Geekcamp Attendees on The Most Important Lesson Learned as a Programmer

This is not yet the overview of what happened 2 days ago. Geekcamp Baguio 2013 turned out to be OK and we will publish photos and videos soon.

We didn’t have much time for the networking break unfortunately but we did use the short time well.

I didn’t think about the question beforehand and it was just a sudden thought. I asked “what is the most important thing you have learned over the years as a programmer?”

Katherine Pe (me):

Do something completely different from what you do especially physical activities

Health is very important. Living a sedentary life can cause serious health problems especially when you grow older. People who don’t exercise are less receptive and productive (and according to Brain Rules book, less intelligent). Over the past few months, I have traveled to different places in the country. I have tried hiking, running, walking for hours, snorkeling and diving as a tourist. Some of the things I have done are dangerous and I would not recommend that everyone should try them because the risk of getting into an accident is very high.

I would like to add:

It’s OK to not have any plan but be mindful and prepared for anything

I had no definite plans as an organizer and a speaker. I wanted to create my slides before my flight back home but I had no time to do it. It was impossible to get it done in transit. The slides really don’t matter but I would love to publish the work I have started in December 2012 for open source.

I think being half-ready was OK as it was less stressful for me. Whenever I plan things out and things fall well below my expectations, I have a tendency to feel very stressed. That is why I do not really make plans.

Being ready for anything means preparing for the worst. When you are hiking, make sure you have food, water, extra clothes, a first aid kit and a flashlight. On some places I have been to, a phone is useless and money does not mean anything. I probably have not encountered the worst yet. I like to believe I was always prepared but I would also avoid disaster I cannot prepare for.

Vincent Tabor:

Find your place

Vincent used to work as a freelance programmer and Java instructor at St. Louis. He taught high school students as far as I know. Today, he is more of a marketing consultant for different hotels and clients overseas. “Find your place means” you can do a lot of things well but find one thing you want to focus on and do it.

George Mendoza:

If you want to learn something new, you have to make effort every week or even everyday

He got the idea from ZenHabits. If he tries to learn a new programming language or a new dialect like Ilokano which he mentioned, he does it (nearly) everyday and spends about an hour of his free time trying to learn.

Miguel Paraz:

Be a polyglot. Try to learn more than one programming language.

Miguel Paraz is a senior hacker. His advice is simple. We should not stick to using what we know or at least the only language that we know well. We should try to learn new languages and there are a lot. He mentioned languages like Scala.

On my part, I would like to learn Elixir and have a deeper understanding of C and Objective-C.

Micael Andrei Diaz de Rivera:

Try and aim high

As far as I remember, he mentioned something about trying to apply for a job you really want. I guess he meant not settling for anything that pays.

Some of these are pretty obvious but I hope it was helpful.

Thank you all for sharing.