Scott Hanselman, David Heinemeier Hansson, Rob Conery, Pete Brown
Scott: Last night I texted my buddy and said, "Dude, we're going to the movies." And we went to the movies on a Thursday night at midnight.
And it was totally the wrong thing to do. I got kids going to school the next day. I had a 9 o'clock meeting on the phone with London. But man I had a good time at the movies last night. I was out till 3AM on a week night - I felt like a kid.
And I feel better. I feel better having done it. I'm exhausted. I'm the walking dead right now. I can't even think I'm so tired..but I had a good time at the movies yesterday. That's what I do to play.
What do you do?
David Heinemeier Hansson: Racing to me feels like nothing else really. There's nothing that I've found that's been able to clear my mind in the same way as racing.
Scott: What are you doing right now? It's 5 o'clock. Go home. Go outside. Get on a surfboard. Build some Legos. Race a car. Build a robot. Go to the movies on a Thursday night at midnight. Play!
Pete Brown: I've been able to show my son for example, that hey, "I've made this robot." He loves that and it's fun for me to be able to see him go, "Wow Poppa you made this right?!". It's something he can hold in his hands and he understands. If I show him a computer program he's not going to get that. If I show him a picture of me jumping out of an airplane I don't think he's going to quite figure out what the heck is going on there either.
Scott: This Developers Life is brought to you by CodeRush for Visual Studio. We appreciate their support. With consume first declaration, powerful templates, smart selection tools, intelligent code analysis, innovative navigation and an unrivalled collection of visual refactorings all working together. Your development productivity will increase dramatically. Get CodeRush. Be glad you did. Check them out at http://devexpress.com/coderush
Rob: Sharpening the saw. Work life balance. Whatever you want to call it. You have to do something when you're not working. David Heinemeier Hansson, or 'DHH' as he's known, he likes to race cars.
David Heinemeier Hansson: Being in the zone programming can have that same sort of affect where you’re so deeply focussed on this one problem that everything else fades away. You're not worried about what you're going to have for dinner or where you're going to be next week or a meeting coming up or anything else really. This sensation of just complete and total focus is just utterly addicting and in a race car it's kind of easier to get that. Programming it's kind of hard. You can get it occasionally when you are just terribly inspired by something and everything lines up just perfectly. But it doesn't happen necessarily, it certainly doesn't happen every day. I am not in the zone everyday programming but I am in the zone every single time I go behind the wheel of a fast race car because if you're not you're going to end up in a wall. There's sort of a criticality and urgency to your inputs that simply necessitates that you get in the zone. So if you're addicted to being in that state of mind then it's just a natural extension that if you get into racing you'll become addicted very quickly.
Rob: If you run a computer long enough it accumulates what's known as 'bit rot' and just naturally slows down. So you need to re-pave it every 6 months to every year. Same thing with your brain. Although we can't re-pave our brains so we choose hobbies. One's that make us focus, force us to focus.
David Heinemeier Hansson: I think for me racing is probably the pinnacle of that. There are other things you can do or activities you can have that have aspects of that. When I'm doing other kinds of sport I can feel like I'm really focussed and in the zone I just...playing tennis or golf or even rollerblading at times you can feel like you're tasting that zone but what I really like about racing is that it keeps you in it for long periods of time. When you're in a racing car and in a race you will sometimes be in a car for upwards of 2hrs and it's really just fascinating that your mind can stay so single tracked, so focussed for such a long period of time. Usually most people who've been in the zone will recognise it in bursts. As I said earlier programming can sometimes have this magic. I've certainly been in the zone with programming where you look up and all of a sudden 3hrs have passed and you're like, "How did that happen?". That's evidence that you've been in the zone and you've just come up for air and you're sort of ecstatic from that and you lost all track of time and space but it's sort of like just happens occasionally, you don't necessarily know when it's going to happen and it's hard to consciously induce it. It's much easier to just get in a race car, shut the door, turn the ignition on and go. And if you know that that's going to give you that same level of reward, that's just a very appealing activity.
Rob: You know, when I'm at home at the weekends, maybe I'm riding my bike or maybe I'm doing a crossword puzzle, I can stop what I'm doing take a break and just think about other things, but not when you're racing. You're committed. You're committed for a long time. It make me think of, for some reason, of taking off in an airplane where you just sort of grip the seats and think, "Well, here I go!".
David Heinemeier Hansson: Absolutely. One of the key things I enjoy more than anything else is the notion of putting yourself in a situation where you're slightly under qualified. Where you have to learn, progress and become better to simply get your head above water. When I first got involved with Ruby and making rails and even creating Basecamp. it was certainly that kind of moment for me. I dropped in at the deep end not really knowing whether I would sink or swim. And with racing I get the same sensation. I've dropped myself into racing situations where I've been fairly uncomfortable with the whole setup. Either I'm at a new track I don't know before, I'm in a new car, I'm with a new team, I'm going much faster than I was before, there's all these variables that are constantly move up the bar and make it harder for you and force you to, on the spot, just simply get better and that's part of that addiction. I have an addiction to improvement. Which I find is just sort of, that when you can find an outlet for that. When you can find an interest or a hobby or an occasion that allows you to continue get better at what it is that you do. Then that's where you want to stick because if you get into that groove and the activity is self-reinforcing and your constantly getting better then, I mean, you better stay on it because that's going to lead to good places usually.
Rob: You know, I can imagine that for some people the goal for racing would be to qualify let's say in the top 3 or 4 so that you can move on to say a bigger race. Maybe race a faster car, or, other people might think, "I need to shave another one hundredth of a second off", or "I want to perfect what I'm doing here and then I'll be ready to move on". So, what do you think? Which one is more motivating for you?
David Heinemeier Hansson: I think I like both facets of it. I like the big jumps where you're trying something completely new and unfamiliar but in many ways I think I actually like the sort of measured progress even better. I like getting really, really good at something. The only way to get really, really good at something is to do it lots and lots of times and in some ways sort of sticking with it. So, you put yourself in slightly different situations or you just give yourself slightly bigger goals. In a race car, the goals are often measured in tenths of a second. Like, I'll be seven tenths of a second off the pole of a certain race. So that's a very clearly defined goal. Which I think in itself has quite a large appeal. A lot of the things we do work wise do not have clearly defined goals. Certainly not to the level of, "shave seven tenths off your racing time and you will win the race". Like, it's not going to be, "Learn Ruby 15% better and you will get this monster promotion" or, "Get just a little bit better at marketing and your company will dominate and will be worth a $100 million dollars". Challenges usually don't present themselves that square in real life. So, in some ways, it's kind of like...it's more like a video game actually. Video games generally have more clearly defined areas and aspects of success or failure. And I think that we all crave that. We all crave that feedback that comes from just knowing if something worked or didn't work. I think the sort of fuzziness that is much of real life is an intense source of anxiety and discomfort and frustration. I really believe that staying active physically is a huge benefit for your mental capacity and I feel like I'm better behind the keyboard when I come back from being behind the wheel or I come back from doing other sort of physical activity. I think there is...I don't even think, there's plenty of academic evidence to point to that link between mind and body. But the funny thing actually with racing is yes it is physical, and pulling 2.5G's in a corner for 2hrs straight is straining and your body will be tired and exhausted afterwards, but the hard part is mental. There's nothing physical in terms of…well, that's not entirely true, but the large difference between me and somebody who does this for a living, races cars for a living, is not in our physical makeup. It is in the mental capacity of the driver. How consistent can you be? How in the zone? How focused for long periods of time can you be? And I think that that's the kind of training that I get out of it as well. Just being conditioned to have the capability to just stay focused for long, long periods of time. I think the modern work environment in front of a computer teaches the opposite. We are constantly distracted. We constantly have our focus disrupted and we're left with these tiny fragments of time to dive deep and get better at something. And I think that it's very easy to become accustomed to that. And once you become accustomed to only having 15 minutes or half an hour to get anything done I think you'll also become accustomed to the terrible productivity you'll get out of that. So, if you have other activities in your life that remind you how wonderful it can be to have 2hrs or 3hrs or 4hrs dedicated to just one activity, with nothing else pulling on you or your time, then I think you'll be impatient for getting that in your work life to. And as a result of that you'll be so much more productive.
Rob: I can see how someone could graduate from being a casual scrabble player to all of a sudden entering into competitions. I can see how perhaps a weekend brewer might get really good at it and open up a micro-brewery. But when it comes to racing a car you have to actually go to a track and decide, "I'm going to get into that race car and I'm going to race it." It doesn't seem like you just go from like driving your kids to school to then racing cars. So how did you get started in this?
David Heinemeier Hansson: A friend of mine had done this in a prior season. He had raced in something called Formula Masters which is this 20 year old design which looks like a miniature Formula One car I guess. It's called an open-wheeled car, so the wheel wells aren't covered. And it's just this terribly old race car which is the function of being old, tried and true means that it's also cheap. Which is a good thing when it comes to racing as these things have a tendency to become expensive. So, he was doing this and he asked me if I wanted to come down to the track and maybe give it a try. And up until that point I'd never been in a race car, the only exposure to racing had been X-Box and PlayStation but I was certainly interested. So, I got down to the track, I jumped in the car and in the first day I spent maybe 3hrs behind the wheel. I kind of partially damaged the gearbox. I tore off one of the front winglets on the car and generally had just an absolutely amazing time. So after that I thought, "Wow! This is something I want to try some more" so thankfully there was this series, this racing series that he was in. I did my first race just maybe a couple of weeks later. Finished last. Then I did another 5 races in that series that same year and at the end of the last race I was battling for the lead.
Rob: Wow. It must be interesting thinking about that versus the very first time you raced a car. I can only imagine like walking up to a race car for the very first time and getting in. I mean, I’ve never done that but it must be an interesting sensation to turn the key and hear the engine kick up, feel it rumble and think, "Oh man! I am in a car that is going to go faster than any car I've ever driven." That must have been an amazing sensation.
David Heinemeier Hansson: That's the sort of wonderful part I think about the racing aspect that as soon as you get down behind the wheel, at least for me, it's very relaxing. It's not a moment of incredible tensity. Especially in that part since there were no expectations from me to do anything. This was my first race; nobody expected I was going to do anything but except finish last. It meant there was no pressure. So, I got in behind the wheel and of course, I think this is right, the very first corner i actually went off because there was so much new information coming at me from the other drivers that were around me that of course I completely forgot where I was supposed to break and then I broke way too late and spun the car off and ended up in the grass. And that was sort of that same idea we were talking about earlier, where you throw yourself into a new situation and what's often special about that new situation is just that there's more information available. When you're just driving around the track by yourself you worry about where the apex is and the track-out and all these technical aspects of, "How can you go around the track as fast as possible?". Now throw in 6 other drivers right around you and all of a sudden you have all sorts of other concerns like, "Oh, the guy in front of me is in the spot where I want to be". Now I have to divert from my regular line and try something else. So, that was just absolutely intoxicating. To get all that new information thrown at you and all this new stimuli and I quickly got back on track and finished up the race but of course after that, as soon as it had wrapped I was ever so eager to go out again. What I like so much about the aspect of driving itself is the idea of "The Limit". So in racing, "The Limit" is where the tyres are going to give up their hold on the asphalt and like, to find where that limit is, you have to over step it. You have to go beyond the limit to know where the limit is and to be able to ride it just so exactly. And I think that that is true for life in general. I find that anything that I do in my personal life or professionally, I want to know where the limit is. I want to find exactly how far can we take something because that's the only way I'll find out whether we're at maximum efficiency and maximum capacity of what we can do or what I can do. And I just accept that the only way to get to that point is by stepping over the limit. And if you just accept that, if you accept that there will be minor missteps and mishaps and maybe a few accidents in the process of stepping over the limit you gain the freedom to do so at will. I think the key thing holding a lot of people back from racing or other pursuits is innate fear of the limit. "Oh, what will happen if I step over the limit? Will I get fired or will I crash into a wall? Or will I do all these other things.". And if you are in that spot you're held back by fear. And maybe I'm sure there's an evolutionary good sense to that. That you shouldn't step over the limit too many times as it means you're going to get eaten by a tiger. The worst that's going to happen is in most circumstances is that you're either going to make a little bit of a fool of yourself or you're going to bend a rim and at the end of the day that doesn't really matter. It matters far more that you develop to the peak of your abilities. I think I am addicted to improvement in itself. I'm addicted to becoming the best at whatever it is that I try to do. For my own satisfaction that is the fun. The fun is improving. So, I really like aspects and things where it's very clear and visible when you're getting better. And as we talked about in racing, you can look at the clock. Did you get any faster? In programming you can also get that aspect somewhat, is your code getting more beautiful? Is it getting shorter? Are you writing it faster? But the feedback loop is a little more fuzzy and indirect. But none the less for me it's the same principal. I enjoy just becoming a better programmer. I enjoy becoming a better race car driver. I enjoy becoming a better manager, to take something that is even more fuzzy.
Rob: Do you that maybe the fear of flying into a wall might add some spice to this hobby? So, to put it another way, would you say maybe you're a bit of a fear junkie? That the only way to get you to focus and improve is to scare you for lack of better words?
David Heinemeier Hansson: I am not a fear junkie at all. I don't respond well to frightening situations. To me, driving a race car, there is no fear in that. That's not the appeal. I don't watch horror movies. I don't like the sensation of being frightened. I know that lots of people do. Obviously there's plenty of industries catering to that but I actually try to avoid it. Which in many ways is the same way I try to avoid risk too. So neither fear or risk is something that appeals intensely to me. I try to find out a way that I can just avoid that. If something is perceived to be scary can I learn more? Can I know more to reduce realise that it's actually not very scary at all? You know for example for racing, racing used to be something you should be scared of. If you were a race car driver in the 1950's the chances of you actually dying were immense. Lots of race car drivers died during that era. You really truly had something to fear. Modern day racing is not that at all. There are very few fatalities or even serious injuries in racing these days. Anybody who's watched a Formula One car go straight into the wall, basically explode, and the driver just walk out will know that the cars and techniques of today are just incredibly safe. So, just learning about that, learning about odds. To me, I try and approach it in a very rational manner. If the odds, if getting killed in a race car are x, then there are probably a whole lot of other things that are more dangerous to do than drive a race car. I actually haven't looked this up but I wouldn't be surprised if it's more dangerous to commute to work in a car every day for a year than it is to drive a race car in a race track for 10 times a year. I'd probably guess it would be more dangerous to commute. So, things like that, just knowledge helps me combat or sidestep any fears that I have.
Rob: If you spend any time with a psychologist they'll sit you down. They'll probe your brain and they'll try and pull out every single fear that motivates you to do weird things and then systematically they'll try and get you to face those fears and deal with them. What if that was your hobby? Every single weekend you go out and you face your fear. Maybe it's jumping out of a plane, hurtling towards the earth only to pull a parachute just at the last moment. Or strapping tanks to your back and going 100ft under water. David likes to pull G's keeping himself away from that wall that can crush his car and even him.
David Heinemeier Hansson: I absolutely agree that fear itself is one of the key inhibitors of people. It prevents them from achieving everything that they could achieve. Just acknowledging that you're afraid of something goves you a chance to shine light on it and examine whether it's actually a raional fear. i believe that the vast majority of all fears in the world are irrational. You start examining the things that you are afraid of you will actually find that they're not worth being afraid of. Then all the time and energy that you put into fear can be unleashed. And you can use all that time and energy for something else much more worthwhile to pursue. And I think the first thing to recognise is just, "Yes, there is risk." There is risk in almost everything. There is a chance that you will fail. But if you take that one step further and not just, "Oh, I fear what will happen if fail.” Yes exactly, go down that route and figure exactly would happen if I fail. You should only fear one thing, that is regret, the regret of not doing things. That's what I fear more than anything.
Rob: When listening to David talk about driving a race car I can identify a little bit 'cause one of the things I love to do is to surf. We've talked about that and it's a commitment. You get out there in big surf, you have to know what you're doing or you could die. And yeah, the world melts away but on the flip side, you know we talked to guy like Pete who we're going to talk to next, I mean, he doesn't need the adrenaline rush. Didn't he say something?
Scott: You're right, he did. He doesn't, he actually said something like…well, here it is...
Pete Brown: My thrill doesn't come from adrenaline rush like skydiving, fast cars stuff like that. Yeah, I get a kick out of that. I'll enjoy a rollercoaster at the amusement park but I don't get the thrill of being close to death. That's not a turn on for me.
Scott: Yeah, he doesn't need to feel like he's going to die in order to be reminded that he's alive.
Rob: I'm curious. I'm just so curious about the way people play. I mean, I have a couple of hobbies. I also like to brew beer and you get to flex a lot of your engineering muscle and all the tools you have basically have to make for yourself or buy them, they're pretty expensive. What do you do? I'm looking over your shoulder here and I can see, what is that? A bridge or something?
Scott: It's the Lego Tower Bridge. 4287 pieces or something like that.
Rob: [laughs] So you really do play with Legos? So, the whole Lego thing you have on your blog. It's a real deal. You play with Legos.
Scott: I enjoy it. I'm not like, there's a think called Adult Fans of Lego but yeah it's not like cosplay or anything! Don't look at me like that! [Laughs] It's not like I'm in the Society for Creative Anachronism but yeah, some people go out and they recreate, I don't know...Orc battles or whatever. The battle for Middle Earth, other people make Legos. Yeah, it's the thing I would do if I had nothing to do.
Rob: Yeah, it's like those guys, they call it LARPing. Live Action Roleplaying. What's the other one? The Civil War battles. You know, it's funny 'cause I bought a tutorial for Final Cut and the whole tutorial is about a guy who did a documentary about these Civil War re-enactments and I was more focussed on the weirdos that did that than I was the tutorial that I bought.
Scott: And the thing is though, those guys are renting cars at Enterprise or they're, "Would you like fries with that?" and that's the thing that they do to play. And you know, when we're sitting here working on the computer, it's interesting that the thing that you and I pick to do is not being on our computer.
Rob: Right. Instead, I'm staring at you and talking into this microphone here. And we do this. And I guess, it's fun. Are you having fun? I'm having fun.
Scott: It's not stressful. It's doesn't take away. It's about draining the tank and refuelling the tank. You know how I'm notorious for leaving conferences early. And everyone's like, "Why are you leaving? There's a party later." I don't want to go to a party. My kids are waiting at home. That refills the tank. Staying at a party at Vegas after a conference is not my thing but I have friends that go to these conferences, they do their talk and they go and party till they're blitzed. That's a totally different thing. You know what I mean?
Rob: Speaking of friends. You spoke to Pete Brown about this very thing. When we talked about this show I was thinking, "Oh, I know a guy who has an amazing hobby, he's a race car driver. It's DHH".
Scott: That was like, the first thing out of your mouth, "Oh! A show on hobbies and play? This guy's a race car driver" And I said, "Oh! A show on hobbies and play? This guy's building a CNC machine in his living room."
Rob: I don't even know what that is.
Scott: Neither do I. I asked him.
Pete Brown: CNC is Computer Numeric Control and it comes from way back before you had like computers attached or separate PC's attached to these machines to direct the movement. They had to kind of build in numeric controllers that said which way the milling head needs to move and what patterns it needs to follow to cut the different shapes out of the material that's loaded in there. In the case of modern CNC machines which still have the same name what they do is they read something called NC codes, so just the NC part of Computer Numeric Control. That NC code describes say the x-axis needs to move this many steps to the left and the z-axis which has the tool cutter in it typically needs to move up this many steps and then the, you know, the other axis, the y-axis needs to move out a little bit. And it does all these things very rapidly and you end up getting this fluid motion on the machine that can be used to cut out a shape. I have a Syil Iron Mill that I go and I design stuff in CAD software on my PC and then I have it run through and create special tool paths and then it will mill out that shape out of whatever material I put on the mill right? So I could also do 2D things and have it cut out shapes in wood or aluminium or stuff like that. For example like robot bodies is one of the things I want to have it cut out so that I can have it do some more stuff with robots.
Scott: And see, this is one more reason that I appreciate Pete. Here's a guy who won’t change his own oil on the car but might build a robot to fetch him beer. I mean, that is brilliant and that's totally awesome right? I don't want to mow my own lawn but I'll build a robot to mow my lawn.
Pete: Like I often get the, "Wow! Somebody has too much time on their hands" type comments and those always drive me nuts because I think it's about how you spend your time. Like, I don't watch a whole lot of TV but I spend a lot of my evenings, instead of sleeping, when I should be sleeping I'm working on, you know, electronics projects and doing some stuff building analog synthesisers and trying to figure out how to build a new CNC machine for the other room so I can go and mill front panels for the rack mount synthesiser I was thinking about building and mess around with MIDI and learning how to solder better and a bunch of other stuff. So those all take a ton of time but it's time that's taking away other time from other sort of time-sink activities that I could normally be doing.
Scott: Where is your wife during this time?
Pete Brown: So she goes to sleep usually at somewhat normal hours. So sometimes we'll watch, you know, a TV show. We have a kind of standing TV date on Thursdays for a show that we watch all the time and stuff. But a lot of time she'll go and do her evening chores that she has to do and then she does more reading than I've been doing lately. I do most of my reading on the plane and on trips or what not. She'll usually do a fair bit of reading in the evenings. And of course this isn't every night but it is a fair percentage of the week.
Scott: One of the things that stands out from my perspective that stands out about your hobbies is that a lot of people have a hobby that is software. So, they'll do software all day that is like, soul-sucking and they hate themselves and then they'll go and they'll do fun software that makes them hate themselves less. So, they write banking software all day and then they'll undo it by writing something fun all night. But literally almost every single one of your hobbies is physical. Hand held, touching something, moving something, building something. You could say it's software but it's not, it's hardware. Everything you do is hardware from your bench seats to your kitchen renovation.
Pete Brown: Yeah, I have two strange kind of motivations. One is, I feel like I have this need to have to make things and make things that are physical, that I can touch and that I can use. I do write software all the time and I think I do some pretty interesting programs and stuff there but they are not things I can take out of the computer and use. I mean the closest you get is you write an application for the phone or something and you have it in your pocket. But that's not the same as building an object or sitting on a bench seat that I built upstairs in the windows. The other thing that I learned about myself a long time ago is that I have this really odd fascination with manufacturing. Like, I don't want to be a line worker in a factory somewhere but I want to have a mini-factory or at least the capability of manufacturing things myself. So I'm drawn to CNC for milling out panels and doing interesting things like that. I'm drawn to electronics, actually being able to build units. I'm drawn to 3D printing and you know I've done a lot with resin casting and stuff in the past and I'm trying to learn how to do more with injection moulding. And for some reason I'm really, really drawn with the idea of having a factory in the corner of my house.
Scott: You build all these things and then where do they go?
Pete Brown: So, I've been trying to...a lot of the stuff that I've had in the past has in fact gone into a bin somewhere. Which is a really horrible habit that I've been trying to break because I don't want like, building disposable things and you know, getting this giant pile of garbage in the back of my office. You know, it's not really garbage, it's expensive garbage but it's not stuff I'm really using anymore. So, I've got that orange robot that one of the motors actually broke on it and I set it aside and I cannibalised it for parts and the body is still sitting there somewhere for a rainy day to be used. But what I've been trying to do is to consolidate a little better. So that the things that I make are actually useful long term. So, one of the things I built and it's mostly complete and it's a MIDI through box because I like to mess around with synthesisers.
Hey, I have this part in my head. I have this vision of something I want to make and it's physical and it's something in the real world. And I need an extension of myself. I need an extension of my thought process that can reach out and carve stuff out of metal. It's being able to take this idea from your head, throwing it into the computer but not having it end in just bits and bytes but it's having it end on a bunch of hot metal shavings on your shop room floor. Between those and 3D printing and a few other parts we're not too far away from being able to say, you know, "Anything that you want, you can just make.". And make easily.
I don't get the thrill of being close to death. That's not a turn on for me. The closest I get to that is, "Ooh, I might lose a finger in this table saw.", and that's danger enough. That's kind of a wimpy thing but I think I'd rather see the powers used to make something as opposed to just scare the crap out of me right? And I think for that, being able to make something like that, being able to show my son for example that hey, "I've made this robot." He loves that and it's fun for me to be able to see him go, "Wow Poppa you made this right?!" It's something he can hold in his hands and he understands. If I show him a computer program he's not going to get that. If I show him a picture of me jumping out of an airplane I don't think he's going to quite figure out what the heck is going on there either.
I have heard theories that guys, and who knows how much truth is in this right? But I've heard theories that guys go this route and have to build and make things a lot of times to compensate for the whole idea that guys can't create life…but, I don't know. I don't know if that one's been proven or not but it's an interesting theory.
I don't want to change my own oil. I don't want to build things for my car. All those maintenance type thing are absolutely no interest to me. And my wife will tell you that I don't like to fix things around the house and I despise plumbing like you would not believe it's the bane of my existence. But if you ask me to build something, like, build a bookcase or something like that, something that I can leave my mark on the house and whoever buys the house after us will have to decide whether or not they're going to keep that bookcase that I build or rip it out and replace it with some crap from IKEA. That's like, that gets me. That's a different kind of thrill. And that's worth it.
Someone wins the lottery and then they say, "Oh, I'm going to go back to work at my convenience type store job or whatever". I simply can't grok why anybody would do that. If I won the lottery, I absolutely have enough things that I could fill every hour of my day and have more time for my family and do a lot of the fun stuff that I want to do. And it wouldn't be work right, it would still be fun. There are some practical reasons why I don't do this work. I couldn't make enough money working, wood working or anything like that to make it worth it. I think that a lot of those folks that build high end custom furniture unless you get into the really nice art type stuff, those guys are generally not rich. They are doing some amazing stuff with very lovingly crafted furniture but they're living fairly low on the income pole and I have some practical concerns there right. Otherwise, I don't know if it became work would I still like doing it? I don't know I'd have to try it out and see. I guess, you know, I programmed for fun before I took that as a job and now I program less for fun now. So maybe. Maybe that is really the differentiators, start paying for it and start having somebody else do it 'cause it's not interesting any more.
Scott: So, I'm looking around my monitor here and I've got a task manager here, I'm copying files there, I've got some code here, I've got a TODO list for work here, I've got some JavaScript that I want to do and I've got three finished blog posts. We're not working...what are we...
Rob: Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on a second. Didn't we talk about... I mean every time we record a show I'm constantly telling you to stop clicking the mouse. Stop looking, would you please go and turn that down and yet here you are...I didn't even know you were doing all those other things.
Scott: [Laughs] No, but it's interesting because, how someone sorts their work right, if you separate work from play and then just sort things in order of what you want to do versus what you have to do. That's another good way to find out to find out what play is. Like, what's play for you? I used to think I really liked X-Box but I've actually three different X-Box games that are open right now, that have been sitting on my desk, including Batman, which is apparently a very good game, that I have not touched in a month. So either, I'm a poor time-manager or I'm learning that doesn't refuel me as much as other things do. I'm spending more time reading and putting Lego together than I am doing X-Box so I might as well stop pretending that I like X-Box. I mean, I want to play Batman but I think about, if I spend eleven hours playing Batman to completion that gets me what? I'd much rather create something. Think about the number of podcasts we can make and the amount of time it would take to finish Batman. Because, when I'm playing something like Batman I eventually realise that I'm not playing Batman, I'm playing the guy that wrote Batman. And I don't want to hang out with that guy. Again, whatever feeds your spirit. I know people who would like nothing better than to sit and read for 16hrs every weekend, but if that's what it takes to get you up on Monday morning? Then man, read on reader.
Rob: Is it about time to turn on Lady Gaga?
Scott: [To the tune of Lady Gaga's song "Bad Romance"] Dun-dun-du-du-du
Rob: I know, here's how we're going to end today. I am going to go get my guitar. You just hold on a second...here I go.
Scott: Oh God...here he goes.
Rob: [Laughs] I can play guitar. I can play the guitar...
Scott: [singing(badly)] "Somewhere over the rainbow...".
Rob: [Laughs]
Scott: [whispering] Play!
End notes Scott: Again, a big thank you to the folks at CodeRush Visual Studio for helping support This Developer's Life. CodeRush has the fastest rename, the fastest find null references, fastest test runner. When it comes to creating, modifying and refactoring code nothing is faster than Code Rush. It's been on my ultimate power-tools list since forever. Get CodeRush, you'll be glad you did. Check them out at Devexpress.com/coderush - we appreciate their support.