This appears to have dropped off of the queue completely, so sadly I don't think we'll get to have the discussion I had hoped when I wrote this (it also focuses

This appears to have dropped off of the queue completely, so sadly I don't think we'll get to have the discussion I had hoped when I wrote this (it also focuses on the biking part of the story wayy too much, so I might rewrite it and submit it tomorrow). The moral of the story, something that I spent way, way too long getting to, had to do with some of my friends who don't ever publish their projects. They're so intimidated by the idea of ending up on coders from hell, or whatever other blogs exist to make fun of people, that they end up doing nothing. And they end up learning nothing. Or maybe they learn a few things out of the books that they have, but they never actually get to see those things applied anywhere. Some of the things that have made me grow most as a coder have been when stuff I've written gets submitted to reddit or HN. I've watched my server melt-down more than a couple of times, and every time it happens I learn a little bit more about how to prevent it from happening the next time. As far as the cycling story goes: I think it's more about managing the risks. Was I ever really in that much danger? Hmmmm...kindof. I certainly screwed up pretty bad, but even if I had ended up camping on the trail, it wouldn't have killed me. It wasn't like I was 1000 miles away from the closest water source or something insane like that. The other part of it is that I think a lot of people understand the "burn the ship" concept, but they proverbially "burn the ship" while it's still in the dock. It's also partially a confidence thing. When you screw up really bad, there is nowhere to go but up. It's liberating.