I just read that Steve Nash has been named the NBA's Most Valuable Player for the second straight season. I wish that I knew enough about basketball to appreciate Nash's skills. But after being a software development manager for almost two years, I've interviewed, coached and talked with enough software developers to have a decent idea about how hard it is to be consistently good, let alone the best.
As I thought about comparisons between Nash's accomplishments and developing software, I was a little bit shocked at how easy we as developers (or development managers) have it.
As an MVP, Nash constantly has to face the best players on the opposing team. Coaches will devise entire strategies that are devoted to taking Nash out of the game. Analysts watch hour after hour of Nash's game just to pinpoint weaknesses or habits that can be exploited. As if playing the game at a high level of skill wasn't enough, Nash has to constantly evaluate how he plays and adapt it to the defence that he'll face on any given night.
In contrast, life as a developer is pretty sedate. Some of us have created a toolbox that will help us through most jobs. We make use of design patterns and code generation in pretty much the same way from project to project. Amongst other things, we've learned to code to interfaces rather than implementations and we're learning new techniques all the time. But what would we do if our challenges changed every time we figured out how to solve them'
Some would argue that this difference between software developers and Steve Nash might explain why he makes roughly $11 million per season (for more info on Nash's salary, read Mark Cuban's post 'Steve Nash, Part 1'). But I would argue that injecting reality into this post would completely defeat the purpose of it.
The purpose of this post is to make you ask yourself a question: 'what am I doing to get better'' If it takes you a few moments to think up an answer, then your answer is 'not enough'. If you don't even understand why you need to ask that question, then you're either fresh out of school or soon to be unemployed.
For those basketball fans that found this post, I heartily apologize. But here's some photos of a naked girl in a bar to make it up to you.