Last Week In Code E009

If you work at your computer , programming and solving problems daily, it soon becomes the norm. The intensity of it starts to weigh low on your brain. But after just a few days AFK, it is common to experience a level of friction getting back to speed. The longer the holiday, the more intense the friction.

I experienced this when I returned from 3 days of mental holiday. I also remember experiencing the same when I'd spend a bigger number days off doing non-computer related tasks. To a point it felt I was out of touch even before I had the reintergration friction remind me. Like I was losing a core part of my professional identity. Makes you understand why some code on holiday.

All this made me more conscious of the danger I'd be setting my self for if I chose any kind of long term work that did not utilise or grow my core professional skills. The more detached from my profession's core task, the harder it would be to return.

For some, there's reports claiming, they bail out of their profession completely just for this reason. I think its the same underlying issue with long periods of AI reliance, or part of the underlying why for licence renewal policies.

There's a whole lot of online articles on the skill atrophy issue you can check out.

And, you don't have to be popular to make it work.

I like this blog. So very much so. I mentioned in lwic e001 I needed an outlet for my experiences and how that birthed this series. Well I was thinking about the concept of it.

When persuing some goal or doing work within some mainstream domain, you usually, as a human , would like to talk about your experiences and listen to others in a space where you won't have to do a lot of explaining since every one in the space speaks the domain language. One way to get this is to have a club you meet with on a fixed schedule. Interesting there is actually a formal term for this: Communities of practice. But there's a problem with CoPs that are tied to a single physical location.

Suppose you change locations to an area where no one is interested in what you are pursuing, what do you do for this kind of connection? Is it now gone? Well often, it is. Which I think is undesirable. And I noticed this affected all such Communities of practice that were dependent on a physical meet up location. Work out groups, coding groups, financial development groups. All affected the same. But it hit niche communities hardest.

Now I was thinking of a solution. Or trying to establish if I already had one. A means to share experiences that did not depend on if a certain group of people was available.

Enter blogging. I have been running this blog for about 9 weeks now. I can blog from anywhere. Even without a visible audience, I am gaining from the that perception someone (doesn't matter if its real, only the perception does), is reading what am putting out. I also have a form of driver to progress in this domain so to have something to write about come next post.

If you have been double thinking starting your own blog, putting it off because you thought probably no one would read it, this is probably for you. You don't need readers to gain from it. At least in the way I am. Those could come after. But they are extra, imo.

You could check out this article here to learn more about Communities of practice.

Nothing relevant crossed my radar.

I have been experimenting with getting one update or cool article and ranting about it in this section. Sharing my thoughts on it. I am still figuring out how to structure my thoughts to keep it brief. I guess the next episode will have that

• The dialogue dividend