What I've learned
Writing code every single day in a Half Year
In background: It’s me and my friend Iron Octocat, talking about this.
It has been 190 days since I challenged myself to write code every single day. Still steady, I intend to reach a whole year of contributions and you can follow here.
It all started with a post from @jeresig (the creator of jQuery). The challenge was simple: writing code everyday. It needed to be open, preferable not a review, and a few other rules. It was thrilling enought to make me want to try.
After reading that post, I've chosen to try this too. But have some rules to be followed (as you can see here). I spoke about the challenge with some friends and most of them sustain the idea. Today only one friend continued the challenge with me: my great friend and sensei: @israelst.
The beginning it’s really not easy. Demands much effort and concentration to becomes something natural. For me it occurred sometime by the third month.
What made it easier for me, was the tactic I created to manage multiple projects. So when you are overload with projects, it's difficult to get locked into any problem or feature. You can skip your lock in some project, changing by other and focus in it. After this, you can return to the old problem.
"Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better."
— Jim Rohn
With this perspective I’ve got almost 50 repositories in just four months. In the 5th month do this becames so natural that I decided to dare myself to create a pull request for week. But, after the end of the 5th month, I was not able to keep this challenger.
We can say that I had a overload with open projects. That was good for many reasons: I improved my code, helped people, I’d created things that make my life easier. I learned a lot! But also had negative points and they only appeared at the end of the fifth month.
The negative points I highlighted: Overload.
Yeah, over time, manage many projects did not become an easy task, but I continued. Then came problems in my work and I volunteered to be a maintainer in some open source projects.
At the beginning of the 6th month I couldn’t breath. I needed do other thing besides programming those same things. I’d reached my limit. So, little by little, I left the projects that I’d got myself into.
“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.” – Abraham Lincoln
With these six months, I learned that everything in excess is bad, and this includes doing things you love.
The truth is that you should do what you love. But do not be so hard on yourself, learn to do other things. Because like it or not, an hour you’ll end up getting sick of doing the same thing.
Explore other lifestyles. If you can not rest for a while, try to do new things, no matter what. No matter the language or purpose.
Do and learn new things, always.
Thanks to my friends: Leonardo A. Souza, Débora V. Held and Felippe Nardi for helping me.
