Be nice to programmers

A man came across three masons who were working at chipping chunks of granite from large blocks. The first seemed unhappy at his job, chipping away and frequently looking at his watch. When the man asked what it was that he was doing, the first mason responded, rather curtly, "I’m hammering this stupid rock, and I can't wait 'til 5 when I can go home."

A second mason, seemingly more interested in his work, was hammering diligently and when asked what it was that he was doing, answered, "Well, I'm molding this block of rock so that it can be used with others to construct a wall. It's not bad work, but I'll sure be glad when it's done."

A third mason was hammering at his block fervently, taking time to stand back and admire his work. He chipped off small pieces until he was satisfied that it was the best he could do. When he was questioned about his work he stopped, gazed skyward and proudly proclaimed, "I'm building a cathedral!"

I would pair-program with this guy, and be astonished by his habits. I have had to have a goal of monitoring my anger for as long as I can remember. And I had no idea how much of a disadvantage this was in programming until I programmed with this boss.

After every recompile, the resulting errors/warnings would fuel my anger until I was true frustrated to continue. As you can guess it is hard to get anything done like this.

Where I would get angry and frustrated, my boss would get happy and pumped.

He was excited at an issue/problem, because he liked the challenge, but mostly he loved to learn.

With each error he'd announce how we were about to learn something new.

It changed my world

If it happens so rarely, which for most developers I believe it does, why would you allow it to get you so jaded? Why would it be apart of your daily concerns or something you felt you needed to prepare for?

Any path worth walking is fraught with forks that lead you through brambles and strife before returning to the main road. The painter seeks the one perfect brush stroke that comes next; the carpenter seeks the perfect arrangement of nails and dead trees. If there weren't a thousand thousand ways to do it wrong, it wouldn't feel so wonderful when you finally got it right.

This is a feature, not a bug.

Even non-producing professions have to deal with constant scrutiny of their performance and negativity. Salespeople might make one sale out of 20 attempts. Anyone in a medical profession is under extreme pressure to not make a mistake (and sometimes things go wrong even when you do everything right).

There are very few professions who don't have to deal with the whole "focusing on the negative" thing (I can't actually think of any). It's pretty much a fact of life that if you want quality, you have to systematically eliminate your weak spots.