What's the Pyramid for software development? What comes to mind are code reviews, and releasing open-source software that's good enough (or sucks less) to be worth using by others. Code reviews can make a difference even when reviewers are at the same level, or slightly below, though of course having a guru on hand is killer.
For entrepreneurship and its Pyramid, money/cashflow is the obvious metric and feedback mechanism - but just as important might be the entrepreneur's life-satisfaction, though that's harder to measure and may fluctuate much more.
Would love to hear people's comments on how they keep their own score.
That's what I was going to ask. Contributing to Open Source projects springs to mind, since you get involved in a community that can give you feedback, experience on a potentially very large, complicated project (which is very different to doing toy projects for class - I'm currently a student) and the excitement of seeing something you work on actually being used.
I've never tried that, btw, but it's on my list when I get time. I'm currently working on a small browser MMORPG, and while I get feedback on the design etc from the playerbase, since no-one else looks at my code I don't get any feedback on my own programming.
However, I did leave it for a few months (got too convoluted to work on) but I've been persuaded to restart working on it, starting from scratch (moved from PHP to Ruby). Since I'm basically trying to recode the same behaviour but trying to avoid known bugs and pitfalls it's been a good way to see progress - I've learned stuff about database normalisation, FP, etc, since version 1 and it's good to see 'ah, doing it that way this time round has made stuff so much easier'. So I guess the community feedback comes from myself.
I'm actually happy there is no Pyramid Club for software. The thing about programming is that you don't have to reach the very top before people think of you as a success.
Open source is the opposite of a pyramid club. You can produce things to impress people, you can produce things for your own enjoyment or you can things that just solve a problem that needs solving.
Entrepreneurship, of course, is different and I'll leave that to the entrepreneurs. Indeed, what's great about open source is that you don't have to be an entrepreneur to do - you can be but its totally optional.
Comments
What's the Pyramid for software development? What comes to mind are code reviews, and releasing open-source software that's good enough (or sucks less) to be worth using by others. Code reviews can make a difference even when reviewers are at the same level, or slightly below, though of course having a guru on hand is killer.
For entrepreneurship and its Pyramid, money/cashflow is the obvious metric and feedback mechanism - but just as important might be the entrepreneur's life-satisfaction, though that's harder to measure and may fluctuate much more.
Would love to hear people's comments on how they keep their own score.
That's what I was going to ask. Contributing to Open Source projects springs to mind, since you get involved in a community that can give you feedback, experience on a potentially very large, complicated project (which is very different to doing toy projects for class - I'm currently a student) and the excitement of seeing something you work on actually being used.
I've never tried that, btw, but it's on my list when I get time. I'm currently working on a small browser MMORPG, and while I get feedback on the design etc from the playerbase, since no-one else looks at my code I don't get any feedback on my own programming.
However, I did leave it for a few months (got too convoluted to work on) but I've been persuaded to restart working on it, starting from scratch (moved from PHP to Ruby). Since I'm basically trying to recode the same behaviour but trying to avoid known bugs and pitfalls it's been a good way to see progress - I've learned stuff about database normalisation, FP, etc, since version 1 and it's good to see 'ah, doing it that way this time round has made stuff so much easier'. So I guess the community feedback comes from myself.
I should probably github it, actually.
I'm actually happy there is no Pyramid Club for software. The thing about programming is that you don't have to reach the very top before people think of you as a success.
Open source is the opposite of a pyramid club. You can produce things to impress people, you can produce things for your own enjoyment or you can things that just solve a problem that needs solving.
Entrepreneurship, of course, is different and I'll leave that to the entrepreneurs. Indeed, what's great about open source is that you don't have to be an entrepreneur to do - you can be but its totally optional.