Steak and Lobster
Tags: programming career
I’ve never cruised before. I don’t get excited about beaches, boats, or the ocean, so cruises cost a lot of money for 24x7 access to food and quiet time to read. I caught a thread on reddit concerning the death of nights and weekends for tech workers. A few tech workers commented that cruises were the only way they found peace on vacation, because most problems can be solved by the crew in the office if it costs $10/minute to talk to the guy vacationing on a boat. Concerning food, “either/or” was not a part of the lexicon, but “and” was:
I’m tempted to catch an off season deal and embark while wearing old man style pants with elastic waistbands just for the sport of it all.
We have our own steak and lobster moments. Python or Ruby? Both. Emacs or vim? Both. Java or C#? Both. Debian or Red Hat? Both. MySQL or Postgres? Postgres.
If there are zero additional constraints or prejudices coloring such a question, the best options are to flip a coin and get busy working or run a small experiment with both to form a stronger foundation for a real decision. We aren’t getting married to any technology, and each choice is both excellent and terrible depending on the problem at hand.
Should I learn Python or Ruby for freelancing?
Both. Or neither. Clients either have a technology in mind already or they will be confused and scared that specific technologies come up in the proposal process at all. The Rails shop that needs an extra hand wants a coder that knows Rails. The dentist that needs an appointment reminder system does not care about programming and programming languages as long as his missed appointment ratio looks better by the end of the quarter.
Most importantly, recall that my opinion in this matter is worth very little.
My opinion about barbell rows is as follows: **** barbell rows. Really. **** them. Stop wasting time worrying about barbell rows and get your deadlift up to 500. By then you’ll have your own opinion and you won’t have to worry about mine.
— Mark Rippetoe