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CodeCamp: in need input

Posted by Owen Evans on Monday, August 18th, 2008

Ok so this is a bit of a plea.
I’ve a week or so to work on my CodeCamp presentation “MVC and Me” (ok so would have been cooler to link to flight of the navigator but that’s too hard for me to pull off) and I’m still trying to gather as many ideas about what [...]

Split And Sprint

Posted by Owen Evans on Thursday, August 14th, 2008

In a forthcoming book (before you ask I’ve no idea what the title is) there’s a little case study about the first project i ever truly worked on as a developer. The project and the team have some of my fondest memories, and I’d want to work with any of the people in the small [...]

Post 300

Posted by Owen Evans on Friday, August 8th, 2008

Ok I just had to cheat an make up a reason to post. But this is my 300th post, this blog has been going for more than 5 years (25 Feb 2003 was my first post, those heady days of university). that’s 1992 days, so an average of one post every 6.64 days. (my goodness [...]

getting out of the comfort zone

Posted by Owen Evans on Monday, December 3rd, 2007

December is upon us and I’ve decided to actively try and increase the amount of posts I make to my blog, trying to pick up interesting and diverse topics and actively writing 1 article every Monday to Friday, I’m not sure how well I’ll stick to it but it’s worth a try.

I’ve recently realised it’s nearly a year since I left my job in the UK and decided to travel all the way round the world to work in New Zealand. Assessing the work I’ve done since then I’m not 100% happy, I seem to have slipped into the inevitable comfort zone, and not even realised it.

The comfort zone is something that really scares me, it’s the place where I go from an active member of the development community to JAD (Just Another Developer). I can’t remember the last time I actively tried to push my own boundaries and worked on something I had no clue how to do, and actively learned. I also seem to be way to comfortable to just accept problems with the software I’m working on as inevitable and don’t actively try and fix up problems such as tight coupling, low cohesion and other elements that make my job difficult on a day to day basis. Instead I seem to have let it was over me, slowly dipping my foot into the pool of the dreaded 80% unreachable people.

http://blog.red-bean.com/sussman/?p=79

I have to agree with Jeff Atwood that this group scares me, not the individuals, just the apathy of the group. However I’ve started to become one of those people. So from this day forward for the next year I’m going to try and take myself out of my comfort zone. I’m tempted to resurrect my old pet project NFitnesse again, although I’m no longer sold on the Fitnesse Idea, I’ve found it quite hard to gain traction in an existing environment.

I’m also determined to get everyone around me evangelising Test driven and behaviour driven development, and really going to try and finish some technical books that have sat on my shelf for a bit too long.

The comfort zone should be something we are all scared of, don’t let it take you.

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