31–40 of 143 posts
I think a highly conscientious developer might feel all these emotions. However, I am sure we have all worked with the developer that is absolutely shameless.
> Anxiety, inadequacy, and shame are just not helpful. It is good to reduce them if we can. Uhm, not really. All emotions have evolved because they are useful. The ones listed here could keep you from doing something stupid, dangerous, or potentially deadly. They are also likely to make you notice something wrong earlier than others. Are those emotions not helpful in some cases? Absolutely. Sometimes they are not jus…
On a societal and evolutionary level they're necessary feelings, on an individual level they're just burdensome. You can reason your way to the same results.
That said, I've had colleagues who could probably do with a bit more shame. Confidence and self-assuredness is great for self-promotion, but if you can continuously produce shitty output with a smile on your face I don't want to work with you.
I've been thinking about this A LOT over the last year. Knowledge work is Emotional work. Software developers make software for PEOPLE. Making things for people requires empathy to be successful or else a whole lot of luck. Having empathy means putting myself out there. It means asking questions that sound ignorant. It means going from feeling like I had a great idea to seeing all the flaws and shortcomings of that i…
I agree with you about the emotional aspect, and I think it’s one of those blind spots that a lot of engineers have. In my experience, the best software engineering is done by the engineers who _care_ the most about the end user experience and the work their software is doing. And the people who care most aren’t always the most brilliant computer scientists or analytical minds.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I edited this sentence to make it clear that I mean only it in the programming context. I believe that we could use positive or neutral emotions instead of negative ones, at least in most cases. Curiousness instead of inadequacy as the drive for learning; humbleness instead of shame; desire to make something great on time instead of anxiety. Of course, the more difficult question is how to do that.
Your personality largely determines your emotions and you can't generate them at will. "Twin studies and other research have shown that about half of the variation between individuals results from their genetic inheritance and half from their environment. Researchers have found conscientiousness, extraversion, openness to experience, and neuroticism to be relatively stable from middle age through old age" [1] What if…
As far as emotions like inadequacy and anxiety, I think mindfulness is a useful tool in terms of differentiating between having those emotions and dwelling in them.
For instance, recognizing one's sense of inadequacy, and from a sober state of mind being able to decide whether that is a signal to reenforce one's skills in some area, or to remind oneself why that reaction is inappropriate in this case is a healthy response. Just walking around feeling bad all day due to imposter syndrome is not a healthy response.
The sooner you realize that everyone on God's green earth is acting from an emotional place, the sooner that human interactions make sense. How something makes people feel - or how they think doing something will make them feel - dictates the vast majority of human behavior.
The sooner you realize that everyone on God's green earth is acting from an emotional place, the sooner that human interactions make sense. How something makes people feel - or how they think doing something will make them feel - dictates the vast majority of human behavior.
Yes I quite like the metaphor that our rational mind acts largely as the press secretary for our emotions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I edited this sentence to make it clear that I mean only it in the programming context. I believe that we could use positive or neutral emotions instead of negative ones, at least in most cases. Curiousness instead of inadequacy as the drive for learning; humbleness instead of shame; desire to make something great on time instead of anxiety. Of course, the more difficult question is how to do that.
Your personality largely determines your emotions and you can't generate them at will. "Twin studies and other research have shown that about half of the variation between individuals results from their genetic inheritance and half from their environment. Researchers have found conscientiousness, extraversion, openness to experience, and neuroticism to be relatively stable from middle age through old age" [1] What if…
At the same time, it doesn't have to mean that one cannot improve things independently. We can't change personality, but we can change beliefs, which also affects what we feel.
Consider this: I used to feel really bad about having my pull requests getting reviewed, because other programmers would leave insensitive comments full of criticism. At one point, I just realized that they are not motivated by shaming me, but that they just care about the codebase's quality (and are not very good at conveying emotions in written comments). This change in perception literally changed how I feel about it.
I've been thinking about this A LOT over the last year. Knowledge work is Emotional work. Software developers make software for PEOPLE. Making things for people requires empathy to be successful or else a whole lot of luck. Having empathy means putting myself out there. It means asking questions that sound ignorant. It means going from feeling like I had a great idea to seeing all the flaws and shortcomings of that i…
Missing: frustration.
Anger: when there is unnecessary red tape to get access to an API while my competitors have the access.
Tired: when applying Nth money patch to use a broken API
PS: I work with external APIs a lot