8 ms·

Thus continues Yehuda's quest to join every cool core team on the Internet. :) See also: Rails, Bundler, Ember.js, jQuery, W3C TAG, TC39.

by nardi 12y ago

adamnemecek 12y ago
Yeah, I wonder how he manages to juggle all of that. What's your secret wycats? (I'm not really expecting there to be a single secret).
- wycats 12y ago
  For what it's worth, a big part of this is slowly winding down earlier commitments over time. I joined TAG a couple years ago, and decided not to run again this year because I had largely achieved my original goals of changing the composition and mission of the TAG, and others can carry the torch forward. I also retired from the Rails team this year after a somewhat-long period of inactivity (from day-to-day decisionmaking) for similar reasons. The closest I can get to a single "secret" is aggressively delegating. What I mean by this is delegating before you feel comfortable delegating. The only way I know of to get everything done that I want to get done is to set the vision for something, do some initial implementation work, and find people who share the vision to help as early as possible. The primary reason I end up working on so many things is that things are way more connected than you might expect, and the full picture of something like Ember involves both day-to-day work on Ember and advocacy around a whole host of related technologies. I'm very grateful for the number of groups that have welcomed my participation. I got involved in Rust largely because it was the shortest path to a low-overhead, non-crashy agent for Skylight, even counting the work we had to do to keep up with ongoing development over the past year. When getting involved in a technology so early, I tend to get really invested, and try to find holes that I know how to fill and fill them. That's what happened with Cargo and a whole bunch of other areas in Rust.
  - adamnemecek 12y ago
    Thanks, good to know. So I guess the real secret is being able to attract people to delegate work to.
  - 674266966223478 12y ago
    How would you respond to those who see you merely as somebody who just hops on the bandwagon, so to speak, quite frequently? Whether this perception is right or wrong, there are a number of prominent individuals within the open source community who are widely seen as rapidly jumping between trendy or hyped projects as they arise, to benefit from the exposure that this involvement can bring. I'm not passing any judgment, mind you. I personally don't care which projects you choose to get involved with. However, I do know that other people have noticed certain trends around how certain open source developers move among projects, and this does negatively affect the impressions these people have of these open source developers and the projects they get involved with.
    - jakevn 12y ago
      Their loss. It's illogical to fault entrepreneurs or the businesses they are a part of simply because one of an entrepreneur's core strengths and motivators is bringing projects off the ground. Likewise, it is illogical for faulting a developer for possessing that same drive when it comes to improving emerging technologies. Squandering one's skills to appease some anti-progress group is silly.
    - buddy_tucker 12y ago
      Well, they've obviously never seen wycats' work. As for the others you speak of, time will tell.
    - ryanmk 12y ago
      Bandwagon hopping is a Good Thing. Furthermore, if you continue to bring something to the bandwagon, people will continue asking you to join them.
    - alukima 12y ago
      Jumping between projects can also be seen as spreading knowledge and good practices around. It would probably be much easier for them to stick to one thing but that wouldn't fully utilize them as a resource.
    - tomdale 12y ago
      Not sure I agree with your analysis of the situation. W3C TAG, for example, was perceived as a stodgy, out of touch standards body. Yehuda led the charge to reform it and bring it back into the realm of practitioners. In this case, I think you've got the causality mixed up. Projects often gain prominence thanks to the work Yehuda puts into them, as he's particularly good at articulating their strengths to a wider audience. It's not that he's bandwagon hopping—it's that he's helping to create the bandwagon. ;)
  - aikah 12y ago
    thanks for your answser! wycats rulez.You're doing a good job in TC39,cant wait to get the final spec.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - seeingfurther 12y ago
    "...delegating before you feel comfortable delegating." That just might be the best piece of advice I've heard in a long time.
  - reledi 12y ago
    Would you mind explaining more about how you find and recruit fellow-minded collaborators and eventually delegate tasks to them?
- tree_of_item 12y ago
  Maybe "wycats" is plural and he has a team of people implementing him, like Stephen King or TJ Holowaychuk.
  - steveklabnik 12y ago
    I have met him in person many times and so if that's it, they also have a single person handling interface. :)
    - masklinn 12y ago
      Might be multiplets. Or maybe wycats is a clonal colony, like Pando.
  - koenigdavidmj 12y ago
    Note that nobody reads every post in linux-kernel. In fact, nobody who expects to have time left over to actually do any real kernel work will read even half. Except Alan Cox, but he's actually not human, but about a thousand gnomes working in under-ground caves in Swansea. None of the individual gnomes read all the postings either, they just work together really well. —Linus Torvalds (2000-05-02)
    - techdragon 12y ago
      I love that quote.
  - aikah 12y ago
    What separates TJ from a lot of us is that he isnt afraid to actually go and read some source code,no matter what the language is. That's what separates the good devs from the average ones.How many of us actually read the source of libs or frameworks we use everyday? not that many. But he also have a thing for simplicity,and that is a matter of taste.
- yla92 12y ago
  I watched his talk Endurance(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYihop9gHj4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYihop9gHj4) to be pretty amazing and inspiring. He talked about some really important points which makes me think and reflect on self. A must watch.
cnp 12y ago
Yes, on top of a relatively short number of years coding -- impressive indeed
- deadfall 12y ago
  How many years?
  - prezjordan 12y ago
    I believe Yehuda only started coding in 2006? Maybe 2008?
    - wycats 12y ago
      I did my first real coding in around 2005, and quickly got interested in both jQuery and Rails. Really good timing in retrospect!
      - dchuk 12y ago
        Considering you've been coding less than a decade, can you comment on what you think the biggest factor was that lead you to developing such a high level of mastery of solid coding principles? Books, mentoring, reading framework and library code thoroughly?
        cnp 12y ago
        Wow, you've asked just the question i've been wondering ever since I read that date. Very curious, because it seems like there's been a reliably intuitive focus since the very beginning which generally takes years to develop.
        wycats 12y ago
        I think the best I can do here is my usual answer: take some time every week to work on a problem that is a little bit harder than what you already know how to do. It requires discipline, and it's hard, but it reliably results in levelling up. It also helps with humility: if you're constantly working on things that are too hard for you to do, it's hard to build up an unhealthy belief in your own abilities. And humility will keep you open to unexpected learnings from collaborators and people working on related things.
sandstrom 12y ago
And each of them are lucky to have a share of his time. His contributions to open source are immense. Much of the software our company use has been shaped, at least in part, by Yehuda. I hope we'll grow the company, so that at some point we'll be able to reciprocate.
yonibot 12y ago
Guess who makes them cool :)

Thus continues Yehuda's quest to join every cool core team on the Internet. :) See also: Rails, Bundler, Ember.js, jQuery, W3C TAG, TC39.

by nardi 12y ago

Thus continues Yehuda's quest to join every cool core team on the Internet. :) See also: Rails, Bundler, Ember.js, jQuery, W3C TAG, TC39.

adamnemecek 12y ago

Yeah, I wonder how he manages to juggle all of that. What's your secret wycats? (I'm not really expecting there to be a single secret).

wycats 12y ago
For what it's worth, a big part of this is slowly winding down earlier commitments over time. I joined TAG a couple years ago, and decided not to run again this year because I had largely achieved my original goals of changing the composition and mission of the TAG, and others can carry the torch forward. I also retired from the Rails team this year after a somewhat-long period of inactivity (from day-to-day decisionmaking) for similar reasons. The closest I can get to a single "secret" is aggressively delegating. What I mean by this is delegating before you feel comfortable delegating. The only way I know of to get everything done that I want to get done is to set the vision for something, do some initial implementation work, and find people who share the vision to help as early as possible. The primary reason I end up working on so many things is that things are way more connected than you might expect, and the full picture of something like Ember involves both day-to-day work on Ember and advocacy around a whole host of related technologies. I'm very grateful for the number of groups that have welcomed my participation. I got involved in Rust largely because it was the shortest path to a low-overhead, non-crashy agent for Skylight, even counting the work we had to do to keep up with ongoing development over the past year. When getting involved in a technology so early, I tend to get really invested, and try to find holes that I know how to fill and fill them. That's what happened with Cargo and a whole bunch of other areas in Rust.
- adamnemecek 12y ago
  Thanks, good to know. So I guess the real secret is being able to attract people to delegate work to.
- 674266966223478 12y ago
  How would you respond to those who see you merely as somebody who just hops on the bandwagon, so to speak, quite frequently? Whether this perception is right or wrong, there are a number of prominent individuals within the open source community who are widely seen as rapidly jumping between trendy or hyped projects as they arise, to benefit from the exposure that this involvement can bring. I'm not passing any judgment, mind you. I personally don't care which projects you choose to get involved with. However, I do know that other people have noticed certain trends around how certain open source developers move among projects, and this does negatively affect the impressions these people have of these open source developers and the projects they get involved with.
  - jakevn 12y ago
    Their loss. It's illogical to fault entrepreneurs or the businesses they are a part of simply because one of an entrepreneur's core strengths and motivators is bringing projects off the ground. Likewise, it is illogical for faulting a developer for possessing that same drive when it comes to improving emerging technologies. Squandering one's skills to appease some anti-progress group is silly.
  - buddy_tucker 12y ago
    Well, they've obviously never seen wycats' work. As for the others you speak of, time will tell.
  - ryanmk 12y ago
    Bandwagon hopping is a Good Thing. Furthermore, if you continue to bring something to the bandwagon, people will continue asking you to join them.
  - alukima 12y ago
    Jumping between projects can also be seen as spreading knowledge and good practices around. It would probably be much easier for them to stick to one thing but that wouldn't fully utilize them as a resource.
  - tomdale 12y ago
    Not sure I agree with your analysis of the situation. W3C TAG, for example, was perceived as a stodgy, out of touch standards body. Yehuda led the charge to reform it and bring it back into the realm of practitioners. In this case, I think you've got the causality mixed up. Projects often gain prominence thanks to the work Yehuda puts into them, as he's particularly good at articulating their strengths to a wider audience. It's not that he's bandwagon hopping—it's that he's helping to create the bandwagon. ;)
- aikah 12y ago
  thanks for your answser! wycats rulez.You're doing a good job in TC39,cant wait to get the final spec.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- seeingfurther 12y ago
  "...delegating before you feel comfortable delegating." That just might be the best piece of advice I've heard in a long time.
- reledi 12y ago
  Would you mind explaining more about how you find and recruit fellow-minded collaborators and eventually delegate tasks to them?
tree_of_item 12y ago
Maybe "wycats" is plural and he has a team of people implementing him, like Stephen King or TJ Holowaychuk.
- steveklabnik 12y ago
  I have met him in person many times and so if that's it, they also have a single person handling interface. :)
  - masklinn 12y ago
    Might be multiplets. Or maybe wycats is a clonal colony, like Pando.
- koenigdavidmj 12y ago
  Note that nobody reads every post in linux-kernel. In fact, nobody who expects to have time left over to actually do any real kernel work will read even half. Except Alan Cox, but he's actually not human, but about a thousand gnomes working in under-ground caves in Swansea. None of the individual gnomes read all the postings either, they just work together really well. —Linus Torvalds (2000-05-02)
  - techdragon 12y ago
    I love that quote.
- aikah 12y ago
  What separates TJ from a lot of us is that he isnt afraid to actually go and read some source code,no matter what the language is. That's what separates the good devs from the average ones.How many of us actually read the source of libs or frameworks we use everyday? not that many. But he also have a thing for simplicity,and that is a matter of taste.
yla92 12y ago
I watched his talk Endurance(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYihop9gHj4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYihop9gHj4) to be pretty amazing and inspiring. He talked about some really important points which makes me think and reflect on self. A must watch.

cnp 12y ago

Yes, on top of a relatively short number of years coding -- impressive indeed

deadfall 12y ago
How many years?
- prezjordan 12y ago
  I believe Yehuda only started coding in 2006? Maybe 2008?
  - wycats 12y ago
    I did my first real coding in around 2005, and quickly got interested in both jQuery and Rails. Really good timing in retrospect!
    - dchuk 12y ago
      Considering you've been coding less than a decade, can you comment on what you think the biggest factor was that lead you to developing such a high level of mastery of solid coding principles? Books, mentoring, reading framework and library code thoroughly?
      - cnp 12y ago
        Wow, you've asked just the question i've been wondering ever since I read that date. Very curious, because it seems like there's been a reliably intuitive focus since the very beginning which generally takes years to develop.
        wycats 12y ago
        I think the best I can do here is my usual answer: take some time every week to work on a problem that is a little bit harder than what you already know how to do. It requires discipline, and it's hard, but it reliably results in levelling up. It also helps with humility: if you're constantly working on things that are too hard for you to do, it's hard to build up an unhealthy belief in your own abilities. And humility will keep you open to unexpected learnings from collaborators and people working on related things.

sandstrom 12y ago

And each of them are lucky to have a share of his time. His contributions to open source are immense. Much of the software our company use has been shaped, at least in part, by Yehuda. I hope we'll grow the company, so that at some point we'll be able to reciprocate.

yonibot 12y ago

Guess who makes them cool :)