Note: This is an ongoing series, more articles will be added soon.
Developing software is not that hard. Especially today, when we have fast processors, many gigabytes of RAM memory and all the fancy tools in the world that help us write and maintain code. The software is everywhere, too. From our cars, telephones, home appliances, and watches, to electrical plants, medical equipment, and factories. I am pretty sure that even my lightbulb has some piece of code running somewhere in it. To quote Dilan Moran, my favorite comedian – “everything’s a camera nowadays; you pick up a piece of fruit, it takes a picture of you”.
So, software is everywhere and it controls many arias of our lives, from trivial ones to life-critical ones. Did I say that developing software is not hard? Yes, but developing software that has high quality and is capable of successfully controlling all those aspects of our lives is not an easy task. Writing a “Hello World” is never hard, but writing software for a car that won’t kill you while driving, on the other hand, is quite a challenge.
One might say that we, as software developers, have obligations to always write great software and to be big professional. Even if we don’t write software for some kind of life-critical systems, a bug on our webpage can piss-off a lot of people and cause a lot of stress, which is ultimately bad for health. All joke aside, writing good software is not easy, but it is our obligation. There is a certain mindset that you have to be in order to do so.
Even when you reach that tough-professional mindset, keeping it and keeping a high level of motivation is super hard. Usually, you will develop this mindset after reading a good book, and then that inspiration would fade until you find another source of inspiration that kicks you back in. But is there a way to stay in this mindset all the time without burning out? My opinion is that it is possible if you renew your inspiration daily. For this purpose, I use one powerful tool – philosophy. Check out how to do that in these articles:
- How to use Miyamoto Musashi’s Philosophy to Become Better Software Crafter
- How to use Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations to Become Better Software Craftsman
- How to use Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy to be better Software Craftsman
- How to use “Art of War” to be better Software Craftsman
Read more posts from the author at Rubik’s Code.
