How DHH talking about Ruby got me wanting to fall in love with the craft of coding
I was listening to the Rework podcast by the folks at Basecamp, and something that @DHH (co-founder of Basecamp, and creator of Ruby on Rails) said made me sit up.
He talked about how he started on Ruby, from an initial curiosity, to deciding to spend a couple of weeks trying it out when he was first building out Basecamp, and then eventually feeling like wanting to write Ruby code when he wakes up, just because he enjoys the elegance of the language.
In other words, he just described how he fell in love…with his craft like it was a person.
I was fascinated, in awe and to be completely honest, slightly envious. Even a tinge of jealousy.
Because I want that. I want to wake up everyday and feel like I want to keep doing this work, get better at my craft as an entrepreneur, programmer, maker, marketer, etc. I also want to enjoy coding the same way he does. The pure simplicity and clarity of that desire, that enjoyment…still eludes me. Right now for coding, I feel like I’m driving for the first time, clumsily bumping from one roadblock to another, and barely making it through to my destination. It’s hard to describe the experience as enjoyable. I’m only grateful to ‘survive’ and to launch something.
But hearing his love story with Ruby inspired me to want that for myself. To try to work towards that, somehow. I don’t know how, but hazarding a guess, I think it simply involves more coding, and trying to take joy in the little things, not just the end product.
Just like dating, and slowly falling in love.
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Top comments (5)
I've walked this path for over 7 years, from just learning to create a simple website, then discovered Node.js, C, PHP, Python, Java (Android), Dart/Flutter and now Swift and still wanted to learn either Rust, Golang, or C#...
But sure there's ups and downs too, like when you're up for a deadline and still have to finish all those bugs. At the end, I treated myself as my own code and software, because I've been thinking about this all day long. And for my entire life.
There's still a long way to go to "teach" computers to do the same thing like me, I mean, being able to do what I thought as a software. That's why, be patient.
Interesting concept there of treating yourself as your own code and software!
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I think you better fall in love with some pretty girl.
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