Intelligence is necessary, but it is not sufficient

When you’re young you need to appreciate the long-run repercussions of your actions.Your freshman-year grades impact your choice of colleges, which impacts your career trajectory and social network, and so forth.  You need to apply intelligence.
Smarts matter less than we would like. What often matters just as much, if not more, are soft skills. Things like building and maintaining relationships, or the way that you present yourself to others. Soft skills actually are more important than how smart you are. You must be socially fluent and naturally able to build rapport.
Finally, it’s not about what you know, but rather what you can do. If you cannot apply your knowledge, employers do not care about it.  An employer really wants to know: what skills do you have that apply directly to the narrow functions assigned to the job for which you’re applying?

Virtues of a Software Developer

"The three virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris" -- Larry Wall

Hubris means extreme pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power.


Ability to minimize the amount of code you write. Code you don't write is code without bugs. this means either writing problem specific libraries or having them in the system.
Ability to minimize boilerplate. This is where dynamic languages often win.
Ability to change code easily and test or run frequently (not necessarily unit testing). Rewriting usually makes code more robust.

Developer Advise

It is important for a developer to be willing to work outside of their comfort zone. Technologies are constantly changing, and as developers we are often asked to do integrations or updates that we have never done before. By pushing yourself to try new things, you end up being exposed to more code and alternative ways of tackling issues. It's this drive to constantly learn and do new things that makes the difference between a good developer and a great developer.

Don't be afraid to break stuff. Breaking things is an important part of learning process. Why did it break? Where did it break? Even if it didn't break, was there a logical outcome? 

General Advice

The time spent playing intramural sports, working on the school newspaper or just hanging with friends is important. Research indictes one of the most important causal factors associated with happiness and well-being is the meaningful connections with other human beings. One benchmark of your postgraduation success should be how many of these people are still your close friends in 10 or 20 years.

Marry someone smarter than you are.  You will do better in life if you have a second economic oar in the water.

Don't try to be great. Being great involves luck and other circumstances beyond your control. The less you think about being great, the more likely it is to happen. And if it doesn't, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being solid.

Programmer duties

Programming is more than just writing code. Programmers must also assess tradeoffs, choose among design alternatives, debug and test, improve performance, and maintain software written by themselves and others. At the same time, they must be concerned with compatibility, robustness, and reliability, while meeting specifications.

Praise For Failure

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/02/02/in-praise-of-failure-the-key-ingredient-to-childrens-success-experts-say-is-not-success/

Failing earlier on in life gives us that ability to not freak out when it happens later on. Working on a hard mathematics problem is not to be afraid while feeling stupid. When you feel stupid, don't say to yourself, I'm stupid, but rather this problem is hard. I'll have to work hard on this, try out lots of different ways to figure this out, and not give up too soon. Just because you feel stupid doesn't mean you are stupid. Sometimes you have to be brave and endure feeling stupid for days, weeks, months, or even years, but if you keep working on the problem, you can break through and feel glad that you didn't give up. Feeling stupid is a sign you are working on a hard problem. It's not a reason to give up.

Negotiation

1. "Nibbles": Reach a general agreement (agree on a basic premise). Instead of instantly accepting the deal, push for one small concession at a time.

2. Before entering into a discussion, think about a 'BATNA' = Best Alternative To Negotiated Agreement. Are there other options? Is there a minimum you are willing to agree with?

3. "Expanding the pie": While certain points in contention may be very inflexible (salary, job position), "expand the pie" and seek out other areas which may be more flexible (vacation days, compensation). This also serves to clarify the central hinge of the negotiations.

4. Disarming Empathy. Essentially, the act of being empathetic (in a sort of self-deprecating way perhaps?) so that the other side bargains against themselves while you do not budge from your initial offer.

NB: Nibbles = get the other party to feel like this is a done deal, then push them for further small concessions. (nibbles are one-way) example: "gee, that job offer sounds great!! but there is one thing- just caught that I have to pay for parking. Can you do anything there to make up for that?" Expanding the pie = find a compromise that benefits both parties: "I understand you're extremely short on office space until the new office space is built out, and your office will be a painfully long commute for me until my lease runs out and I can move closer to the office. How about I work from home for a while?"

Summer 2012 Compass draw result

Had very good matches and experiences in Summer 2012 compass draw. 2 losses to the same opponent  in the finals of the Seeding round and playoff round. Playoff round matchups:

Software communication

For any program or project spanning 3 or more people, there will be people-problems. X and Y don’t agree on much and solve problems in a completely different way, Person Z is analytical, and cold, while Person B is the best artistic, creative, unstructured thinker and so on. There are going to be personality issues, with  People misconfigurations  is the number one problem on any project with 3 or more people.  It’s all about communication and honest, respectful, direct conversations. Consider people first. Technology development is foremost a social problem. Communication and flexibility allow us to work better and happier. 

Web architecture

TomCat Web container architecture

Hammock Driven development - Cheat sheet

Udacity CS101 - Building a Search Engine certificate

Published Redbook

http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg247548.html?Open 

Productivity Tips

Don't spend too much time on things no one sees. The full methodology one should adopt for all your work is Continuous Visible Productivity. Plan the work in terms of things other people can see and prioritise with respect to how many useful people see the result. A person who makes his boss look good is far more valuable than one who knows more technical stuff, so boss's fear of you leaving goes up without you doing anything. Any pitch for money must contain a mix of opportunities for your boss to look good with just enough fear that you might be leaving. Sound enthusiatic as everyone likes cheerful people and because it means the team is functional, which is part of business correctness.Say supportive and positive things at meetings. Demanding more money two weeks after the decisions have been made just annoys your boss.