Cooking & Coding
I’m always the guy who carries a great passion for food. In the past year, I’ve been experimenting cooking various styles of cuisines at home. Some of them are extremely good, some of them are not. I hate beets, and I’m still not a big fan of it even after trying all different kinds of cooking techniques on beets. But hey, at least I tried. And now I know for sure what doesn’t work for beets. I probably would try more ways to cook beets in future if I find any new techniques.
Similarly, a great benefit for working in technology industry is that you always have chances to open your mind, and try for new techniques. The mentality coming from it would be the source of power for becoming a better engineer. I cannot emphasize enough that making high quality software is extremely difficult in any age. No matter how technology changes in past decades, it still takes a lot of effort to build software. I used to be very ignorant, and considered myself as a coding Ninja. There is nothing I cannot build if I have enough time. The fact is that it is simply not true. Just like getting to be a good chief, you have to practice a lot, think a lot and read a lot about how your peers will do with the same martial to make yourself truly know what you are doing.
Most people wouldn’t know that the process of becoming a good software engineer takes a long time. If an engineer stop learning, practicing, thinking and communicating, he would be doomed by his own brain.
John Resig from Khan Academy and Eric from DuckDuckGo conducted an experiment called “Writing Code Everyday”. Guys like them is busy. I really don’t think I am busier than them. If they can manage to do it, I can definitely do it as well.
Therefore, I’m planning to conduct my own experiment. Here are some ground rules I need to set up for myself.
- Write at least 10 minute a day. The content can be in different languages.
- Publish content bi-weekly.
- Push code every day.
- Write code for minimum of 30 minutes every day. This should not related to my daytime work at all.
- Read book for minimum of 30 minutes every day. The books can be totally not related to technology. Novels are encouraged to read.
- Finish reading each book within one month.
