“Two things I enjoy, Code, and Training”

Code is building software systems and infrastructure.

Training (ideally) gets people enthusiastic, motivated, and engaged about something.

“training” can also be monotone, bland, and non-intuitive.

Let me introduce the idea that telling people the story of a side project, is going to be far more engaging, than regular exercises in a training booklet.

I’ve got nothing against Alice, Bob, and the Pet Store++… It’s (just) not very exciting. There is also the question of context.

You may all be thinking… it’s far easier to put a ready-meal in the microwave for three minutes, than select a side-project, and move it forward, often struggling, finally dragging it across the finish line.

I agree.

But, there are also numerous advantages to “time-boxed-home-cooking.”

In other words, home cooking which takes less than thirty minutes. You can experiment, create, plan, and who knows, you might enjoy it :)

What have you got to lose? Not much.

If it all goes awry, Alice, Bob, and the pet store are waiting in the wings.

Let’s get back to context.

Context is all about a realistic, relevant situation.

An interesting side project, with a liberal sprinkling of context, (which is) selected, designed, developed, and supported, is going to give you oodles of interesting, realistic… context. Challenging, tough, interesting, though provoking, and (certainly) realistic.

I’m going to invite you to join me, as I select an interesting side project, and write about how I add context, and turn it into something, which I am enthusiastic, and engaged about, which others can use.

Yes, enthusiasm and passion are important to me. That’s why I do what I do.

I believe this format will be a robust training medium. Context, combined with an interesting side project, broken down into digestible parts, including some bumps along the way, sound like “Training” (with a capital T) :).

++ Alice, Bob, and the pet store are often used in database, and code training