Hope Cocktails OR Why We Love Guides

"Rome, thou hast lost the breed of noble bloods!"

-- Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Act I, Scene II, Line 150

Friends, coders, methodologist, lend me your ears;

I come to bury experience and knowledge, not praise it.

The work that men do lives after them,

The glories are interred with their retirement parties;

So let it be with experience and knowledge.  The noble methodologies

Hath told you that experience and knowledge are not needed.

If it were so, it was a grievous fault,

And experience and knowledge have been replaced.

Good sir, they say, have you mocked methodologies?!?  Have you gone mad?!?  We sir, like our hope cocktails and will not stand to hear your mocking!

Riddle me this methodologist, why should we follow these principles?!?  What are their genesis?!?

Sir, they say, these were handed down to us from above, we do not question them.

Friends this is a sad, sad, sad state indeed.  Drunken on hope cocktails, these methodologist come and say to us, "Follow me and I will lead you to the promise land, I have access to the secret doctrines and only I can interpret them correctly."

All these statements may be true, they may have access to the "secret doctrines", they may have the ability to "interpret" them correctly.  There is just one thing:

"Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare?"

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Who could teach Shakespeare to Shakespeare?  Who taught Virgil to be Virgil?  Who told Homer the Iliad and the Odyssey?

The ancient Greeks having no history or doctrines were able to be truly beautiful.  They were able to soar to heights never reached before or since.  They did not blindly follow, they led and are still leading!

"Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans."
-- Homer, The Iliad
Book I, Line 1

Sing goddesses of men that were truly beautiful.  Men that gave us the Sciences.  Men that gave us the very idea of History.  Men that gave us hope.

"Only Hope remained there in an unbreakable home within under the rim of the great jar, and did not fly out at the door"
-- Hesiod, Works and Days, Line 96

Hope not in a cocktail, the thing itself, the authentic thing.

True experience and knowledge, the kind which builds worlds, cannot be drunken down, it can only be lived.  True experience and knowledge, my friends, becomes one with us.  It is created, not drunken in.  It is made true to oneself.  It cannot be disproven since it is part of one, it becomes one's duty.

"It is far better to discharge one’s prescribed duties, even though faultily, than another’s duties perfectly. Destruction in the course of performing one’s own duty is better than engaging in another’s duties, for to follow another’s path is dangerous."

-- Bhagavad Gita, 3:35

It would be better to be destroyed than to follow!  For blindly following is worst than not existing, it is not even being.  To follow another's life, to not be authentic, is to not even exist.  Live your life, your experience, your knowledge.

Fellow developers, do you know why you do a daily stand up?  Is testing first part of who you are as a developer?  Is continuous integration part of your definition of done, even if it is not required by your team?

Beware my friends for it is far easier to drink down hope cocktails than to gain true experience and knowledge.  It is often hard to tell at first who is buzzed on hope cocktails and who actually has true experience and knowledge.  You can tell a drunkard when they pererrat to another cocktail and quote new sages, this herd will be moving to new pastures, grazing on new hope cocktails, worshipping new idols.

"Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

How to Become Like Uncle Bob

"Here's the challenge, read it. I warrant
there's vinegar and pepper in't."
-- Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Act III, Scene IV, Lines 142-143

How does one become what one is?  Better yet, how does one become what one should be?  Even better, how does one become what one must be?!?

A challenge was fired straight across the bow! Just a little less than one year ago, Uncle Bob in his
"The Reasonable Expectations of Your CTO" stated that software professionals need to be spend 20 hours a week honing their craft! Sir you say, 20 hours is a lot, this man is surely joking!

Nope, Uncle Bob was serious, in fact he gave away one of his secrets.  This secret was how to become an Uncle Bob.  Yes sir, Uncle Bob has given away a secret of how to become like him in abilities and knowledge.

No surprise Uncle Bob has stated that it takes in a different way that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert.  Wait you say, 10,000 hours where did that come from?

Let's see, take the 20 hours per week that Uncle Bob is challenging us with and multiple it over a whole year which we'll say it is 50 weeks, that give us 2 weeks of vacation!  20 * 50 = 1,000.  Hmmm, 1,000 well if we did this for 10 years that would give us 10,000 hours of practice.  Surprise, surprise, just as Dr. K. Anders Ericsson has found in his research on experts!

In fact as any weekend golfer that has not improved in 20 years of play will tell you, 10,000 hours of practice by itself is not enough!  No, sorry sir, it take deliberate practice to get better, practice in which one climbs mountains!

What?!?  Surely I am mad, surely I have fallen from the great height of my rocker!  Surely I am an anarchist that laughs as the world burns!--and thus with some silly jesting in my writing I have left a quote that could easily be taken out of context and used against me!

Sorry my friends, but traveling to great heights takes great amount of effort and determination, but boy is the view great!

A poem of old reads:

"The aspen plum blossoms!
Bent towards me it waves!
It's not that I do not think of you.
But that your home is too far away."

Confucius said, "The writer of this poem does not really miss his beloved.  If he did, how could he feel that his beloved is too far away?"
-- Confucius, Analects of Confucius, Book 9
(other translation 1, 2)

As Confucius has shown us what we do truly speaks as to what we really mean and feel.  If we really want to be better, we really want to be professionals, we really want to better than average, we really want to soar to greater and greater heights, if we really want to become an Uncle Bob, we'll have to get good, we'll have to get really good!  It will take much more than wishing, it will take blood, sweat, and tears.

Laugh at his challenge.
-- Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
Act IV, Scene I, Line 6

Laugh for how could one every stand up against such overwhelming work without laughter?!?  Furthermore, what truth could ever be spoken without laughter?!?

This challenge is great, it takes a lot to transcend the bonds of the normal everyday.

But sir, you say, this challenge is too great, too terrible!!!

A young man can be most surely corrupted when he is taught to value the like-minded more highly than the differently minded.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day, Section 297

We are not talking about the average.

What is being talked about is moving beyond the herd, to the heights of what can be.

O-but good sir you have surely forgotten about the plague!  The plague you say?  You are right I have forgotten about the "Sam's Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days" and its bothers.  I have forgotten about Wizard Schools, boot camps, and sheep dip training!

Yes, my fellow adventures of knowledge we have a plague on our hands, the Get Knowledge Quick Plague!

You see learning can be done in the 21 Day route or the Oxford Complete route.  The authentic subject in itself or the Cliff's Notes?!?  The choice is yours, one path leads to new heights, the other to the same-old-same-old.

When a war breaks out, people say: "It is too stupid; it can't last long." But though a war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so wrapped up in ourselves.
-- Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 1, Chapter 5

No one asks for the plague, one is just thrown into it.  Lucky one finds that one has choices even in the darkest mist of the plague.  One can fight the monsters or one can be the victim of monsters!

"Look here, Monsieur Cottard, why don’t you join us?"

Picking up his derby hat, Cottard rose from his chair with an offended expression.

"It’s not my job," he said. Then, with an air of bravado, he added: "What’s more, the plague suits me quite well and I see no reason why I should bother about trying to stop it."
-- Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 2, Chapter 9

Cottard, Cottard, it is so easy to see the plague and think hmmm, I will dip the sheep!  I will profit from this plague!

My friends this is the enemy.

Through me the way is to the city dolent;
  Through me the way is to eternal dole;
  Through me the way among the people lost.

Justice incited my sublime Creator;
  Created me divine Omnipotence,
  The highest Wisdom and the primal Love.

Before me there were no created things,
  Only eterne, and I eternal last.
  All hope abandon, ye who enter in!

-- Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto III

There is no profit to be made in plague!  No greatness to be found in the plague.  The plague is the same, everyday in the plague is the same, the same joylessness, the same hopelessness, the same misery!  Only fighting against the plague can bring about greatness.  Greatness is not found in profiting from the plague!

"You're right, Rambert, quite right, and for nothing in the world would I try to dissuade you from what you're going to do; it seems to be absolutely right and proper. However, there’s one thing I must tell you: there’s no question of heroism in all this. It’s a matter of common decency. That’s an idea which may make some people smile, but the only means of fighting a plague is—common decency."
-- Albert Camus, The Plague, Part 2, Chapter 9

Like Sisyphus, we found that we are pushing our rock up a hill to only have it rollback.  For every Clean Coder there are three Teach Yourself x in 21 Days!  For every Elvis there are three Morts!

Sir, you say, you have gone mad.  You have wanted to set the world on fire!

Do you remember when you were young and you wanted to set the world on fire?
-- Against Me!, I Was a Teenage Anarchist

Perhaps I am being a drama queen, perhaps I have gone too far, perhaps I have lost sight of what the point was!  One must remember, while mountain climbing that one must get use to the air at higher heights, one cannot be simply dropped onto the summit and expected to survive!  No, one must work their own way up the mountain.  One must face their own challenges, one must meet their own monsters!

He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Chapter 4, Aphorism 146

20 hours a week or if it is easier to think of 10,000 hours of progressive deliberate practice and higher and higher challenges is what is needed to become an expert.

Developer Freedom is a Blank Text Editor

"Though age from folly could not give me freedom,
It does from childishness."
-- Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra
Act I Scene III Lines 57-58

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."
-- John 8:32

"Freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom!"
-- Simpsons 3F31

For a software developer there is nothing as freeing or as scary as a blank text editor.  Just looking at it is both liberating and intimidating at the same time.

(or to not start any wars)

With a blank text editor you can create anything and everything.  This is how Google and Facebook got their start.  The software used on the Space Shuttle, Unix, and even the Internet itself all got their starts from a blank text editor.  Think about this next time someone tries to sell you a tool to limit your freedom.

GOTO Hell

It seems that people have forgotten what Dijkstra said about GOTO. You see GOTO is actually being added to languages that did not offer it before (PHP5). Have we not learned that GOTO is too easy to abuse?

The argument against GOTO (as given by Dijkstra) is simple, when you use GOTOs you cannot tell without a great deal of work what a program executing has done. Example if you use the following:

n = 783
:start
i = 2

:loop
if n%i == 0
goto done
end
i = i + 2
if i > n
n = n + 2
goto start
end
goto loop

:done
print n
n = n + 2
if n < 100000
goto start
end

This program would not be very hard for most people to figure out what is going on, but what if somewhere deep in the source code called start or done--or even worst loop. What would happen if you call loop or done much latter in the code? Are you sure you know what the values of i and n would be? I agree GOTO does have it uses, I mean sometimes it can save you a lot of code (see the C code for ls). GOTO is at its best when it gets you out of a deep if/for/if/case/... structure, but you could always use private methods in order to get yourself out of those cases without a GOTO. You see there is no real reason to use a GOTO and as such I believe if the greater good it is best to leave it out of languages.