raganwald
(This is a snapshot of my old weblog. New posts and selected republished essays can be found at raganwald.com.)

Friday, September 01, 2006
  Just in time for "labour" day


I strongly oppose the false dichotomy of either you program for fun or you program for business. That split is not only artificial, but seems more like a self-serving fairy tale you can tell yourself to why your current environment is making you unhappy. Well, I'm doing Serious Business Stuff, so it has to suck. That's just the way the world spins. Bullocks.
David Heinemeier Hansson, commenting on Less is Better

Labels:

 

Comments on “Just in time for "labour" day:
Years ago I worked at a video game company. One night, as I slapped the monitor in disgust and swore at the code for the 83rd time, my coding partner smiled and said, "Dude, remember: if we're not having fun, we're doing something wrong."

He wasn't talking about writing games. He was talking about being a programmer. (Frankly, everything you've heard about the gaming industry is true: every "business" job I've had since then has been less stress and more fun.)

This was one of the most useful career lessons I've ever learned. Nowadays I'm optimizing distributed databases... and loving it. To me, "programming for hire" means "programming for fun... while getting paid to do it."
 
anonymous: thanks!
 
It is a great truism in life that if you don't like what you are doing, you had better change it. You HAVE to like your job (i.e. there has to be some fun in it) or you'll simply go C r A z Y! Too much of our time as a populous is spent at work for it to additionally be a boring, dull, drag as well.

If your job sucks - start looking for another - more fun - position!
 
Say hi to Msrs. False Dichotomy and Strawman Argument. It always has to be DHH's way or the sucky way. There couldn't be any more variables, and we only have to look at the very beginning of the process because that's what RoR is geared up for. Looking at the whole process, looking at the many things missing from RoR, looking at the smiles on the faces of the children who's lives you were able to save because you didn't waste money and time on on RoR and take unnecessary risks just to amuse yourself in a way that makes DHH's ego swell instead of amusing yourself in a way that would let those kids live, that's just unpossible.
 
It always has to be DHH's way or the sucky way.

I don't personally care about what he may or may not have said elsewhere. The quote merely says that it is a false dichotomy that work cannot be fun.

looking at the smiles on the faces of the children who's lives you were able to save because you didn't waste money and time on on RoR and take unnecessary risks...

If smiling children make you happy, aren't you really in violent agreement with him? Aren't you saying that your work can make you happy?
 




<< Home
Reg Braithwaite


Recent Writing
Homoiconic Technical Writing / raganwald.posterous.com

Books
What I‘ve Learned From Failure / Kestrels, Quirky Birds, and Hopeless Egocentricity

Share
rewrite_rails / andand / unfold.rb / string_to_proc.rb / dsl_and_let.rb / comprehension.rb / lazy_lists.rb

Beauty
IS-STRICTLY-EQUIVALENT-TO-A / Spaghetti-Western Coding / Golf is a good program spoiled / Programming conventions as signals / Not all functions should be object methods

The Not So Big Software Design / Writing programs for people to read / Why Why Functional Programming Matters Matters / But Y would I want to do a thing like this?

Work
The single most important thing you must do to improve your programming career / The Naïve Approach to Hiring People / No Disrespect / Take control of your interview / Three tips for getting a job through a recruiter / My favourite interview question

Management
Exception Handling in Software Development / What if powerful languages and idioms only work for small teams? / Bricks / Which theory fits the evidence? / Still failing, still learning / What I’ve learned from failure

Notation
The unary ampersand in Ruby / (1..100).inject(&:+) / The challenge of teaching yourself a programming language / The significance of the meta-circular interpreter / Block-Structured Javascript / Haskell, Ruby and Infinity / Closures and Higher-Order Functions

Opinion
Why Apple is more expensive than Amazon / Why we are the biggest obstacles to our own growth / Is software the documentation of business process mistakes? / We have lost control of the apparatus / What I’ve Learned From Sales I, II, III

Whimsey
The Narcissism of Small Code Differences / Billy Martin’s Technique for Managing his Manager / Three stories about The Tao / Programming Language Stories / Why You Need a Degree to Work For BigCo

History
06/04 / 07/04 / 08/04 / 09/04 / 10/04 / 11/04 / 12/04 / 01/05 / 02/05 / 03/05 / 04/05 / 06/05 / 07/05 / 08/05 / 09/05 / 10/05 / 11/05 / 01/06 / 02/06 / 03/06 / 04/06 / 05/06 / 06/06 / 07/06 / 08/06 / 09/06 / 10/06 / 11/06 / 12/06 / 01/07 / 02/07 / 03/07 / 04/07 / 05/07 / 06/07 / 07/07 / 08/07 / 09/07 / 10/07 / 11/07 / 12/07 / 01/08 / 02/08 / 03/08 / 04/08 / 05/08 / 06/08 / 07/08 /