Great advice for beginners

'Awhile' is the new 'alot'.

Zen Pencils has several entries that do an outstanding job of capturing the quotes being illustrated. It's a shame they get classified as "derivative" works, because they all have quite an amount of original effort and thought put into them that, in my mind, separate them from the original works. However, there are still some that can be ordered as prints.

I agree with that. I found some really good stories on Zenpencils. The beautiful visuals just add more power to the written stories.

There are a couple of stories that comes to mind when reading this. The first one has to do with with Picasso while the second one has to do with Golf (well professional sports).

1) The story goes that Picasso was sitting in a Paris café when an admirer approached and asked if he would do a quick sketch on a paper napkin. Picasso politely agreed, swiftly executed the work, and handed back the napkin — but not before asking for a rather significant amount of money. The admirer was shocked: “How can you ask for so much? It took you a minute to draw this!” “No”, Picasso replied, “It took me 40 years”

2) I was watching Golf the other day and saw how huge the purse was. I think Tiger Woods won over $1million dollars for 4 days worth of work. A lot of people would say that its not fair and that its way too much money. But think about it for a second. This guy started playing golf since he was a kid. Has been playing it every day, hours on end for 35+ more years. He lives, breaths, sleeps Golf. He his Mr. Golf. That $1mil payday is just the embodiment of years of "sacrifice" and enthusiasm for mastering a craft.

I wrote a bit, but the point is exactly what this comic is about. Its not about the money, but about working towards a goal. To find out what the goal is, you have to have "good taste" and know that what you're doing isn't satisfactory. I'm that way with a lot of things, but I'll stick to coding on this one. When I finish writing a module, I stare back at it as if I'm a painter looking at his masterpiece. I scrutinize it and eventually come to a conclusion of whether or not its worthy of pushing to production. Some of my work gets pushed because its "good enough" to do the job to my dismay. Others (a few) are masterpieces to me. Even though the user or project manager doesn't see it, I know that I wrote something special. I guess that's what's drives me forward.

I know I'm not the greatest developer. I don't work at a fortune 500 company. Until recently, I didn't even know what great code looks like, let along UI design. Everyday, I do strive forward because I know that it will drive me crazy if I don't at least "try" to reach that level.

Unfortunately, in this industry (like in most), you can get by being mediocre.

Creating a great product needs time and hard work. This story beautifully illustrates that.

Earlier I used to spend so much time worrying about being perfect that many times I wouldn't even start. It's only now I realize the importance of creating good work every day, even though it may not be the best one.