Nice sunny Sunday here in Ljubljana yesterday. Around noon something particularly odd happened though. The week was over. I had finished everything I absolutely had to do, there was no more coursework, no more tasks for this week in pivotaltracker ... nothing.
14 hours of pure unadulterated freedom.
I felt drunk. I didn't know how to handle myself. Can't even remember the last time I had free time and didn't have to worry about everything lurking on the other end.
A couple of lessons
- Your code is broken, you just don't know it yet
- Rejoice about free time and you will jinx it
- Take advantage of free time immediately
- Internet Explorer has almost matured into a browser
But everybody already learned those lessons long ago right?
Having unscheduled time plomped into your lap like this is strange. There are a bunch of things you've been putting off for months that you could do, there's that book or three that have been waiting for attention since two summers ago, books you bought a month ago but only read 100 pages of, hell, it's sort of sunny outside and maybe you should venture out on that new longboard despite somewhat wet conditions?
The abundance of choice is truly paralyzing ... until somebody helps out.
I did end up going for that longboard ride and started working on fixing up some outstanding bugs on my blog, there's that mobile mode people have been crying about for months, the footer was broken and I even flirted with a small hack project that's been rolling around my head for weeks.
Not two hours after I set out on the epic fixing of everything that the US woke up and somebody decided to test my code before pushing to production.
It broke. Three small issues. Just an hour or two to fix surely. Small bug on IE, but I'm sure I can find a windows box in the apartment somewhere to figure it out ...
Seven hours, two very deep bugs of which the reported bugs were just symptoms, one very strange django QuerySet behavior and two cups of tea later ... it worked. Everything worked. We pushed to production and I collapsed into bed.
So much for my free Sunday.
Continue reading about I kicked myself in the balls
Semantically similar articles hand-picked by GPT-4
- 17 hour workday Sunday
- You, take a break
- A little bit of burn out? Perhaps
- And so it ends
- Lessons learned in a year of freelancing
Learned something new?
Read more Software Engineering Lessons from Production
I write articles with real insight into the career and skills of a modern software engineer. "Raw and honest from the heart!" as one reader described them. Fueled by lessons learned over 20 years of building production code for side-projects, small businesses, and hyper growth startups. Both successful and not.
Subscribe below 👇
Software Engineering Lessons from Production
Join Swizec's Newsletter and get insightful emails 💌 on mindsets, tactics, and technical skills for your career. Real lessons from building production software. No bullshit.
"Man, love your simple writing! Yours is the only newsletter I open and only blog that I give a fuck to read & scroll till the end. And wow always take away lessons with me. Inspiring! And very relatable. 👌"
Have a burning question that you think I can answer? Hit me up on twitter and I'll do my best.
Who am I and who do I help? I'm Swizec Teller and I turn coders into engineers with "Raw and honest from the heart!" writing. No bullshit. Real insights into the career and skills of a modern software engineer.
Want to become a true senior engineer? Take ownership, have autonomy, and be a force multiplier on your team. The Senior Engineer Mindset ebook can help 👉 swizec.com/senior-mindset. These are the shifts in mindset that unlocked my career.
Curious about Serverless and the modern backend? Check out Serverless Handbook, for frontend engineers 👉 ServerlessHandbook.dev
Want to Stop copy pasting D3 examples and create data visualizations of your own? Learn how to build scalable dataviz React components your whole team can understand with React for Data Visualization
Want to get my best emails on JavaScript, React, Serverless, Fullstack Web, or Indie Hacking? Check out swizec.com/collections
Did someone amazing share this letter with you? Wonderful! You can sign up for my weekly letters for software engineers on their path to greatness, here: swizec.com/blog
Want to brush up on your modern JavaScript syntax? Check out my interactive cheatsheet: es6cheatsheet.com
By the way, just in case no one has told you it yet today: I love and appreciate you for who you are ❤️