10 Comments

  1. HelioS
    October 5, 2012 @ 10:49 pm

    Thanks for designing links and tips 🙂

    Reply

    • Jacob Mather
      October 5, 2012 @ 10:58 pm

      Of course! It helps everyone to have at least a general overview of what everyone else is (or should be) doing.

      If you don’t know what the other people around you are actually in charge of, how would you know when to delegate a task to them? Hmm. 🙂

      Reply

  2. cordoval
    October 7, 2012 @ 2:21 am

    yey I read it all the way, thanks jj!

    I like the apple-passion for doing things better than what they normally are and engaging.

    I do wish you could have spoken about FOSS. Jeremy talked about it but I needed a more heartful passionated-type answer. Maybe someday you will have an article for that too. 🙂

    Encouragements my good friend!

    Reply

    • Jacob Mather
      October 7, 2012 @ 9:05 am

      Thanks Luis!

      FOSS was out of scope specifically for what I was talking about here, but I can see possibly writing about it in the future.

      Reply

  3. How to act like a responsible professional programmer | VictorSmeu.com
    October 10, 2012 @ 2:03 am

    […] This little note I’m writing is based actually on a very nice article I’ve read called How to act like you (maybe actually) care about your work. […]

    Reply

  4. Danyel Lawson
    October 10, 2012 @ 11:11 am

    Over all a positive message and a little something for everyone.

    \A couple of things I disagree with you on:

    1) OOP and even more complicated OOP as solutions to a templating language solution. Sounds like a solution in search of a problem to me, and

    2) users is a derogatory term the correct term is clients.

    Otherwise a good light treatment of the stages of programmer roles and problem solving in general.

    I commend the time and effort and thought you have put into this.

    Reply

    • Jacob Mather
      October 10, 2012 @ 11:27 am

      Hi Danyel,

      First, thank you for the comment!

      I’m not sure I understand your first point of contention entirely.

      Your second point may boil down to a matter of semantics. When I say user I am specifically referring to someone who uses my software. Client has mixed meanings, and generally (at least in my experience) client infers stakeholder, which the user is most often not.

      The difference is subtle, but most users are not stakeholders, which means they cannot directly make decisions for a project that impact the deliverables. Please don’t misunderstand — an apt stakeholder will take user comments into consideration when determining what move to make next, but the user does not directly participate in that decision process.

      Reply

  5. Jon
    November 11, 2012 @ 10:57 pm

    Love it.

    I think continued learning is so vital to being in-demand in this industry. I also think it’s really vital to gain an understanding of your co-workers jobs and how to better get along with them.

    Great post, I can’t wait for your talk!

    Reply

    • Jacob Mather
      November 11, 2012 @ 11:23 pm

      Thanks Jon,

      The terror is slowly setting in — which is funny because the last time I gave a version of this talk was in front of probably 100+ people.

      I have an outline now though — we’ll see where it takes me.

      I have no idea how long this is going to actually run. I’ll keep a timer going and we’ll see where we land, and I’ll try to adjust accordingly.

      Reply

  6. M Noivad
    November 11, 2015 @ 8:15 am

    I have no idea why I never commented before now, but I found this post years ago, and found so much value in it that I saved it, bookmarked it, and re-read it from time to time to remind me of the things we tend to forget while wanting to chuck the entire project in the trash or launch a server into the bay via homemade catapult. So, this is long overdue: thanks for writing this. It should be required reading at pretty much any company…

    Reply

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