So, I’m out there slinging advice about how to change the world of being a professional programmer. Maybe y’all need to hear some things about that, that might not have occurred to you.
- I am just some schmoe. I am having a successful life in the world of geekery. There are a host of causes for that, among them my dumb luck, and also among them the way I approach and enact the work. I like to talk about this, so I do.
- To think of me as either lawgiver or wannabe lawgiver, would be to put me in a role I explicitly renounce. I am not an anointed representative of anything. Prolly not even of me.
- I am not trying to solve programming. I mean "solve" in the sense of provide any sort of final case-closing proof that one thing is the right thing. I’m not trying to do that because I don’t believe it.
- If what you are doing is working well for you and those around you, I don’t think you should take my advice, except for one recommendation I bet you can live with: make small changes to your way, as a routine, to keep your ideas fresh and re-test them against your experience.
- Giving advice, like I do, serves several goals of mine. The two people are most curious about are probably these: 1) I want to make a modest-by-the-trade living making content and hanging out with people and 2) I want to share in the supply of the world’s geek joy and, if I can, increase it.
- The advice I give is almost entirely a) to the model of the bell curve, and b) based in the trade as it exists right now, c) deeply infused with a belief that the use of individual judgment is of paramount importance.
That’s all.
I just wanted you to know where I’m coming from.