The Road to Awesomeness
Wouldn’t you like to become an awesome programmer?
Be able to excel at your craft and write great code?
I’m sure you do, as do I. But, where do we start?
Well, I found a series of blog posts the other day about being awesome, which is a good start on getting onto this mythical road. The series, written by Jamis Buck, is titled There is no magic, there is only awesome and is summarized in this post.
In order to achieve awesomeness, we need to dispel the magic around that advanced technology. We need to understand the how’s, what’s, and why’s of the things we use each day. With this in mind, Jamis suggests four cardinal rules to becoming awesome, each explained in different posts:
What this series basically comes down to is that we should ask the four following questions with every tool, programming language, and library that we use:
- What does this do best?
- What does this do worst?
- Why should I use this in particular?
- When was the last time I learnt something new about this?
If any of those questions can’t be answered, then it’s a sign to investigate further and slay that magic dragon.
Actually knowing and being able to apply that knowledge is so much more important than just knowing about. And that is essential to form an opinion about the things we use and answer the above questions. An opinion is crucial to becoming awesome because:
And that’s a big NO NO.
It’s also important to note that, even if we’re able to answer those questions, we should continue to learn something new about the tools we use. Jamis suggests we try do that each day by reading something we didn’t know before. Then, integrate that knowledge in what we’re doing, be it in a project we’re working on, playing around with simple code examples, or even blogging about it. Doing this will help cement the newly acquired knowledge. After that, we then need to use it repeatedly so we don’t forget it.
Now that we know the direction of The Road to Awesomeness, the only thing standing in our way is ourselves. It’s now up to each one of us to pick up the torch and go down this road.
Start with reading the posts in the series, then get to answering those questions and follow that yellow brick road to awesomeness. Leave any suggestions or experiences in the comments section.
Until the next post, happy road trip!