Sorry, but an awesome programmer does not only talk about programming, he does it.
How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
111–118 of 118 posts
Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
#112I wonder what's the point in writing a book about Dart, where the language, environment, toolchain, compiler(s), and community are still very, very unstable.
At best, it could be an intro saying "this is what they're trying to do"; but you can also cover that in a blog post, right?
Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
#113Some people didn't get one main aspect of his point which is the 'tricking' part where he publicly committed himself to his daily work output goal.
I guess two problems with that are A) I am unfortunately not that "gullible" as far as believing that there will really be dire consequences if I don't produce a certain amount and B) as far as I know there is no public for me who would care if I suddenly declared that I was going to produce one new feature every day no matter what or whatever. I have no twitter followers and no one ever really read my blogs and generally posts on sites like reddit are autobanned. The closest I could do would be to go on Facebook and almost everyone on there is family. They would probably react the way they usually do to my Facebook posts which is "wow, I forgot that guy was on Facebook? He is so weird" with an addition of "who cares".
Also, its easier to write one article a day than it is to say push a major feature per day. Also it is easier to measure and break off writing goals than software goals.
I don't have a problem doing work every day, but I do feel like some days are vastly more productive than others. Not sure what goal I could have per day other than X amount of hours of actual work.
Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
#114I applaud the author for his tenacity. There is no doubt that kind of discipline produces results, both in terms of work product and personal advancement. However, I have serious doubts about the merits of writing a book about a subject intricacies and philosophy of which you have not yet had the chance to distill through the lens of experience. The method may, perhaps, work for simple recipes, how tos and other proc…
Good argument.
But then by the same argument, would you not trust Sal Khan's Khan Academy videos, since he himself has experience in only a few of the many areas, he researches & then makes educational videos about.
I would tend to agree with you : as a rule, people need to be experienced in a discipline/area to produce high quality content in that discipline/area. People like Sal Khan are the few & rare exceptions to this rule.
Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
#115I applaud the author for his tenacity. There is no doubt that kind of discipline produces results, both in terms of work product and personal advancement. However, I have serious doubts about the merits of writing a book about a subject intricacies and philosophy of which you have not yet had the chance to distill through the lens of experience. The method may, perhaps, work for simple recipes, how tos and other proc…
I think we're actually mostly in agreement :) Neither The SPDY Book nor Dart for Hipsters was meant to be a definitive guide on their respective subjects. They are 150 page intros and, as you say, probably well suited for this approach. For Recipes with Backbone, we aimed for the intermediate / advanced audience. Again, I agree that I probably could not have gotten there in 3 months on my own. For that, I relied heav…
Maybe slightly OT, i would like to know your motivations for diving into multiple distinct subjects ?
Do you, kind of like Sal Khan (of Khan Academy fame) feel curious to know more & more stuff, & then want to share your knowledge & understanding with the rest of the world, by writing books ?
Context : my comment above http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3904024
Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's only one problem. When you do break the long chain you're out for the count. When was the last time you heard anything from Seinfeld after his long-running eponymous show was cancelled? How are you supposed to motivate yourself to start a new chain, when it means you'll be working on this shit for the next 3,000 days?
Don't knock it until you try it. I've found this to be the most effective technique for keeping myself on track. It has far more to do with creating a habit than anything specific about this 'chain'. The book "Switch" covers this really well, you basically have a limited amount of self-control to use each day. Habits do not tap the self-control bank. So in my case, I really want to make working on my sideproject a pr…
This with a capital T :)
Brilliant insight. Great advice.
Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we're actually mostly in agreement :) Neither The SPDY Book nor Dart for Hipsters was meant to be a definitive guide on their respective subjects. They are 150 page intros and, as you say, probably well suited for this approach. For Recipes with Backbone, we aimed for the intermediate / advanced audience. Again, I agree that I probably could not have gotten there in 3 months on my own. For that, I relied heav…
Maybe slightly OT, i would like to know your motivations for diving into multiple distinct subjects ? Do you, kind of like Sal Khan (of Khan Academy fame) feel curious to know more & more stuff, & then want to share your knowledge & understanding with the rest of the world, by writing books ? Context : my comment above http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3904024
Yup, that is absolutely why I do this. I'm not sure it would be possible to keep this up without an intense curiosity about these topics :)
There is also a selfish aspect to it. By writing the best book that I am capable of, I learn this stuff much better than I would by playing around with it for a day or two.
Motivations and results feed each other and (hopefully) produce great results.
Re: How I Tricked Myself Into Being Awesome
#118I wonder what's the point in writing a book about Dart, where the language, environment, toolchain, compiler(s), and community are still very, very unstable. At best, it could be an intro saying "this is what they're trying to do"; but you can also cover that in a blog post, right?
I was really unsure what the result would be -- I definitely shared your concerns when I started.
The core of Dart is surprisingly stable -- the team is doing a really solid job of not yanking the rug out from under developers' feet. Sure, I could have stopped at one blog post, but I ended up with 90 and still feel like I have more in me.
In the end, I was pleased with the result. But I might be biased :)