I think I’ve read “The Passionate Programmer” for the second time. Otherwise, I cannot explain why almost everything I read in the book sounded like a “Déjà vu”. Well, even if it was a second time, it’s worth it. Book itself if very easy to read. It is nicely organized in small chapters and contains short real-world stories from different people. I liked reading the book very much. Besides, since recently I started working on getting back on track with my career and blog writing this book came very handy.

What is this book about

Author, Chad Fowler, does really great job advising software developers on their career. This book definitely makes you think about your current position and gives sensible suggestions on possible actions to improve the situation.

The book helps you realize that your skills are just a product. A product that is highly demanded. For any high demand product there is high supply. And it is only a question where you find your product in all the supply available. Is your product a quality one? Are you sure your product won’t become obsolete over time? What is it you do to stand out from the crowd?

My takeaways

There is one take away from the book that I took action on already. I started writing Monday weekly e-mails to my direct manager with list of last week’s completed tasks and the goal for a current week. This is not to make my manager happy nor to make me look nice. I’m doing this for myself. For sure this will keep me focused and provide additional push for completing my work.

These below are some other action items from the book I want to take:

1. Find out what is now highly demanded and how my skill set correlates with it.
2. Read something about the industry I work in. Should be interesting, as it is nuclear energy.
3. I need to put myself in “be the worst” situation.
4. Proceed more actively with learning another programming language.
5. Try AngularJs. Since I have experience with EmberJS, it would be nice to compare.
6. Mentor myself (details in the book).
7. Do some Kata.
8. Never go too comfortable. I’m pretty sure my current just is exactly “too comfortable”. Time to change.
9. Do “Refactotum” exercise (by Stuart Halloway).
10. “Spend next year trying to become one of the alpha geeks.” This sounds strange, but why not?
11. Find if I have any monkey traps (things I hold on to way too much).
12. Go Independent.

You

Go ahead, read the book and create a list of action items for yourself.

Just Be Better Than Yesterday!