

Does "You are what you eat" apply to developing? - stevenklein
http://trentwalton.com/

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nudge
For posterity, the url to the article itself (as opposed to the blog) is
<http://trentwalton.com/2011/01/26/you-are-what-you-eat/>

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bradfordw
I'd go more along the philosophy of "you are what you read" when it comes to
development. No one knows everything (or anything for that matter) so you
should constantly try to better yourself.

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Samuel_Michon
That site has a really nice design, and it even works in IE6.

> Does "You are what you eat" apply to developing?

No. Most of us who develop software do so in a job or for a client. That
determines the priorities. Will it be good, cheap or fast? Most developers
have to do it cheap and fast.

Most people have control over their own diet. Unless your doctor or partner
tells you otherwise, you can stuff yourself with twinkies.

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synotic
It depends on who you're working for (how top-down or bottom-up the company
is) and how autonomous you are. Doing things cheaply and quickly, even in a
web startup is shortsighted. Sometimes you have to spend money to make money.
Sometimes big, interesting projects take time (think IBM developing Watson).
I'm not discounting agile methods — the things you choose to do should be done
efficiently, but they shouldn't be done poorly.

Perhaps I don't disagree with your comment that "most" developers have to do
things cheaply and quickly, but I think most anyone has ability to speak up in
their environment and push for the changes they think are important. I've
worked at a big, sprawling company and was still able to work against the
grain and push back on requirements and things I didn't think made sense. I'm
working at a company now where I can do the same things (this time with less
pushback).

If you change your perspective from controlling your job or your company to
controlling yourself and your career, then it makes it easier to pull back and
make the decisions that make sense for you and the things you want to work on.
Then the places you work at are just the vessels and opportunities to turn
your ideas into reality. The onus is on you to determine your career — not
your company's.

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a5seo
I like the ending point about 28k breakfasts as motivation to make them
couunt.

A mentor once told me, "look it takes 7-10 years to build and exit a company.
You're 35. If you're successful, you'll probably only do 2-3 significant
companies before you retire to angel investing or whatever, so choose the
businesses carefully."

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stevenklein
With regard to side projects, the most important category for me is a "the
work is challenging" and "time is budgeted for ideas and thoughts". If I'm
going to take up a side project, it's not going to be for money. I'd rather
learn a new skill or get better at something I already do.

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m0th87
The title uses CSS transforms to rotate the text, rather than images.
Beautiful.

