During my morning run I was listening to This Developer's Life Podcast by Scott Hanselman is a production that deals with general areas of a typical software developer's existence. This latest show discusses the need to be a continual learner.

One of the points made in the podcast was the concept of turning the consumer of software, consider the person playing hours of video games, into a producer of software. Imagine the amount of time and brain power applied to just video gaming by the consumers of those games!

One aspect to turn consumers into producers may be the use game mechanics in the actual creation of programs. The addicting factor of video games is largely the desire to "get to the next level."

Maybe simply making the solving of problems via the writing of code the reward. "How can I 'get to the next level' in my understanding of this framework?" or "How many defects can I fix today?" or "What is the most elegant solution for meeting that business need?" Perhaps creating personal challenges out of the problems by asking, "How much can I accomplish today on this bug or issue?"

Just thinking....

It is time to issue a reorg on the table via this:
CALL sysproc.admin_cmd('REORG TABLE YourTableHere');

$ gem install autotest

Yes Google has some brilliant software engineers. However, even the best minds cannot foresee all or most secondary and tertiary effects of a piece of code. To simply say that they knew all ramifications of the code is not to consider the complexity of their systems.

I am not saying that Google is always ethical. I have submitted previous posts that clearly state that I understand the danger of user data potentially being misused. I am not so naive to think that they are not interested in making money. But I am not sure that this case, that stemmed from code added that was designed to make different web browsers consistent which is a better experience for the user, is the result of malevolence to steal user information. It is certainly possible for it to be used in that way but again, this really could be a case of an unintended side effect or what is commonly termed, the ghost in the machine.

The map keeps getting redrawn, because it's cheaper than ever to go offroad, to develop and innovate and remake what we thought was going to be next. Technology keeps changing the routes we take to get our projects from here to there. It doesn't pay to memorize the route, because it's going to change soon. The compass, on the other hand, is more important then ever. If you don't know which direction you're going, how will you know when you're off course?

To find our direction, I must turn the compass dial until the North mark and the "Orienting Arrow" are lined up with the North end of the needle. Then, whichever direction is on the opposite side of the compass, that is the direction you are heading. Now, orient yourself to the direction you want to go with the compass dial until the North mark and the "Orienting Arrow" are lined up and you are good to go. For example, the picture below shows you pointing west.

Now, you can take any road that will allow you to go west and not be stopped if the road your on is closed. Just navigate to another road going west by the use of the compass.

Of course, the compass in Godin's article was a metaphor. Yet, this concrete example shows us that we need to get better at calibrating our compasses or our sense of the proper direction. We need to determine the best direction via "the compass" and stop memorizing maps to get where we are going professionally, personally, etc.as the maps will be changing faster as we move forward in our journey.

I need to remember this next time Google Maps leads me into a corn field instead of where I wanted to go!

I just watched a great video with Eric Ries, entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School and author of the book The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses.