0:00:00Hello, and welcome to Developing Perspective.
0:00:03Developing Perspective is a near-daily podcast discussing the news of Note and iOS, Apple,
0:00:07and the like.
0:00:08I'm your host, David Smith.
0:00:09I'm an independent iOS developer based in Herndon, Virginia.
0:00:12This is show number 13, and today is Monday, August 22, 2011.
0:00:18The format of Developing Perspective is that I'll cover a handful of links, articles, things
0:00:21I found interesting since the last show, and then move over to a more general discussion
0:00:26towards the end.
0:00:27The show will never be more than 15 minutes.
0:00:29Let's get started.
0:00:30As I was on vacation last week, I'll
0:00:32have a fewer links than normal this episode.
0:00:35However, next episode tomorrow should be back to normal.
0:00:39All right, first I have a link to a Git workflow video
0:00:43put together by the guys at CodeSherpas.
0:00:45These are actually a local development shop
0:00:47to me who I've done some work with in the past.
0:00:49It's a great little overview video
0:00:51of just what an actual workflow looks like in Git.
0:00:55So worth checking out if you're a newbie
0:00:57just trying to kind of wrap your head around it.
0:01:00Next, which is a really interesting article that I saw on the Fog Creek software blog,
0:01:08talking a little bit about how the guy who recently wrote a translation of Zed Shaw's
0:01:15Learn Python the Hard Way and Learn Ruby the Hard Way, who is Rob Sobers, was talking about
0:01:22how he wrote that.
0:01:23And I just thought that was kind of interesting.
0:01:24So it's basically the story is that Fog Creek gives fairly generous paternity leave.
0:01:31And recently, Rob had a child, a daughter, and he got six weeks off to take care of her.
0:01:39And basically, him and his wife decided that the way they had handled it is he took a little
0:01:42bit of time when she was first born.
0:01:44And then his wife went on maternity leave.
0:01:47When her maternity leave ran up, he went on paternity leave.
0:01:52And then, so for, he was a primary caregiver for six weeks of his daughter, and he found
0:01:56that while being a caregiver for an infant is a tremendous amount of work, he had a lot
0:02:01of extra time when his baby was sleeping, that he could do something.
0:02:05And so he sort of thought he was, "Hey, maybe I'll do something practical, maybe I'll make
0:02:10some good use of this time."
0:02:11And what he did is he wrote that book.
0:02:13Now, the thing that I find most interesting about that is just how interesting, you know,
0:02:20The way that he made use of that time, it was just very impressive and something that
0:02:24is certainly admirable as a developer, is he had all this free time.
0:02:29He was away from work.
0:02:30He probably wasn't able to contribute to teamwork because his time wasn't specific.
0:02:36He couldn't be in meetings every day.
0:02:38He couldn't be as part of things that they needed for a dependable release cycle.
0:02:43And so this is what he did.
0:02:44And that's certainly admirable and something worth thinking about for...
0:02:48You don't have to take a vacation.
0:02:51It doesn't have to be a total break from work work,
0:02:54though it's important for your vacations to be restful.
0:02:58All right, and lastly, I've kind of
0:03:00been interested-- this week's Macalope Weekly over on
0:03:04macworld.com is very interesting for me,
0:03:07especially because I was out most of the week
0:03:09and intentionally was trying to avoid news
0:03:12about what's going on.
0:03:13But it sounds like it was quite a week in kind of a strange way.
0:03:16So it sounds like Google bought Motorola.
0:03:19HP is spinning off its hardware business
0:03:22and killing the touchpad.
0:03:24And there are a variety of other more minor adjustments
0:03:30being made in the non-iOS mobile development space.
0:03:36All of it sounds essentially, in summary--
0:03:39and this is certainly coming from someone who makes
0:03:42his living primarily from iOS-- but it
0:03:44sounds like everyone else is kind of having a bit of a mess.
0:03:48Here's Apple getting ready.
0:03:51Beta 6 of iOS 5 was released last Friday.
0:03:55Here's Apple getting full steam ahead towards what's arguably
0:03:59going to be one of the most interesting and significant
0:04:03adjustments to iOS, probably since 2.0, I'd say.
0:04:06Maybe 4.0 was big, but 5.0 with iCloud
0:04:10and some of the things that are going to be happening with that.
0:04:13It's huge.
0:04:14And here it is, all this jumping around, everyone trying to work out what to do, how to make
0:04:19money, how to come anywhere close to catching up with Apple.
0:04:22It's kind of a mess.
0:04:24And I'm glad that at this point in my career I can just focus on iOS and just sort of have
0:04:29that be fine.
0:04:32And that is it for today's links.
0:04:34Like I said, tomorrow we'll probably have a more typical link count and so on as I kind
0:04:39of get used to what's been going on, what's happening.
0:04:43and just sort of get back into a normal routine.
0:04:46My discussion today, which will be fairly brief, is just sort of a follow-up to last
0:04:51episode's discussion on the importance of taking vacation.
0:04:54And this is something that obviously I just got back from one.
0:04:56And the thing that I was struck by, and I was obviously giving a fair bit of thought
0:04:59to it after my sort of having the last episode be about that, was sort of what is the purpose
0:05:05of going on vacation?
0:05:06Because there's a couple of different reasons for that.
0:05:10And I'm going to be talking specifically coming from someone who's an independent, someone
0:05:14who has a lot of control over their time and what they do.
0:05:20And specifically, what I thought was interesting for me is, okay, so I can go on vacation that's
0:05:24good for physical rest, which is an important thing.
0:05:27Working consistently every day, 40 hours a week, et cetera, week after week after week,
0:05:33is very physically draining.
0:05:35And by physically, I mean primarily sort of the intellectual energy and cognitive load
0:05:42that that brings on you.
0:05:43That if you're always thinking about something, eventually it just tires on you and you're
0:05:46not as effective as you could be otherwise.
0:05:48But really, what I was thinking about this week while I was away was I think the really
0:05:54important thing is that it gives you perspective.
0:05:57It gives you that ability to take a step back and not just be reacting one thing after another.
0:06:03Because often what I find happens in my development, sort of style and the business development
0:06:09and all those things, is I'm constantly sort of jumping from one fire to the next.
0:06:15And at any point in time, I'm really just thinking, "Okay, I've just done X.
0:06:19What's the next Y?
0:06:21What should I be doing next?
0:06:22What should I be doing next?
0:06:23What should I be doing next?"
0:06:24And those decisions, though, are rarely sort of made with a broad strategic value in mind.
0:06:32It's not something that I'm often being like, "Okay, what is the best decision for me to
0:06:38make here that will benefit my business over the course of the next 12 months?"
0:06:43It's often, "Okay, which fire is burning brightest?
0:06:48What's the most thing that absolutely has to be done right now or everything will fall
0:06:54apart?"
0:06:55And while that's important to take care of those fires, you end up in a very dangerous
0:07:00place where I've often found it myself. You sort of go along for a week or two and you're
0:07:05like, "Wait, what am I doing? Why would I do this?" Or taking a step back and seeing
0:07:09like rather than solving these 27 things in a manual way, it's like, "Maybe I need a better
0:07:15system for this. Maybe that's something that I need to automate this and I need to outsource.
0:07:18Maybe that's something I need to do in another way." Whereas I just get stuck into, "Okay,
0:07:22I just have to do it. I got to write these tax, file my taxes, do all these kinds of
0:07:27things and you get so used to just like oh rather than taking a step back and
0:07:31you're like oh what should I do with it it's like oh gosh I just need to do it
0:07:34it needs to be done right now. So I think an interesting thing about going on
0:07:38vacation is you break that cycle you kind of that crazy cycle of being like
0:07:43okay I can take a step back and I can say all right I'm gonna think about this
0:07:48I'm gonna think about okay so what's important what could benefit my
0:07:51business most broadly. It's also something I think I'd recommend it's
0:07:55That's always the best thing of talking to a peer, having someone who doesn't work with
0:07:58you or for you, who you can talk to.
0:08:01So I have a couple of people I talk to about business and things, local developers, local
0:08:05independence.
0:08:06And it's incredibly helpful to me because then you get someone else's opinion who doesn't
0:08:11have a horse in the race, who's not motivated by the individual success or failure of whatever
0:08:18it is you're talking about.
0:08:20They're motivated just by a desire to help out.
0:08:23So that's really helpful.
0:08:25And also, it's important, I think, to just kind of--
0:08:28another important thing about having that perspective
0:08:31is that it allows you to make sure you're not
0:08:34falling into very bad habits, which
0:08:36is similar to what I was saying before, but I think
0:08:38it's a slightly different take.
0:08:40And it's the importance of saying,
0:08:42if you take a step back and say, OK,
0:08:45this is what's important to me.
0:08:48How am I doing?
0:08:49You can be much more introspective
0:08:50after taking a break from doing it,
0:08:52where you can kind of step outside and be like, "Why was I doing that?
0:08:56Why was that important to me?
0:08:59When I left, it felt like, 'Oh goodness, this is so urgent.
0:09:01This is so pressing.'"
0:09:03Then I come back and I'm like, "What?
0:09:04I didn't do it for a week, so clearly it's not as urgent as it felt."
0:09:09This allows you to kind of break those habits.
0:09:11Anyway, that's just some thoughts.
0:09:13As I said, I'm digging out a vacation, which I'm sure we've all done, where you come back
0:09:16and you've got hundreds of things in your inbox and all your cues and everything's full
0:09:22to the brim.
0:09:23But as I'm digging out, they so far so good.
0:09:25It doesn't seem like too much happened while I was gone.
0:09:28And like I said, tomorrow should be a more normal show and I look forward to it.
0:09:31All right, happy coding.
0:09:32Bye.