Category: Philosophy

The lessons here are ones I’ve taken a while to learn and they are relevant to coding and most things in life and they have not changed in the six years since I first posted them!

I hope this blog post helps others learn them quicker:

• Conclusions drawn, even by the ‘wise men’ in a community should never be taken on their own, as gospel.
• Always check the date of a resource if you can.
  (most of the posts on here are several years old!)
• Do your own tests.
• Join in discussions and check your view against that of others.
• Go back and review your own conclusions after time, has anything changed? new techniques or technology been released? did you jump the gun?
• Never be afraid to admit you would change your mind (even if it’s only to yourself).
• Never be afraid to try something new.

A young friend is off on a long journey soon and as I wondered how best to wish him well I came up with the following. Of course me being me and being my age I couldn’t resist a fair chunk of (probably unwanted!) advice…

I just wanted to say good luck on your journey to new lands, I hope you find what you’re looking for there. Since I have a huge dollop of zen in my philosophy, the way I looked when I was searching was to look for koans, short phrases containing nuggets of truth. You find one that enflames the senses and opens the soul and you live by it for a while until it no longer needs to mean anything, then you find the next, kinda like signposts on the path to life. You find them in the moments you listen to. Hope that helps… and when all else fails, have fun 🙂

I guess it’s not a bad view of life for anyone.