Greatness isn't random. At least not always.
I just completed what is arguably the best talk ever given at a programmers conference - "Things Laravel Made Me Believe" by Jeffery Way.
The talk highlighted a question posted on StackOverflow by Taylor Otwell the creator Laravel;
I just completed what is arguably the best talk ever given at a programmers conference - "Things Laravel Made Me Believe" by Jeffery Way.
The talk highlighted a question posted on StackOverflow by Taylor Otwell the creator Laravel;
Is there any benefit to obsession with making code "look pretty"?
Sometimes I spend ridiculous amounts of time (hours) agonizing over making code "look pretty". I mean making things look symmetrical. I will actually rapidly scroll through an entire class to see if anything jumps out as not looking "pretty" or "clean".
Am I wasting my time? Is there any value in this kind of behavior? Sometimes the functionality or the design of the code won't even change, I'll just re-structure it so it looks nicer
Am I just being totally OCD or is there some benefit hidden in this
That reminded me, greatness isn't random. The most popular story of Taylor Otwell you hear is that he started writing Laravel on a not so good cheap laptop and etc. Yeah, that's sweet for the headlines.
But I also believe, that trait of taking the pain to agonise over little details is one of the reason why Taylor is the ONE who built Laravel. Laravel is popular for its simplicity, the evident care, thoughtfulness and effort that goes into building it and its documentation. The unique combination of the context of his life when he got tired of CodeIgniter and his unique mix of software skills and non-software skills or traits made him the prime person to build such a beautiful framework which would become one of the most popular programming frameworks in the world.
Many try to rationalise the rise of Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk to the fact that they were born into rich homes. Yeah, but that's too simplistic.
Truth is, if all Jeff Bezos had to do was to be born in a rich home then all rich kids should be able to build companies which employs one-third of the US workforce. Of course, being born rich is a major contributor but without other major traits such as an inordinate amount of ambition plus an inordinate obsession to satisfy customers Amazon wouldn't be built by a Jeff Bezos.
So, greatness isn't random. It's not just priviledge. It's not just been born in a poor background. It's not just being being very skillful.
Several things have to converge for greatness to be born. And a shocking truth is, the patterns are even hard to put it in a bottle, because there's also a case for timing.
Oh heck.
By the way I was just getting into
That's when i began recognizing all the simple, seamless interfaces the framework provided and not taking it for granted. Saw how much work and focus it took to actually present such simple interfaces to us regular devs.
LARAVEL FOREVER