Here’s My Theory On What Drives Dev
- Curiosity (You wonder why a thing is the way it is or want to know how something works.)
- Spark of Belief (generates enough energy that you actually begin the tackle the problem)
- Tenacity (ability to fail your way to the solution) Or, as famous quote says,
“Success is the ability to move from one failure to another without loss of enthusiasm.”
- Iteration — as you work through the problem you see hints of other things that make you 1. Curious and you begin to better understand the problem driving your 2. Belief that you can solve it. You stumble upon other problems but your 3. Tenacity kicks in and you push forward.
And, so it goes.
Consider The Opposite
- If you aren’t Curious about how things work, you will never begin to even think of actually trying to build a solution. You will sit in the “I don’t know what to do.” bog.
- Even if you’re Curious, if you never obtain the Spark of Belief that you could actually create the solution, you will not even begin to type.
“The man who thinks he can and the man who thinks he can’t are both right.” ~Confucious
- If, every time you meet resistance you quit (no Tenacity) you will never be able to achieve the good feelings of success.
- If any of those cause you to never try or to quit early, you will never Iterate and nothing will ever happen.
Think About People You’ve Worked With
I’ve worked with a particular dev who just waits for someone to tell him to do something: no Curiosity.
I’ve asked him, “Hey, why haven’t we improved the bad production code that causes this issue?” His answer: “I don’t know. It works good enough, I guess.”
Same dev goes to Design something & presents it. You ask one question and it pokes a hole in the entire design. He says, “I hadn’t thought of that. I don’t know how that works.” Totally disinterested. Zero curiosity!
What do you think?
