OTP team members on BEAM Radio

Ingela ":ssl" Anderton Andin and Kiko Fernandez-Reyes join us to discuss life in the heart of Erlang at Ericsson. Tons of fun. I hope you enjoy.

Podcast: BEAM Radio, episode 71

Doing the thing you know

There is a flip side to pushing yourself. The opposite of leaning into discomfort. Comfortable, efficient and calm.

I find this particularly when I know the tools for a task and I can focus most of my mental energy on figuring out how best to solve it. In my recent work I've written straight up Elixir code. The thing it was supposed to do was kind of novel. I had to math. But I was writing two GenServers. I've probably written a hundred GenServers at this point. It is a calm and peaceful thing.

I think I've heard it dubbed Explore/Exploit. The kind of tick and tock of learning new things, gathering knowledge, growing, expanding and then switching gear and just leveraging those acquried skills. Having a strong foundation somewhere is immensely practical. And there is calm and peace there.

And then I had to change the UI of the project so now I'm learning another programming language along with a framework in that language. Weeeeeeeeeeee! And we are off again. But at least the main thrust of the current work is .. calm.

When have you felt most calm in software development? When have you felt most competent? You can reach me on the Fediverse where I'm @lawik@fosstodon.org or by responding to this email to lars@underjord.io.

Thanks for reading. I appreciate it.