Code - A La Carte
I almost became a chef. Went to Paris for culinary school, learned the restaurant biz as a dish washer in my teens and even graduated with a business degree to add some“hard” credentials. The love of the hard work, dedication mixed with creativity and working with a team was what drove me towards this passion.
Long story short I am a father and husband and it’s no secret that the chef lifestyle consists of little pay and long hours where shifts don’t end until your loved ones have already been asleep for hours. Missing my son grow up just wasn’t worth it. So here is where I parallel programming to being a chef.
Both involve taking raw ingredients and using them in very specific ways to surpass the expectations of the customer. What I discovered this week is that it is very easy to have your ego come across in the final product, which often becomes the focus and can take away from the final product. Look no further then celebrity chefs who are on tv and cannot go more then 30 seconds without an applause from the audience, or the chef in a NYC restaurant showing off some fancy artistic plating skills to earn another Michelin star.
There is an expression “good honest food” that says a lot. It says that I can enjoy it without having to give a review and there’s no one watching me eat waiting for a facial expression. Still a novice, but I often hear “simple clean code” that can entertain the same feelings from a developer’s frame of mind.
So what I learned from both cooking and developing thus far in terms of design is that it is really really easy to get excited about adding more bells and whistles to just show you can, but you know you’re starting to get better when you do the final product justice and think further then putting the fancy food on a plate or the additional ego on the screen that won’t do anything more then distract the end user from your purpose.
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— Brad
