Jay s Kampf
J’s conf was really inspiring and it got
me thinking a lot about this show today
I have an exciting announcement to make
this show is finally getting a name
welcome to fun fun function that isn’t a
fun fun fun fun function I am going to
spend this video talking about the goal
of fun fun function and four principles
that are going to guide us towards that
goal these principles are not coupled to
this show in fact they are general
principles that represents qualities in
programmers around me that I look up to
here we go the goal of fun fun function
is to make software better I’m making
programmers and the four principles that
will guide us towards that goal are have
fun explore wild ideas explore old
wisdom and teach let’s talk about the
goal first software is good and
important software runs in cars
pacemakers electric grids and nuclear
power plants but software is not good
enough what if we could solve core
pollution with a transportation network
of self-driving electric cars
what if software could separate trash
forests for perfect recycling what if we
could do surgery what if it could locate
and disarm all blind minds software has
made the world so much better but it is
still insignificant compared to the
problem that we could be solving if
software was better so how then do we
make software better well we make
programmers better since programmers are
the ones writing software it is on us to
become better and every day we don’t
humanity is worse off and I know that is
a very ostentatious thing to say
as is using the word or Santosh’s but
it’s also technically true we want to
become better programmers not just I not
just you not just us watching this show
no we need to make the entire profession
of programmers better how can we do that
there’s many possible ways but we are
going to focus on four have fun explore
wild ideas explore old wisdom and teach
let’s talk about the first principle
having fun programming like most crafts
is both a tool to get done and a
way to be creative and experiment both
of those are important and we need to
keep them in balance but in situations
where we have to choose between having
fun and utility we will choose fun we
are willing to sacrifice a little
utility to have fun and the reason for
that is that becoming a great programmer
requires active and constant learning
for a very very very long time and to
have the stamina to keep up with that
learning you really must have fun along
the way
principle to explore wild ideas
programmers are humans and we humans are
creatures of habit we tend to become
comfortable with ways of thinking and
it’s very important to constantly
counter that by exploring new and weird
ways of thinking stuff that is outside
the industry comfort zones new languages
new patterns and generally crazy hack
novel ways of doing things deliberately
and constantly blowing our own minds
this partly goes back to the first
principle having fun but it’s mainly so
that we don’t get stuck exploring old
wisdom so we talked about having fun and
exploring wild new ideas but you know
to know what a wild new idea is we need
to know our history otherwise we’ll all
keep reinventing things from the 1960s
rather than producing ideas that are
actually new so we need to go back in
time taking deeper into our love
knowledge of programming going back to
the real fundamentals to rediscover all
truths that are still as relevant today
if not more fourth and final principle
teach humans the homo sapien is a herd
animal that means that instinctively
when we are confused by a decision we
are going to look at what the herd does
so when something becomes popular it
tends to become more popular and so on
and there is nothing wrong with that
very often popular ideas are good but
someone had to popularize those good
ideas in the first place for every good
popular idea at some point somebody took
the first step and led the way saying
people I have I have a better idea
like when Li new students introduced
gift when everybody else was using
subversion on funfun function you won’t
find many step-by-step tutorials on
popular tools we don’t think such things
are bad but we think that there is
plenty of them already instead we will
be focusing on exploring wild ideas and
old wisdom in order to find ways to
improve on what is popular I’m going to
warn you that you will be frustrated
about the fact that the things that you
learn on funfun function in order to
start using them you will need to
convince your colleagues that it’s a
good idea first and that is the way it
should be it means that you are helping
to push the industry forward teaching is
a great way of revealing how sloppy your
thinking is because when you have to
explain
and convinced then you really need to
understand the why and the watts of an
idea if you don’t you’ll fail because
people won’t be convinced or people
won’t understand teaching is the hardest
principle of the four but it’s also the
most important and the most rewarding
one all that fun we’re having and all
that exploring that we are doing is
meaningless if we don’t teach the people
around us what it is that we’ve found
the goal of fun fun function is to make
software better by making programmers
better I exploring wild ideas and old
wisdom teaching and most importantly
having fun that is where we go I am so
excited that next Monday will start for
real let me know what kind of video you
would like that to be either comment
down below or tweet at me at mvj me and
for the love of all that is holy and
mighty and cute do not miss that episode
subscribe and follow me on Twitter until next Monday stay curious