Mathieu Tozer's Dev Blog

I took these notes at student sunday last year. There's some truisms in there that I like. Thought to share. Sorry about the fragmented nature of them, I was heavily jet lagged! Oh and the guy who was speaking ended up doing a talk in 07 (a similar one). Amazing guy.

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and that other people can't. It's about giving power to the users of systems.

You're taking things that were in a pipeline, and brining them all together.

Tools are about power.

It's a redistribution of power that works (win/win).

You make a bad thing go away. When you do that, you know you're made a good tool.

Leverage
Passion
It's about following your bliss. Write what you know!
You should be trying to write a real app.

Challenge yourself, but not too much. You want to get better, but be realistic.
Know what you write!

Pick something you know about so you can get better at it.

Join the justice league.

Be world class at something, so you know how it feels.
Pixar hire people because they're really good at one thing.

Have just one thing (even for the interview's sake).

If you've never been really good at something, then you don't know what you feel like, and if you work with people who are better than you, you get better yourself.
Acknowledge your ego, exercise humility.

Play well with you.

Be someone people want to work with.
You know what you don't like in others, don't do that to them.
Become the person you aspire to be.
Learn the skills you need
Meet the people that person would know.
Take the long view

Identify problems by type.

"Yes, it's stupid, fix it"

Or, Actually, it's subtle, and a feature, not a bug.

That was a problem at the last place you worked, not here.

"Nail in the head". Identify problems that you should just not work on.

Just walk away! It's one of the most valuable things you can learn as an engineer. Engineers about the right solutions to something. About elegance.

Criticism.
Seek it out, early and often.
Get it from people who respect you, otherwise you won't get the truth.
Make sure your application is pull not push.
Support promotes ownership, ownership promotes elegance.
If you've only got one idea, you're only going to defend it.

Your first real app
Scalpel, not swiss army knife
assume it will crash, and code accordingly

Labels: wwdc06 student sunday pixar