A friend confronted me that I should use mailchimp and not a self created script to e-mail students. We got into an argument of why you should create your own software.
Although it takes a lot more time than just creating an account or downloading software, there are very good reasons to create the software yourself. I want to go into detail here. Please also share your own experience at the comments below. I'm really looking forward seeing this!
First of all, you develop skill. I believe that technology makes people lazy in the end. With the introduction of new technology first humanity gets lifted up by its increased productivity, but then human's lazy nature comes into play and actually the end level for the human race is actually a less satisfying life. An example, TV enters the living rooms. People can enjoy themselves, be informed better, etc. It was a great invention. But now if you look to people who watch television a lot, they are worse off than the people without a television who had time for more interesting stuff that made help them develop more, like reading books, social life, etc. Should you then build a TV yourself? Actually, it would be great if you could experience a little bit of that joy and satisfaction, and that brings me to the second point:
It's supersatisfying to build things. They also call it the difference between production and consumption. It's incredibly satisfying to be creative, to be challenged and find yourself solving difficult problems and situations. I remember vividly the moment when I managed to achieve my goal to translate YouTube with live automatic dubs. It was 3:30 in the morning and I typed in the link to Bohemian Rhapsody in my terminal with the languagecode for Dutch, pressed enter...
node dt https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ nl
The screen full of translations and text to speech api calls to Google. Then it opened up this video, I shared it for you on Youtube: Bohemian Rhapsody in Dutch.
I cannot express that joy in words. When I was young I remember skipping a beach day for sitting at home creating a new level of SUPERWIM. It's as if you just changed the world for the better. And you actually did this for yourself. And you built your skill. Brings me to the next one:
Real skill
With your skill and experience comes wealth and great income (longterm). There are few people with the real experience. I knew a drummer when I was 17 years who then sent me a message: 'I can now play every song of Dream Theater'. Later he became the drummer of DJ Armin van Buuren en played in Carnegie Hall. But you know, he already laid the foundation in his small room by imagining himself being the drummer of his favorite band. He behaved in such a way AS IF HE was in the studio with the guys. He took every drumpart, transcribed it and got it in his fingers and inside his head. He had almost the same experience as the real drummer. His level was soon insane and the audience was always digging his groove and timing.
Experience
I think experience is one of the most important things and underestimated in IT. Because when you have thousand of hours experience in a particular field, then you can be so incredibly fast. There are two types of intelligence: fluid intelligence and crystalized intelligence. The first one is speed of thought, items in workmemory. The second one is built up knowledge, experience. With the fluid intelligence you win nobel prizes in mathematics (that's why they tend to be around age 24-30). With crystalized intelligence you can lead a country, isn't it a coincidence that politicians have the age of 'retired people'. Anyway, in IT some people believe that's all about intelligence, adaptability and fluid intelligence. So you know, javascript? You can lead this project in python. Where I believe it's like music styles, would you ask a metal drummer to play in a ska band and expect immediate results? If you find a guy who already built 10 mobile apps for himself plus 5 for other companies, that's so much more worth than a guy with a college degree, a lot of knowledge but no experience.
Don't isolate yourself
With a post like this comes always the counterside. If you do everything yourself, you become isolated and that doesn't work either. You have to find collaborations, you have to borrow, change, upgrade software. Ofcourse you can use libraries but if you use react router for example, try to build it yourself. It's actually not that hard, and you'll learn lots of things which gives you a much deeper understanding. Plus, it's much more enjoyable than reading documentation. Yeah, documentation, that's my next point.
Reading vs coding
Reading docs is like being a lawyer. You can find out all the details and be supercrafted in applying other people's code. But you also need to be a lawyer kind of type. Less creative, a more conscious hard worker type. I'm less that type. I like to go into things that motivate, challenge me. To build things myself. I don't expect anything other than the joy of the process on the short term. I'll us the skills and experience later for companies and I'll make the world a better place. This bring me to the last point:
Life Quality
When you automate your life, you'll increase your life quality. The tools and infrastructure are there for you!
I made an amazing discovery in March 2019 when I created a time management bot. The idea was simple: just type in what you do and you'll see total times per day/week. I improved social life, rest, learning and work and minimalized internet. I can even go as far to say that I now have two kids because of the time management insights (wanted to keep doing cool stuff) and both are named with help of a 'name generator'. I can also imagine that coding will improve our family life and early education.
Being in control
Writing the code yourself gives you total control. Imagine that Facebook was yours. Wouldn't you be a lot more free? You can access the data, do anything with it, add any feature. If you don't like clicking twice, you make a shortkey. I'm learning languages since a couple of yours, was very inspired by Michel Thomas and Pimsleur. Then I tried to create a super-algorith, that teaches you words from text that you enter. Every time in the car I can now listen to the news in two languages. I'm independent from any site and it's free.
Don't have time?
What if you don't have the time to build all those things?
- Sleep more. This sounds crazy, but I think the more you sleep, the more you want to do being awake, and the more energy you have. Most people sleep too little, complain about too little time and waste so many hours doing nothing productive.
- Automate your life to get more free time
- Work as a freelancer: flexible and higher income
- Start a business and automate this
- Think in systems, optimize your life systems (See also the book work the system, which had a huge influence on me)
You can check out some of my project at: https://github.com/wimdenherder
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