Ship Something Every Day
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Ship Something Every Day
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Re: Ship Something Every Day
#2I’ve been doing this for longer than a year now: https://github.com/blackrabbit17
One thing that really helps me is “do nothing time”
When I sit down, it’s tempting to fire up a browser, or Spotify or YouTube or something, then spend time faffing about looking for a good song, no no no, this is really just me avoiding the work.
I sit down, resist that initial temptation and my mind calms, like a storm clearing, and then I let it calm and little more, and then I can start. That do nothing period is only 2-3 minutes but it allows me to slip into flow state quickly. I recommend to others to try…
Re: Ship Something Every Day
#3I’ve been doing this for longer than a year now: https://github.com/blackrabbit17 One thing that really helps me is “do nothing time” When I sit down, it’s tempting to fire up a browser, or Spotify or YouTube or something, then spend time faffing about looking for a good song, no no no, this is really just me avoiding the work. I sit down, resist that initial temptation and my mind calms, like a storm clearing, and t…
> No contributions on December 19th.
smh
(I realize this could just be down to timezone differences considering I'm in the US)
Re: Ship Something Every Day
#4A side benefit from this is that there is now a prerequisite that your ci/cd pipelines are always operational
Re: Ship Something Every Day
#5IMHO "every day" is far too frequent, and this ADHD-ish attitude is one of the reasons why the quality of average software has gone down the drain. Developers need to step back, think more deeply, and not worry about being pressured into "shipping code" that barely works.
The dopamine rush of your code being shipped
This frequent overstimulation leads to less ability for long-term attention. When I taught programming, I saw plenty of beginners do this, especially with an IDE, and the addictive nature of being able to edit and run to see the changes immediately lead to many of them falling into an unproductive rapid iteration loop where they were barely even thinking about what they were doing, just making random changes until something seemed to work.
Your team (and manager) sees you're working
Tough problems need time to solve, and you won't see much meanwhile. If needing to put on a show for others is more important than actually working, something is very wrong.
Your git commit streak looks good
Yes, people say this doesn't matter. But I'm sure people like recruiters look at GitHub profiles, and an empty page isn't a great look.
Optimising for metrics never works for those who can see through the illusion, and that's an increasing number of people over time. If I was a recruiter and saw that sort of activity, I wouldn't think of it as more than someone just putting on a show --- especially if the majority of those commits are effectively "thrashing" or "churning".
The satisfaction (and mental benefits) of getting something done
I can personally say that the satisfaction is far bigger the longer you've persevered.
Re: Ship Something Every Day
#6i followed this religiously for a month or two, and found it really beneficial. not necessarily for the product i was building (some of those things i shipped probably shouldn't have been) but for my own motivation.
however, i expanded my definition to mean not just software features, i included writing a new help doc as "shipping". as long as it was something user-visible and for users in general, and not something for one specific user, it counted.
Re: Ship Something Every Day
#7A side benefit from this is that there is now a prerequisite that your ci/cd pipelines are always operational
You could run them every night
Re: Ship Something Every Day
#8> The satisfaction (and mental benefits) of getting something done
I used to think that motivation would come to me if I just waited long enough but I now believe that action breeds motivation. You need to do something no matter how small and your motivation will benefit from it.
Re: Ship Something Every Day
#9IMHO "every day" is far too frequent, and this ADHD-ish attitude is one of the reasons why the quality of average software has gone down the drain. Developers need to step back, think more deeply, and not worry about being pressured into "shipping code" that barely works. The dopamine rush of your code being shipped This frequent overstimulation leads to less ability for long-term attention. When I taught programming…
I mean, sure, if shipping everyday means stuff breaks everyday then its a bad idea--that sounds miserable. But it doesn't have to mean that. I'd rather have a culture of shipping frequently and fixing the occasional mistake instead of shipping slowly and moving at the pace of a snail. Thats assuming "breaking" occasionally is an acceptable risk. Speed does matter, especially with new products. Shipping frequentily often speeds up the feedback loop which speeds up how fast you learn (and how long it takes to build something useful).
There's tons of assumptions in both our comments though, and loads of context thats important. Spend more time on the code for life support systems, healthcare, etc. If its just a bunch of rest API's for a crud app with few consequences if you break stuff, then its okay to live life on the edge.
Re: Ship Something Every Day
#10It’s actually off putting if you check out a potential employer’s GitHub and it’s filled with obsessive committers, obviously working late hours, weekends, holidays, etc.