Reuven Lerner made one of the first 100 websites... ever... and other things I learned recording his DevJourney

Reuven Lerner made one of the first 100 websites... ever... and other things I learned recording his DevJourney

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Tim Bourguignon
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This week, I published Reuven Lerner's #DevJourney story on my eponym Podcast: Software developer's Journey. Among many other things, here are my main personal takeaways:

  • As a child, Reuven was prescribed video gaming (on an Atari) to help refocus his eyes! That's the first time I heard of such a prescription :P
  • Reuven was studying at MIT when the World Wide Web was born. As such, he created one of the first 100 websites ever, which has added to "the list" :P
  • Reuven described Web-Development back then as "fiddling" more than software engineering. "You cannot call that software development" he said. Was it really this way? Or was he so good at his job, that it appeared too easy to him and thus not a "real" job? I tend to believe the latter...
  • "It's better to be the bigger fish in a smaller pond" said Reuven. He tried to be a trainer for various topics. But his training business really had a breakthrough when he decided to specialize on Python only!
  • Reuven made an interesting point about the training business. As a contractor, you can be booked and dropped very quickly. As a trainer, you are booked a very long time in advance. This provides more visibility on your own cash-flow and a better control over your finances.
  • Reuven said: "There are two types of questions, good questions and excellent questions. Good questions are the ones where the students don't know the answer. Excellent questions are the ones where the teacher doesn't know the answer [...] We are all always learning, asking questions is an attitude we have to embrace." I couldn't agree more.
  • Pair-programming is a great accelerator for learning, remembering and trying things.
  • One more quote I love: "Try to learn and use the idioms of the language, you can "speak Python with a strong C++ accent", but the language and the frameworks will then be in your way."

Thanks Reuven for sharing your story with us!

You can find the full episode and the shownotes on devjourney.info

Did you listen to his story?

  • What did you learn?
  • What are your personal takeaways?
  • What did you find particularly interesting?
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