Ricci

A Test, A Competition, A Feat, An Exploration, Not A Challenge "I challenge myself everyday" can mean two widely different things. Either you put yourself in unplanned situations and try to overcome them or you carefully plan for a little discomfort everyday in order to keep growing. It depends by who is listening. The word "challenge" is used interchangeably and more often than not it replaces words that would convey a more specific meaning. What everyone understands is that a challenge is an event that gets you of your comfort zone. An event that forces you to make an temporary adaption in order to get over it. Since the comfort zone is different for everybody and everybody has a different approach on getting out of it, a challenge means a different thing for everyone and is perceived in a different way by everyone. This gap leads to a misunderstanding of what each one of us is capable doing and it skews how we assess the capabilities of others. Somebody who plans carefully sees a challenge as a failure. The same situation is seen as an opportunity to grow and thrive by somebody else. A clear example is how people practicing any sports in general, and KettleBells in particular, approach a so called "challenge". "On a given date, we will do such and such for this long and record the results". Some people start preparing right away, some assess their relative capabilities, some get hyped up, some dread the date, some find other things to do on that date. The proposition is quite a vague for an events that gets you out for your comfort zones. How do you prepare? What's the purpose of it? Do we do it just for sake of it? Will anything good will come out of it? If it were to be called a test, then you know that you have to prepare and if you succeed then you are able to move to the next level. If it were a competition then you know where is your place among your peers and if you do it very well you might even win something. If it were a feat then you could obsess over a short time period on a single exercise in order to show off. If it were an exploration then you know the existence of new possibilities and determine if you are ready to take them on or not. Even though these things are challenges, they have a specific outcome and convey more meaning for one time events with determined outcomes. It gets everybody to be aligned on the same page, to know what is expected of them and what can they expect to get out of it. The generic challenge can be, and should be, much more than one time events. The challenge has the potential to be the mechanism of growth when given a more specific meaning so it has a determined outcome. A generic challenge only ends in success or failure but a test, a competition, a feat, an exploration puts you in a feedback loop within which you can improve. It should be an everyday thing. Big or small, harder or easier is irrelevant. A moment of discomfort what's important. Either a specific or a generic challenges, they will arise and you will have to go through them. Take the time to name them properly so that you can prepare so that you can learn so that you can make progress.

Of course, all that extra regulation is making it sad.

Once you have been through the JavaScript UI libraries churn of 2016, nothing bothers you anymore.

They mismanaged the entire AI adoption by trying to remove editors and moderatos.

In 2026 I’m going on the Rails after writing php for a decade. It’s the enthusiasm after finding a new great toy rather than rationale what is making this decision. open.substack.com/pub/workan…

Confusing managed deterministic behavior with supervised probabilistic implementations is a great way to get a hell of a lot more things wrong down the road.

It is at this moment that CSS will stop being a cascading stylehseet

Thanks @dhh for inadvertently giving us a great new list of competent software developers to follow!

I thought zuck wanted to build something that actually works

This is the question I’m tackling in my post “Por Amor Al Arte” open.substack.com/pub/workan…

A shame nobody from that company will read this because they don’t use this platform

You should never go down easy. "The double champ apologizes to absolutely nobody" - @TheNotoriousMMA

Wait until Bob learns about gRPC

AI, The Senior's Autocomplete When you start learning how to code you usually do it using a basic text editor where you type in the tutorial and run the code. The first time you start using an IDE, a feeling of insecurity overwhelms you; the thing already knows how to do all you know that you know to do. The more you keep learning and progressing towards mastery, the more you realize that for every new lesson you learn there is an existing solution to that problem which already has all the bells and whistles needed. To make your self-esteem suffer even more, these solutions are open source and in almost all the cases is also free to use for commercial purposes. It's just too easy to conclude that "What the fuck am I even trying to do here?". And that's where you are wrong. Plenty of so called senior software developers are in shambles right now because of AI. All they know how to do, the AI can do for them - and even worse, the AI can do it for anybody who asks. In the same way that autocomplete replaces the need to type in all the code every time for the junior developer. I say they are "so called senior software developers" because it seems they have forgotten about what is like to learn new things; to be a junior, to realize that their job is not to be a typist. And that's were they are wrong too. See, software programming is about problem solving. It's mostly all about creativity with a sprinkle of engineering. There are known solutions to common problems and repeatable patterns that you can apply over and over. For the rest of the problems, which represent the vast majority of them, you need to develop a taste over time on what is the best path forward. Understanding the problem at hand and solving it withing the context you are operating in. Which implementation will give you a competitive advantage given your current set of constraints. It's knowing what practices will help you and which will be in your own detriment. What attributes to prioritize within the system. To close the gap in understanding between the systems you are responsible for and the outsiders no matter their technical background. To drill and drill with questions until you understand the problems that need to be solved not just fixing the symptoms. And then to care enough to work hard all the way trough completion. And that's not something you can autocomplete. So, don't worry, keep on coding.

Is macOS finally getting Paint by default?

What if @elonmusk wanted to show the people of the US how exploited the visa program is and just pointed into the right direction letting people do their own digging. Now he can reform the entire system without being seen or accused of any -ism. 🤔