have 10 core values of which my favourite is

“Create Fun and A Little Weirdness – One of the things that makes Zappos different from a lot of other companies is that we value being fun and being a little weird. We don’t want to become one of those big companies that feels corporate and boring. We want to be able to laugh at ourselves. We look for both fun and humor in our daily work.”

So farewell to a manager who provided fun and humor in my work.

Posted in Mangement | 3 Comments

Goggle box

David MaCandless of Information is beautiful decided to visualise the time spent tv viewing v writing Wikipedia stat from the Clay Shirky talk below,

How do you spend your cognitive surplus ?

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Enjoy what you do ?

I am currently nearly done reading ‘Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience’ by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, and I may blog about that after I’m done, but there was a paragraph I read today that bought a few things to mind.
It went
“Because work is so universal, yet so varied, it makes a tremendous difference to one’s overall contentment whether what one does for a living is enjoyable or not.”

Considering we spend most of our lives at work, it always surprises me when people say “I work to live, not live to work”. What does that even mean !? When is this living part of your life going to happen ?

There is an old story about a mexican fisherman which tells of a boat docked in a tiny Mexican village. An American tourist complimented the Mexican fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.

“Not very long,” answered the Mexican.

“But then, why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more?” asked the American.

The Mexican explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family.

The American asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

“I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs…I have a full life.”

The American interrupted, “I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you!

“You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat. With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers.

“Instead of selling your fish to a middleman, you can negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge enterprise.”

“How long would that take?” asked the Mexican.

“Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years,” replied the American.

“And after that?”

“Afterwards? That’s when it gets really interesting,” answered the American, laughing. “When your business gets really big, you can start selling stocks and make millions!”

“Millions? Really? And after that?”

“After that you’ll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta, and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends!”

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Clay Shirky on the cognitive surplus.

Excellent video from the always intersting Mr Shirky, answering the “how do people find the time ?” question, whether its lolcats or wikipedia. Spare yourself the 15 mins or so it takes to watch this.

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Back from holiday

Just back from three weeks in Argentina and Brazil, and back to work tommorrow.

Preparing all the usual back to work stuff, I was reminded of this fabulous piece from the financial times by John Lancaster titled “Can money set you free” that I read back in January.
Lifting a quote from the piece, Lancaster says :
“Money isn’t automatically freedom. You need to look carefully at what you’re doing to earn the money before you can conclude that you are, in practice, free. This is a cost-benefit analysis we should all perform on our own lives. Don’t listen to what people say about freedom and security and money but, instead, look at the specific, actual bargains they are making with their lives.”

It also contains this great quote from the Irish poet Seamus Heaney
“The way we are living,
timorous or bold,
will have been our life.”
(timorous = fearful)

Now where did I leave my pass ?

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Meetings are toxic

I have been reading Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson which is a fast and inspiring read that I can heartily recommend. One chapter that struck a chord with me was entitled “Meetings are Toxic”.
Meetings are described as “The worst interruptions of all” for the following reasons

  • They’re usually about words and abstract concepts, not real things.
  • They usually convey an abysmally small amount of information per minute.
  • They drift off- subject easier than a Chicago cabin a snowstorm.
  • They require thorough preparation that most people don’t have time for.
  • They frequently have agendas so vague that nobody is really sure of the goal.
  • They often include at least one moron who inevitably gets his turn to waste everyone’s time with nonsense.
  • Meetings procreate. One meeting leads to another meeting leads to another . .

They suggest that:

  • Invite as few people as possible.
  • Begin with a specific problem. Meet at the site of the problem instead of a conference room. Point to real things and suggest real changes.
  • End with a solution and make someone responsible for implementing it.

As someone who has sat in more than one meeting, wondering whether I really need to be there, and having watched my colleagues happily surfing away on their laptop/Iphone I can testify to the accuracy of their observations.

If you’re thinking of booking a meeting with your colleagues ask yourself the following :

  • Is everybody I have invited involved or just interested ?
  • Would a quick chat over a cup of tea achieve just as much ?
  • Do I need the minutes to document what we have agreed or would an email be enough ?

The philosopher Alain de Botton summed this up on twitter when he wrote “There are meetings which, when cancelled at the last minute, give one an ecstatic feeling of having cheated death for a little longer.”

Gold.

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