Day Four: The Reality of a Developer’s Weekend, Mr Beast, JS-FIG and Doing the Important Stuff First
My Fullstack Journal: 29 Oct 2019
A Developer’s Weekend
When your childhood hobby was code, what hobby do you have now you’re a fulltime developer?
#NoLife
To focus during my 5 days of work, I give myself a break on the weekend. Sounds silly, but there are many developers who code, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.
I was such a developer.
And if I am honest with myself, I perform better when I give my mind a chance to connect the dots (or rather, neurons).
Case in point. A library made up of 10+ files. 5+ directories. Took evenings to write.
Here’s the new 80 line slider logic:
Much more concise.
Much simpler to digest.
Immutable by design.
Took less than an hour to write clunky version.
I spent another hour or so half-watching a film, cleaning it up and writing tests.
Yes, I write slow. But I’m happier with the new version.
I gave myself one clear day of no code. If I jumped in and wrote the code, I would have repeated what I’d done before.
Mr Beast
So what do I do when I don’t code?
That’s right. Mr Beast et al. are planting trees (https://teamtrees.org). A lot of trees. Even Elon is at it.
JS-FIG
PHP-FIG create standards known as PSRs. These can be interfaces like PSR-7 or guidelines like PSR-2.
In javascript, we don’t have an interface standard. We don’t have interfaces unless you use TypeScript or the like.
So a few years back, I thought, why not create use cases; little pieces of logic that can be used in any framework by any library.
Say, you have a slider.
jQuery developer creates his own slider with his own logic.
Vue developer then creates her own slider with her own logic.
Vanilla js developer does the same thing, all over again.
You probably get the point.
A slider is a slider.
The logic is the same.
How many of those repositories, use the same base logic? Like Guzzle and Nyholm do with PSR-7.
If we implement the same standard use cases across all front end frameworks and libraries, what is left is unique to the application.
Important Stuff First
Brian Tracy’s Eat That Frog is just the best.
Doing the hardest and most important things are not just good for the business, but our self-esteem.
It seems counter-intuitive because being productive is about ticking things off a list. The dangerous part is to achieve that, one might focus on small tasks that bring no power to the business. Ticking lots of little things off a list seems pretty satisfying, at first. But then at a higher level, you look back and wonder, what have I actually achieved.
This is something I personally want to work on.
At Kamma, the most important things are not new technologies and performance optimisations. They are about the data. Complete, confident data. And some of these tasks are huge in scope. It may seem unproductive when you aren’t ticking lots of little things away.
That’s why I’m not a fan of to-do lists anymore. They provide a false sense of productivity even though Brian Tracy promotes the to-do list.
But when I and my colleagues complete those big important tasks, they help solidify our company’s position in the market as leaders in property compliance and data intel.
Never be afraid to feel unproductive when tackling an important task. Be afraid that you feel productive when really you achieve nothing.
