Developing Perspective

00:00:00 ◼   ► Hello, and welcome to Developing Perspective.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Developing Perspective is a near-daily podcast discussing the news of Note and iOS, Apple,

00:00:07 ◼   ► and the like.

00:00:08 ◼   ► I'm your host, David Smith.

00:00:09 ◼   ► I'm an independent iOS developer based in Herndon, Virginia.

00:00:12 ◼   ► This is show number 13, and today is Monday, August 22, 2011.

00:00:18 ◼   ► The format of Developing Perspective is that I'll cover a handful of links, articles, things

00:00:21 ◼   ► I found interesting since the last show, and then move over to a more general discussion

00:00:26 ◼   ► towards the end.

00:00:27 ◼   ► The show will never be more than 15 minutes.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Let's get started.

00:00:30 ◼   ► As I was on vacation last week, I'll

00:00:32 ◼   ► have a fewer links than normal this episode.

00:00:35 ◼   ► However, next episode tomorrow should be back to normal.

00:00:39 ◼   ► All right, first I have a link to a Git workflow video

00:00:43 ◼   ► put together by the guys at CodeSherpas.

00:00:45 ◼   ► These are actually a local development shop

00:00:47 ◼   ► to me who I've done some work with in the past.

00:00:49 ◼   ► It's a great little overview video

00:00:51 ◼   ► of just what an actual workflow looks like in Git.

00:00:55 ◼   ► So worth checking out if you're a newbie

00:00:57 ◼   ► just trying to kind of wrap your head around it.

00:01:00 ◼   ► Next, which is a really interesting article that I saw on the Fog Creek software blog,

00:01:08 ◼   ► talking a little bit about how the guy who recently wrote a translation of Zed Shaw's

00:01:15 ◼   ► Learn Python the Hard Way and Learn Ruby the Hard Way, who is Rob Sobers, was talking about

00:01:22 ◼   ► how he wrote that.

00:01:23 ◼   ► And I just thought that was kind of interesting.

00:01:24 ◼   ► So it's basically the story is that Fog Creek gives fairly generous paternity leave.

00:01:31 ◼   ► And recently, Rob had a child, a daughter, and he got six weeks off to take care of her.

00:01:39 ◼   ► And basically, him and his wife decided that the way they had handled it is he took a little

00:01:42 ◼   ► bit of time when she was first born.

00:01:44 ◼   ► And then his wife went on maternity leave.

00:01:47 ◼   ► When her maternity leave ran up, he went on paternity leave.

00:01:52 ◼   ► And then, so for, he was a primary caregiver for six weeks of his daughter, and he found

00:01:56 ◼   ► that while being a caregiver for an infant is a tremendous amount of work, he had a lot

00:02:01 ◼   ► of extra time when his baby was sleeping, that he could do something.

00:02:05 ◼   ► And so he sort of thought he was, "Hey, maybe I'll do something practical, maybe I'll make

00:02:10 ◼   ► some good use of this time."

00:02:11 ◼   ► And what he did is he wrote that book.

00:02:13 ◼   ► Now, the thing that I find most interesting about that is just how interesting, you know,

00:02:20 ◼   ► The way that he made use of that time, it was just very impressive and something that

00:02:24 ◼   ► is certainly admirable as a developer, is he had all this free time.

00:02:29 ◼   ► He was away from work.

00:02:30 ◼   ► He probably wasn't able to contribute to teamwork because his time wasn't specific.

00:02:36 ◼   ► He couldn't be in meetings every day.

00:02:38 ◼   ► He couldn't be as part of things that they needed for a dependable release cycle.

00:02:43 ◼   ► And so this is what he did.

00:02:44 ◼   ► And that's certainly admirable and something worth thinking about for...

00:02:48 ◼   ► You don't have to take a vacation.

00:02:51 ◼   ► It doesn't have to be a total break from work work,

00:02:54 ◼   ► though it's important for your vacations to be restful.

00:02:58 ◼   ► All right, and lastly, I've kind of

00:03:00 ◼   ► been interested-- this week's Macalope Weekly over on

00:03:04 ◼   ► macworld.com is very interesting for me,

00:03:07 ◼   ► especially because I was out most of the week

00:03:09 ◼   ► and intentionally was trying to avoid news

00:03:12 ◼   ► about what's going on.

00:03:13 ◼   ► But it sounds like it was quite a week in kind of a strange way.

00:03:16 ◼   ► So it sounds like Google bought Motorola.

00:03:19 ◼   ► HP is spinning off its hardware business

00:03:22 ◼   ► and killing the touchpad.

00:03:24 ◼   ► And there are a variety of other more minor adjustments

00:03:30 ◼   ► being made in the non-iOS mobile development space.

00:03:36 ◼   ► All of it sounds essentially, in summary--

00:03:39 ◼   ► and this is certainly coming from someone who makes

00:03:42 ◼   ► his living primarily from iOS-- but it

00:03:44 ◼   ► sounds like everyone else is kind of having a bit of a mess.

00:03:48 ◼   ► Here's Apple getting ready.

00:03:51 ◼   ► Beta 6 of iOS 5 was released last Friday.

00:03:55 ◼   ► Here's Apple getting full steam ahead towards what's arguably

00:03:59 ◼   ► going to be one of the most interesting and significant

00:04:03 ◼   ► adjustments to iOS, probably since 2.0, I'd say.

00:04:06 ◼   ► Maybe 4.0 was big, but 5.0 with iCloud

00:04:10 ◼   ► and some of the things that are going to be happening with that.

00:04:13 ◼   ► It's huge.

00:04:14 ◼   ► And here it is, all this jumping around, everyone trying to work out what to do, how to make

00:04:19 ◼   ► money, how to come anywhere close to catching up with Apple.

00:04:22 ◼   ► It's kind of a mess.

00:04:24 ◼   ► And I'm glad that at this point in my career I can just focus on iOS and just sort of have

00:04:29 ◼   ► that be fine.

00:04:32 ◼   ► And that is it for today's links.

00:04:34 ◼   ► Like I said, tomorrow we'll probably have a more typical link count and so on as I kind

00:04:39 ◼   ► of get used to what's been going on, what's happening.

00:04:43 ◼   ► and just sort of get back into a normal routine.

00:04:46 ◼   ► My discussion today, which will be fairly brief, is just sort of a follow-up to last

00:04:51 ◼   ► episode's discussion on the importance of taking vacation.

00:04:54 ◼   ► And this is something that obviously I just got back from one.

00:04:56 ◼   ► And the thing that I was struck by, and I was obviously giving a fair bit of thought

00:04:59 ◼   ► to it after my sort of having the last episode be about that, was sort of what is the purpose

00:05:05 ◼   ► of going on vacation?

00:05:06 ◼   ► Because there's a couple of different reasons for that.

00:05:10 ◼   ► And I'm going to be talking specifically coming from someone who's an independent, someone

00:05:14 ◼   ► who has a lot of control over their time and what they do.

00:05:20 ◼   ► And specifically, what I thought was interesting for me is, okay, so I can go on vacation that's

00:05:24 ◼   ► good for physical rest, which is an important thing.

00:05:27 ◼   ► Working consistently every day, 40 hours a week, et cetera, week after week after week,

00:05:33 ◼   ► is very physically draining.

00:05:35 ◼   ► And by physically, I mean primarily sort of the intellectual energy and cognitive load

00:05:42 ◼   ► that that brings on you.

00:05:43 ◼   ► That if you're always thinking about something, eventually it just tires on you and you're

00:05:46 ◼   ► not as effective as you could be otherwise.

00:05:48 ◼   ► But really, what I was thinking about this week while I was away was I think the really

00:05:54 ◼   ► important thing is that it gives you perspective.

00:05:57 ◼   ► It gives you that ability to take a step back and not just be reacting one thing after another.

00:06:03 ◼   ► Because often what I find happens in my development, sort of style and the business development

00:06:09 ◼   ► and all those things, is I'm constantly sort of jumping from one fire to the next.

00:06:15 ◼   ► And at any point in time, I'm really just thinking, "Okay, I've just done X.

00:06:19 ◼   ► What's the next Y?

00:06:21 ◼   ► What should I be doing next?

00:06:22 ◼   ► What should I be doing next?

00:06:23 ◼   ► What should I be doing next?"

00:06:24 ◼   ► And those decisions, though, are rarely sort of made with a broad strategic value in mind.

00:06:32 ◼   ► It's not something that I'm often being like, "Okay, what is the best decision for me to

00:06:38 ◼   ► make here that will benefit my business over the course of the next 12 months?"

00:06:43 ◼   ► It's often, "Okay, which fire is burning brightest?

00:06:48 ◼   ► What's the most thing that absolutely has to be done right now or everything will fall

00:06:54 ◼   ► apart?"

00:06:55 ◼   ► And while that's important to take care of those fires, you end up in a very dangerous

00:07:00 ◼   ► place where I've often found it myself. You sort of go along for a week or two and you're

00:07:05 ◼   ► like, "Wait, what am I doing? Why would I do this?" Or taking a step back and seeing

00:07:09 ◼   ► like rather than solving these 27 things in a manual way, it's like, "Maybe I need a better

00:07:15 ◼   ► system for this. Maybe that's something that I need to automate this and I need to outsource.

00:07:18 ◼   ► Maybe that's something I need to do in another way." Whereas I just get stuck into, "Okay,

00:07:22 ◼   ► I just have to do it. I got to write these tax, file my taxes, do all these kinds of

00:07:27 ◼   ► things and you get so used to just like oh rather than taking a step back and

00:07:31 ◼   ► you're like oh what should I do with it it's like oh gosh I just need to do it

00:07:34 ◼   ► it needs to be done right now. So I think an interesting thing about going on

00:07:38 ◼   ► vacation is you break that cycle you kind of that crazy cycle of being like

00:07:43 ◼   ► okay I can take a step back and I can say all right I'm gonna think about this

00:07:48 ◼   ► I'm gonna think about okay so what's important what could benefit my

00:07:51 ◼   ► business most broadly. It's also something I think I'd recommend it's

00:07:55 ◼   ► That's always the best thing of talking to a peer, having someone who doesn't work with

00:07:58 ◼   ► you or for you, who you can talk to.

00:08:01 ◼   ► So I have a couple of people I talk to about business and things, local developers, local

00:08:05 ◼   ► independence.

00:08:06 ◼   ► And it's incredibly helpful to me because then you get someone else's opinion who doesn't

00:08:11 ◼   ► have a horse in the race, who's not motivated by the individual success or failure of whatever

00:08:18 ◼   ► it is you're talking about.

00:08:20 ◼   ► They're motivated just by a desire to help out.

00:08:23 ◼   ► So that's really helpful.

00:08:25 ◼   ► And also, it's important, I think, to just kind of--

00:08:28 ◼   ► another important thing about having that perspective

00:08:31 ◼   ► is that it allows you to make sure you're not

00:08:34 ◼   ► falling into very bad habits, which

00:08:36 ◼   ► is similar to what I was saying before, but I think

00:08:38 ◼   ► it's a slightly different take.

00:08:40 ◼   ► And it's the importance of saying,

00:08:42 ◼   ► if you take a step back and say, OK,

00:08:45 ◼   ► this is what's important to me.

00:08:48 ◼   ► How am I doing?

00:08:49 ◼   ► You can be much more introspective

00:08:50 ◼   ► after taking a break from doing it,

00:08:52 ◼   ► where you can kind of step outside and be like, "Why was I doing that?

00:08:56 ◼   ► Why was that important to me?

00:08:59 ◼   ► When I left, it felt like, 'Oh goodness, this is so urgent.

00:09:01 ◼   ► This is so pressing.'"

00:09:03 ◼   ► Then I come back and I'm like, "What?

00:09:04 ◼   ► I didn't do it for a week, so clearly it's not as urgent as it felt."

00:09:09 ◼   ► This allows you to kind of break those habits.

00:09:11 ◼   ► Anyway, that's just some thoughts.

00:09:13 ◼   ► As I said, I'm digging out a vacation, which I'm sure we've all done, where you come back

00:09:16 ◼   ► and you've got hundreds of things in your inbox and all your cues and everything's full

00:09:22 ◼   ► to the brim.

00:09:23 ◼   ► But as I'm digging out, they so far so good.

00:09:25 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like too much happened while I was gone.

00:09:28 ◼   ► And like I said, tomorrow should be a more normal show and I look forward to it.

00:09:31 ◼   ► All right, happy coding.

00:09:32 ◼   ► Bye.

00:09:33 ◼   ► [