Should you still be doing it? Not such a simple answer really because the one constant in my daily life has become quite apparent – no matter what you do you are either going to succeed because you accept failure, or if you don’t accept failure and you keep things at the same level for a long period where you don’t lose. You will not improve whether you are a programmer or a writer. Think about it this way, if you are a chess player and you play to draw and not to win you can claim a “victory” against a stronger player if you draw but you didn’t win, in more than one way.

Programming is tough and you can never truly say that you have written perfect software unless you have failed and struggled. Struggling means getting dirty and exposing yourself to the hardest and toughest ways of doing things and accepting that you will have to try and try. I often fail at accepting the fact that to succeed at the tough things you have to develop a patience and desperation on the same sort of level. You need patience to know that you may have to try again and again and the desperation to tackle each attempt with as much intensity as you can give.

Talent alone is not enough.

Mainstream society portrays a tendency of masochism very well, and before I define this further I’ll try and see what it, masochism, means. If you do a search for masochistic, you might find this page that will lead you to this page and if you look at the key points from “Self-defeating personality disorder” then it seems like we see that appearing in every facet of our society, yet we try to cover it up with our material achievements. “A pervasive pattern of self-defeating behaviour” is indicative of how we make movies isn’t it? Most movies portray characters that are already in a defeatist state – the focus of which is then to see these characters go from this defeatist state to something better. We love movies about demons, vampires and evil things because we like the evil, because we seem to want to find a justification for the evil. Lately vampire movies feature a “good vampire” or a “good bad guy”. Why don’t we ever see movies that stay with the good and end with the good. Is that even possible?

The defeatist and masochistic nature reveals itself far more in how we live our lives. People claiming to be the “meanest bitch” or “not caring who they offend” are all examples of masochism in my mind. You are hurting yourself because you want to portray a particular image to the world. You know the “I-don’t-give-a-shit” attitude, which is really screaming “I want lots of love and attention”, especially when you don’t get the love. Having a don’t care attitude reminds of a documentary I once watched about lions and buffaloes, where the lions were hunting the buffaloes as young lions and how eventually the hunting took its toll on them physically as they grew older because of the injuries they picked up while hunting. The injuries did not affect them as much when they were young but eventually as they grew older became more apparent. The same analogy can be drawn for people who have an attitude of “don’t-care” when they are younger, because eventually your soul gets weary of being like that.

We are so unlike nature because we always tend to seek the humanistic element in nature, the thing that suits us. Instead nature just is, it asks no questions or gives no answers, it just is. Why are we not like that? Death is such an equaliser yet we discriminate, we try to make ourselves better than others. There is a very fine line between who you are now and how you are living your life now, and how it all could change in an instant. An instant which would make you no better than anyone else.

Saying you are a bitch is a sign of a person with a small and pitiful ego deeming it necessary to make themselves appear meaner to make up for what they lack on a personal level. You will generally find these people to be the same proponents of drinking every weekend (all in the name of having a good time). They generally associate themselves with the typical crowd – ones who deem their material wealth (measured in both monetary and achievements) to be the epitome of achievements in life. They also tend to be the ‘neat and clean’ crowd, yet you have to wonder what the ‘neat and clean’ appearance must cost them, both personally and otherwise. I am pretty sure many individuals sell a piece of their soul to achieve this. The ‘neat and clean’ lifestyle often reminds of how we always try and disassociate ourselves from the poor and the sick.

What am I trying to say here? Life is not a predictable thing, you cannot always live it the way you imagine it, perfectly in your mind. Therefore you must be accepting of people, and be open to what they offer, rather than be a “bitch”. I have so many more thoughts around this though.

Today I was doing some thinking again, about my own personal demons in particular. One of these demons is that I tend to be extremely sceptical of people and 99 times out of a 100 I will have a pre-conceived notion about people, and the notion will manifest itself as my reality, and as we all know your perception is your reality. The manifestation will become a defensive mechanism and being defensive around people may seem to be internalised to yourself but more often than not it will be clear in your body language also. I asked the question on Twitter:

if i dont let my pre conceived notions about people go i guess they wont change in my eyes either. then you are always expecting the worse

To which someone replied:

Very true. But without being naive. That’s the key.

So there is no real perfect answer when you find yourself with a crowd of unfamiliar people – you have to somehow let go of the pre-conceptions on one side but on the other side of it you should never be so naive to think that people will generally accept you the way you are. Just because I am trying hard to fight my own personal demons, it doesnt mean someone else does too. They might think themselves quite perfect even if they build up some pre-conception about people. It is my personal experience that very few people make you feel at ease and totally accept you the way you are. Its a defensive mechanism I guess from their, but also being aware of yourself and the people you surround yourself with is not a bad thing, it just means you are selective and that the people you do end up being comfortable with the most might be long term friends. It also means you have good self awareness (EQ) and that you have some pride and dignity and you are not going to just throw yourself out there and let people take whatever liberties they wish. You do not have to sell yourself to be like the world wants you to be – be who you are first, screw the world.

So back to the question, would you go to a Tweetup? I suppose many have and to them it has been an awesome and enriching experience, but to those that haven’t, would you? I could probably skip a tweetup and not worry about it again, since it has no bearing on the few close friends I have and how they see me. It also has no real bearing on me, I’ll be me long after a Tweetup. On the other hand it could be nice to see what people do around you, maybe someone might be nice, and maybe you end up learning more about yourself. A favourite song of mine has the following lyrics:

Looking at life through a loaded gun
Take your best shot, aim it at the sun
Looking at life through a loaded gun
You’ll know you’ll find…

You’ll find yourself, you’ll find yourself alone
You’ll find yourself, you’ll find yourself alone
You’ll find yourself, you’ll find yourself alone
You’ll find yourself, you’ll find yourself

I cannot go through life looking at it with a loaded gun, because its self destructive. You cannot live in a defensive mindset, because as in rugby you cannot defend and defend and expect to win.

1. Humans have this tendency to be conformists when it suits them. We are always striving to standardise or fence everyone in on a single way of thinking or on how we do things. It seems that the only thing any person seems to care about is their own opinion and if you don’t agree with that opinion you start to conform somewhere on your own and if you are lucky you find some unlucky sod to join you in your crazy ways – eventually though even your little group will split because people can never really agree. There is a joke about three Afrikaners that go to the moon – only to start three churches, three schools and three political parties. My solution: Teach leadership principles at a school level and focus on things such as servant leadership. Teach listening skills as well, because we don’t have enough people doing it enough.
2. My church. Yep I go to church, but I’m not always sure where to draw the line between the religious and the human element. The sad truth is that the people in my church are more concerned about being connected somewhere with the ones with the money or status. I’m not sure my pastor would do what he does for free. You got to ask  and wonder about that question. It seems unfair but religion is one of those things that seem to require total selfless belief and commitment, so then money would not be an issue. I don’t socialise with the people from my church for a few reasons, but the primary one I guess is class and social stature. When I go to church there is always a clear distinction between the human element in ‘our’ church and the religious element, because in our church it does not really seem about congregation. I have also on occasion attended social gatherings with a pastor and to be honest I have never felt so uncomfortable in my life, simply because of I am not of a certain class, or whatever standing it is that they expected. I also dislike the fact that people think they can place me in a box and think they know my internal state of mind. My solution: Find peace within myself and find people who I can feel comfortable with.
3. Over-opinionated people. You know the type who think their opinion and their absence will make the world shed a tear? Yes those. Solution: Lets ignore them and only focus on the people that are important to us.
4. I think we spend way too much time trying to fit in with those that seem to dislike us – forgetting that we should be spending time with those that really know us and care for us. I mean people will dislike you regardless of what you do or how you say it. The people that really care for you will still love you regardless of what you say. And disliking someone is a two way street – if you can show your apparent dislike for me so can I, and don’t expect any favours. Solution: Harden up to the world by not taking what people say seriously.

And more where will mine be in the near future? I was looking at Macbook Pros today and I am seriously considering switching over for quite a few reasons. The first reason is that I really want to get stuck into learning Python or a non-windows programming language, and it seems Mac OS X is a natural extension for Python. I’m not looking for a programming language alone though and would prefer a technology stack instead.

The .NET framework is a technology stack that stretches quite far, from desktop development, database development, web development and mobile development, and you dont have to learn separate programming languages for each. I dont just write code for web development purposes – I write whatever I need for a particular job. Windows Powershell seamlessly integrates with the .NET framework’s BCL (base class library).

It seems to me that because Mac OS x is a UNIX system at the core it would integrate well with hosted content on Linux- or Unix-based systems, which means that you become part of a technology stack. With my limited knowledge and experience on Ubuntu I was able to connect through a shell to a Linux-based webhost, and I was able to traverse through directories and files. This seems like a natural extension of the development environment to me.

A while ago I noticed that at least two Microsoft people left to work for Google and while this may not seem like much of an event I find myself questioning the platform(s) I use for development. At heart I am a curious and innovative person who will generally seek to use something to solve a particular problem, regardless of what technology it uses. I have also been guilty of some fanboyism with regards to things like Visual Studio and C#, but I too realise that being a fanboy of something tends to make you a bit ignorant of other things. I have for instance decided not to learn PHP simply for the reason that I dont like its syntax style, the dollars just seem to clutter the code and PHP is not such a widely applicable language such as C# or Python. You could write any type of application with either Python or C# – windows-based or web-based. I also seem to think PHP is not quite on the same level as Python or C# in terms of language maturity, but that is just an opinion.

A big field where I played rugby and cricket with other kids. We had our own tournaments going, even though we only had two or three players in the side. Cricket was played with no wicket keeper, any nicks behind were given out. We also limited scoring shots to the leg side only, off side scoring was not allowed. We had our rules in place, and the tournaments and matches played were memorable, and life changing. I only found out this year that one of the kids, a great childhood friend, died some time in 2008, which really saddened me because we had a lot of memorable times together.

We played rugby on a quarter of a full playing field, by playing vertically down in that quarter. So if you can imagine a rugby field for a minute, think of the goal line and the quarter mark, and imagine a group of kids, maybe 4-5 a side playing in that space. We had imaginary goal posts, so we kinda guessed if we kicked a drop goal, and we only had three in the scrum, but it was the memories that were created that have remained with me in my short 29 years of life.

The last time we played cricket I was in standard 7, grade 9, or about 15 years old, and since that time I have had little to no contact with any of my childhood playmates. Due in most part to people moving around, and moving to new neighbourhoods. I saw the friend that died a few times after that, but not frequently, and I guess it kinda signaled an end to that part of my life.

Looking back at these memories got me thinking about personal branding and finding inspiration in my life through stories. Stories are sometimes the best way to communicate a value or a lesson, and I can personally say that I have learnt most of my values through the lessons in my life. In saying that I guess the first important aspect of my personal brand is that I love stories, stories about life and stories that reflect determination and character. Playing cricket as a young boy was about being able to play cricket, no matter where we played. We had our favourite spots, but often our spots weren’t available and we made plans, we adapted. We even kept stats of each game for each player, and there was always a lot of competitiveness for being the player with the most runs or the most wickets. We were free though, free to play and be, and that is the second aspect of my life that I have always tried to treasure, freedom. You know the feeling you get when you are in a swimming pool and you are all alone and you can swim freely without knocking into anyone? Freedom to run around on open fields, to sleep late in the school holidays, to express yourself in any way you wanted to, thats what I valued the most. How do you reflect that in a personal brand?

I have been at my current job for a year and a half now and in that time I have come to see and appreciate what I believe are not good manager skills. With that in mind I have been thinking about what I would like a manager to be, or how I would like him to treat me. Before my current job I had another job for about four and a half years, and in that time I had 3 managers and I saw how they acted and reacted in situations. So I feel I know and understand what I expect from a manager.

Firstly, a manager is a leader, and leaders lead by example. In other words there has to be some form of servant-leadership from the manager toward his workers. I’m not saying be feeble or bend to every whim of your workers, but rather have some humility towards them and treat them as grownups. One thing that I don’t like is to be micro managed, in other words be checked up on and so on, which makes me feel like I am seen as a school child. I have enough self discipline to realise and understand when I must work. I also find that some managers have small egos and need to either belittle someone or make an example of them in front of colleagues. I have had several instances where this has happened and this is NOT something a leader or manager should do.

Another thing that I have found in the last year is that managers sometimes make commitments to deliverables without any prior communication with team members which to me is BIG problem, because it creates distrust. If the deliverable being committed to is a long term one then it should be discussed with team members as well and ideally no commitment must be made.

Keep the social life out of it. I have had several instances where a manager has crossed the social line and it resulted in uncomfortable situations at work.

Respect people’s private time and life. I have had several instances this year where it seemed as if the measure of one’s contribution to the team was measured by how many late hours they spent working. I have also had a manager tell me that I must work ‘until 4 am’ because a team member was working till then. This is unacceptable, because working late does NOT prove you are actually working. For all intents and purposes you could be fixing bugs because you made decisions in an earlier situation and now it seems as if you are being a ‘good team member’. It is my opinion that one can work well and effectively without working until 4 am in the morning. You do have a life that you are entitled to.

I havent blogged much lately but thought it good to change the theme a bit just so I can motivate myself again to blog more regularly. I’ll be focussing a lot more on my development skills and in particular C# within the next 6 months or so. I will also be tackling and completing a few personal projects, and in particular a CV management project that I have blogged about before here as well as another on-going project. There are lots of interesting things to be learned. I also want to focus my skills on program and application design.

Bill Goldberg, the wrestler, had this way of saying “You’re Next” that made whoever realise they really where next in line to get smashed. There is no next person for me though rather next objectives, but what I can say is that I have come to realise and understand several things in the last 6 months about myself and where I see myself going career-wise for the next 12 or so months. I have been to several interviews in the last while, say two years or so, and admittedly I did not succeed in all of them, but what I did take from them was that you kinda have to keep going and you have to try and get better at what you do, and more importantly get better at where you want to see yourself. I am the only one capable of making my life what I want it to be, or as Ghandi put it “Be the change you want to see”. I see myself being a great C# developer firstly. I love abstracting requirements into functional pieces of code, because it allows you to think and it allows you to do things. Becoming a great C# developer will require lots of discipline and the measure of being a great C# developer might be becoming a C# MVP, which is kind of a peer review system. Getting to that point will mean taking time to understand code and delving into the detail of what the code does. It also means compartmentalizing things into smaller understandable chunks and building to a bigger picture of things. Being a C# developer means not only focusing on just the language itself, but also focusing on the environments that what you are developing run in. WCF for instance does not simply use C#, but it also uses other aspects of Windows and the .NET framework, which require some understanding. Another way of measuring my way to becoming that great C# developer is being able to answer most of the demands of any interview! Look at these questions, taken from Scott Hanselman:

• Describe the difference between a Thread and a Process?
• What is a Windows Service and how does its lifecycle differ from a “standard” EXE?
• What is the maximum amount of memory any single process on Windows can address? Is this different than the maximum virtual memory for the system? How would this affect a system design?
• What is the difference between an EXE and a DLL?
• What is strong-typing versus weak-typing? Which is preferred? Why?
• Corillian’s product is a “Component Container.” Name at least 3 component containers that ship now with the Windows Server Family.
• What is a PID? How is it useful when troubleshooting a system?
• How many processes can listen on a single TCP/IP port?
• What is the GAC? What problem does it solve?

I don’t know all the answers unfortunately, and if you visit that link you will see a whole list more, which I don’t all know either. But I guess the upside is that now you can find it out and make sure you do.

My manager asked me today to give him some insight into the things I would like to learn more about, with a particular focus on my own development, and I thought it a good idea to spend a few minutes posting a blog on the topic. My personal interests lie in a few areas at the moment, and when I say personal interest the context is work, and more specifically the technologies that I work with. One area I really want to focus a lot on in the coming months is the C# language itself and in particular:

• Generics
• Delegates with the specific aim of better understanding Linq
• Linq to Objects
• Linq to XML

I would like to know and understand the C# programming language in a comprehensive manner. In addition to the language I would also like to understand design patterns and overall system design, with a very strong OO flavour. I think if I can spend the next 6 months learning C# I would be a better developer for it. In addition to C# I would like to learn a second programming language and I have been thinking Python is a good candidate in this regard. I would like to apply the knowledge directly into what I do though. So if I learn Linq to XML now, I want to start using it now. If I learn the yield keyword now, I want to use it now.

Other aspects that I would like to incorporate in my learning of C# would be areas of social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, etc. I really enjoy SEO (search engine optimisation) as well, I love the metrics and the art that goes with it. I believe I can develop many aspects of this in C#. I also believe I can develop a total marketing solution that encompasses email and social media.

I am interested in topics such as ASP.NET MVC and Silverlight, but I am also interested in developing full-blown client applications in WPF.

My manager also mentioned that each new thing that we learn should be set as a target for each day. You have set yourself some goals and stick to them. One way to determine a few goals is to reflect on yourself and see what you do each day, and through that reflection set some ideals and goals.

We are at work for a purpose after all.