I was having a conversation with a successful tech entrepreneur last year. He started coding in JavaScript when he was very young. I brought up the subject of teaching kids WordPress and he told me, “friends don’t let friends code in PHP”.
Intellectual humility: knowing we do not know much
Something that I read about early on in my career was emotional intelligence. It was trending around the time I got into the “real world” and I took the opportunity to get familiar with that concept. As someone who was more fascinated by Maths and working on “hard things”, the knowledge about emotions and empathy aka “soft skills” was a breath of fresh air. I am no expert on this topic. However, it did help me navigate some of the challenges of work and life.
Just give it some time
I was working on a website to change its font files yesterday. I had done everything correctly to the best of my knowledge. However, it did not seem to work – no matter how many times I looked over my pull request to see if everything was in order. I decided to call it a day and check back the following day.
To hustle or not to hustle
Soon after I was done with college in 2016, it was the period when hustling was in vogue. Getting by with little to no sleep was a badge of honor and entrepreneurs like Elon Musk were looked up for their 100+ hour work weeks.
Ignorance is bliss, sometimes
I have heard the phrase “ignorance is bliss” multiple times and I did not really understand it at first. Now that I think I have some understanding, let me do a bit of a brain dump!
On Being Pragmatic
I wrote about curbing negativity in the last post and about optimism in a post earlier. I’d like to add a few words about pragmatism in this article.
The system isn’t rigged
When some people feel helpless, they turn into a sort of despair saying words like, “life is unfair” or “businessmen are cheats”. Or they will say words that sound grand, like “I speak the truth, so people hate me”. Or “So and so is a fake, that is why people are around him”. This kind of negative outlook is not only harmful but in itself unfair to oneself and the rest of the world.
Use the tools you have
My last post spoke about considering an expensive laptop as an investment. But what if you cannot afford one? Easy answer: use the one you have.
Investment vs. Expense
When someone rents/buys a store and purchases fixtures for it to set up a business, they would consider it an investment. No one would consider it to be outrageous. However, when developers spend a little more money to purchase a high-end laptop, it is often considered an unnecessary expense. I believe this has to change.
The 
My first smartphone was a Nokia Symbian – back in 2011. I loved the fact that we could install “real” software aka apps on a phone!
