Sunday, November 11, 2007

why i work on hackystat

hackystat is an awesome project. and i work on hackystat for three reasons. but, the priorities of those reasons is probably not what you would expect. here they are:

  • i want to help lead my peers - part of what i do and what i really love doing is helping the "younger" or newer hackystat developers understand what hackystat is all about. actually, it is the soft skill mentoring that is really motivating. i have the chance to help other hackystat developers grown their critical thinking about software engineering research. thats fun and thats what it is all about.
  • i learn a lot from my peers - typically everyone that works on hackystat are better than me in programming. yes, i even think that the "younger" developers are better at programming than i am. i learn a lot from them. i also learn a lot on how to be a leader, by following leaders like philip. i also love to hear, "aaron, that is stupid", every time i hear that makes me better.
  • (the last reason) i like the actual application of hackystat. i like that hackystat is successful and can be even more successful. i like the domain that we are in, because i like software engineering research. but, i put this last because the other two are much much more important to me. i'd probably be as involved if hackystat was a chat client.

    so, you see that it is the people and the environment that makes the biggest difference for me. if you are working in a crazy cool project with dumb people, in a dumb environment then i bet you are hating it. i would. people make all the difference. moral of the story: people is what makes software engineering awesome. but people can also make software engineering a pain in the ass.
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