Ruby's REPL,
irb has gotten a ton of love over the past few
years, essentially obviating most popular debuggers in the process. This year is
another huge leap forward.
This is my favorite item in this list because I didn't even know show_source existed:
The show_source command has always been an essential tool for many IRB users, especially for debugging. This year it received two enhancements that will make it even more useful:
- You can now use -s to get the method's super definition if it has one
- It can now display private methods too
Awesome!
Having a great REPL is essential in dynamic languages, so quality-of-life
improvements have a direct impact on the speed and quality of feedback during
development.
Rounding out what feels like six months of contemplative and retrospective blog
posts over at the Test Double blog is this one on
my own idiosyncratic
approach
to finding meaning in my work and how I wish more managers would approach their
direct reports' career development.
To wit, I've never accomplished anything I felt proud of by setting a goal. In
fact, the surest way to ensure I don't do something is to set a goal. When asked
to set goals for myself, I've found that expressing the goal (as opposed to
achieving it) becomes my overriding objective. The moment a manager approved my
list of goals, I felt that I had completed the work asked of me and I would
instantly lose all motivation to pursue the goals themselves.
This explains why planting flags can succeed where goal-setting fails. If what
I'm searching for is meaning in my work, setting a goal creates an expectation
of where, when, and how my future self should find that meaning. High pressure.
Focusing on doing my job well and reflecting on whatever I did in retrospect,
however, has allowed me to sift through my experiences, identify patterns, and
give meaning to them. Low pressure.
I feel like managers as well as employees find comfort in planning what their
future state will look like, as if it reduces any of the fear-inducing
uncertainty that lies ahead. It doesn't, but I can't imagine why else people
would so quickly reach for goal-setting as their primary career development
approach when it almost always fizzles and fails.
I need exactly two things to do great work: awareness of others' expectations of
what they think I should be doing and a shared definition of what success will
look like when I achieve it. Nothing more is necessary to excavate metaphorical
tons of marble from which I can chisel sculptures to mark the moments that
mattered along the way.
One more note on what people get wrong about ✨Thought Leadering✨:
But here's the thing: I create these things for me and me alone. When a bunch of people read something I wrote or show up to one of my talks, do I find it encouraging and validating? Sure. But it's not what drives me. I started creating things to punctuate my life's sentences long before anybody took an interest in me and I wouldn't stop even if everyone loses interest in me.
If the lack of an audience is the reason you've failed to apply creativity in
expressing the meaning of your life's work, that's a real shame.
