In life I tend to do things a bit strange. Not what most would consider “normal”. For instance, I run thousands of miles each year and have been known to run up to 100 miles in a single week. (Yes, run.) I am a black belt in Judo, and enjoy being thrown to the ground, only to bounce up and get my turn bouncing someone else. I love scuba diving, and feel a great sense of relaxation while deep under water with only the sounds of my own breathing and bubbles around me. I’m the organizer of a PHP user group, and the organizer of a PHP conference. My family and I take vacations where we hike 30 or more miles over a few days, and come home feeling rested. To top it all off, I love to refactor code!
So, no, I do not live life in the “normal” zone.
However, when it comes to coding PHP I do things pretty much as you would expect from a senior developer. Most of what I do is pretty normal, with only a small dash of interesting here and there to satisfy some exotic needs. Of course I spend most of my time these days refactoring other people’s code, but even then it is pretty normal and usually falls into a normal pattern.
Then a couple weeks ago I had the great opportunity to organize my first hack-a-thon for the South Florida PHP User Group (SoFloPHP), and it sure was an eye opening experience for me. Things kicked off pretty normal as most attendees split up into groups and started discussing their projects for the day, and the coding began. I also had a small project I intended to work on, but ended up spending most of my day pulled between groups to help out in one way or another. Questions on how to set up hosting, how to use Git version control and github, as well as how to use CakePHP. I loved it, and really enjoyed helping others with their projects.
Later in the day I was helping someone with a Git workflow when he said something that hit me squarely in the face. He said, “I do not get to use Git in my normal job, so it is nice to do it here.” Now this is not the first time I have heard such a thing, but for some reason it really sunk in this time as I realized that hack-a-thons are not for “normal” things we do every day. Instead we enjoy hack-a-thons and other social coding activities because it affords us a chance to learn new things, use technologies we would not normally get to touch, and to go beyond our “normal” things.
This opened up a whole new world for me, and from now on I have another way of looking at these social activities. Attending activities like this are educational, enlightening, and door opening as well as presenting a social aspect that really helps developers advance their skills and networks.
I can’t wait until the next one.