In the last episode we talked about 2017 we did a recap and I think each and every one of you who are listening for being a part of this show's history and obviously wouldn't exist without the listening end point for what we're creating here so you are integral to this show's success but more importantly you're the reason the show exists in the first place. So thank you so much for downloading this podcast on regular basis for subscribing for interacting with me for sending me emails with questions and also the most meaningful thing that I get from listeners is your stories the stories of how how you've progressed through your career how Developer Teahas played a role in that I'm so grateful that this show can be a part of your stories. Thank you so much. My name is Jonathan Cutrell you're listening to Developer Teain today's episode we're going to be looking ahead we're looking forward into 2018. Thank you so much for listening again and before we jump in I do want to take a moment to thank today's incredible sponsor Linode Linode has been such a consistent sponsor they sponsored an average of one episode a week in 2017 and they've been such a great partner to work with they're so flexible and they provide a great service to Developer They're involved in the community and so I highly recommend you check them out simply because they are so committed to this community they're not just looking to optimize their race they're actually investing in long term relationships with developers go and check it out spec.fm slash Linode you can use a code Developer Tea2017 at checkout of course you know we're almost to 2018 so make sure you look at a future episode of Developer Teato get that that new code if you've rolled over in 2018 already to use that at checkout to get that credit but Linode provides all of their services with money back a 70 money back guarantee in their all hourly as well so you can spend up a $5 a month server and then you could switch that up and go to much larger a much larger offering you scale up into a different node and then you could scale it right back right back down and Linode provides even a command line API for doing that kind of stuff that kind of scaling so tons of stuff that they have we really can't cover it all on this show we're going to try to walk through some of those specific use cases in future episodes that Linode is sponsoring so thank you again to Linode for sponsoring today's episode of Developer Teaso I've done a lot of introspective thinking about the purpose of this show on January 5th Developer Teaturns three years old we've been around for three years it's a long time at least in podcast land in digital services land or whatever you want to call this in media land you could you could say that we're on season three but really it's more like ten seasons worth of this show you know we have 472 episodes right now that are live it's quite a few the average TV show has something like 15 episodes so if you do the math there you're looking at something like 30 seasons if you if you do count it that way but Developer Teahas always been about getting to the point and for that reason we try to make this show shorter than the average podcast the last year we had an average show length of about 24 minutes and I would say for the most part that goal has been accomplished many of the longer episodes were the interview style episodes most of these monologue style episodes we've managed to keep well under that 20 minute mark and again that's not arbitrary we didn't choose that number you know out of thin air the whole point of that in the very beginning was to get to the point to provide as much value as possible without taking up so much of your attention so much of your time so much of your day that you have to you know schedule your podcast listening into your day of course the nature of podcast media is that very likely you're doing something else maybe you're washing dishes or you're on your commute or maybe you're at the gym most podcast listeners do something while they're listening to the podcast and my goal with the show and part of the reason we made it short was to fit inside of some of those activities but also so that you don't you know lose the context so you can engage it mindfully so that as you listen you don't trail off in your mind and stop listening at one point and then come back and you know leave and return and leave and return I want to pack as much of value into these episodes as possible so moving into 2018 we're going to continue that that feature of Developer Teathe short episodes and hopefully we're going to continue refining the episodes and focusing them on the most valuable pieces so that you can move on with your day and and truly be mindful as you're listening to this show if you've been listening to Developer Tea for a long time then you've hopefully noticed a shift in the past few months we've refined our vision and the purpose of this show more than we ever have in the latter part of 2017 the purpose of Developer Tea is to help driven developers uncover their career purpose so that they will be driven to do better work and have a positive impact on the people they're around this seems like a lofty goal but the reality of this is that there's a community of people who are making software every day every single day there are hours that are being turned into software energy that is being turned into software and that software has a major effect on the world and so if you're one of those people then you are a part of that movement your part of that large scale a changing of the world every day our world is shifted by software and the responsibility for that is with the people who are creating a large largely speaking so I want for us to do that mindfully for us to do it intentionally for us to understand the effects of the work that we do and the first step in that process is truly connects to a purpose but as we move into 2018 I want to kind of set up three pillars I guess you can call them three primary areas of discussion that Developer Teaengages in because when we talk about for example last year we talked about a sync code and promises it's kind of hard to understand how that connects to you know your career purpose right these things seem worlds apart but as it turns out it's important that we choose our everyday actions these specific things that we're doing the code that we write the practices that we have they're important and they make up the kind of the pathway to accomplishing that purposeful underlying thing whatever those drives are for you and so we can't ignore the practices right so I want to share with you the three pillars for Developer Tea we've mentioned to them already first one is purpose understanding your own purpose now this sounds a theory it sounds difficult to to articulate and that's because in some ways it is difficult to articulate but understanding what you care about understanding what really fulfills you to be involved with and understanding that purpose really is kind of the science of fulfillment that you living your purpose doesn't have to be a lofty thing it really can be that you connect with you know the outcomes or you connect with the way that you work in a meaningful way and understanding purpose is not just about understanding your own values in your own you know vision of the world but it's also understanding others purpose right being able to get on board and drive the purposes of other people whether you work in client services or you know maybe you have co-workers that have a collective goal they are trying to accomplish together helping others find their own purpose that's kind of the stage that I'm personally driving towards helping you as developer to listeners uncover your own way of seeing the world your own purposes finding others who have overlap with what you want in the world right so having a common vision that you both agree on all of this is purpose driven work now this sounds kind of lofty for a developer podcast but the truth is you know if you don't have that compass if you don't understand what you care about at a core level then you know the code will eventually expire it's very rare for developers are really anybody to do the same exact thing for their entire careers there are a few narrow careers that that's true for but by and large your career will change the actions that you take in order to earn your salary that's going to change over time so finding that base level compass finding a way of of aligning yourself on a path so important to your long term fulfillment to your professional development as a developer uh there's so many things that that plays into and we're going to we're going to explore this more in 2018 perhaps more than any other year previously on the show the second pillar and this is one that we haven't mentioned on the show today yet uh the second pillar is principles principles principles are an identifiable truth uh there's something that you can come back to and act on and these are systems that you've been able to observe and test your actions against you know a principle might be for example humans overestimate what they are capable of doing within a given period of time this is a good principle to have and it's one that can drive the third pillar we've already mentioned it the third pillar is practices so principles and practices kind of have this interplay where you identify principles and then you determine actions as a result of principles so a principle might be humans are not very good at finding bugs that they've caused with new code uh humans are bad at finding bugs they've caused with new code that's kind of long for a principle but it still holds to be true and so therefore an action you might take as a result of this principle a practice you might have as a result of this principle is test driven development instituting regression tests so that as you add new code you're protecting yourself against the reality that humans are bad at finding new bugs that they've caused as a result of new code right uh so this interplay finding these principles and the principles can be you know much higher level than this they can be much more zoomed out they can also be much more zoomed in and principles are driving our adoption of practices and as it turns out you can also identify your principles based on your purpose so these three areas are kind of always mixed in with each other they always are defining each other in new ways they're adding new context and you ultimately can cultivate a much more effective way of working if you keep in mind all three and that's what this show is going to drive to do I want to identify principles that I believe all developers can share and I want to identify practices that are derived from these principles and I want to help you define your own purpose and that's what 2018 is going to look like we will always be able to see an episode through the lens of practices principles and ultimately purpose now there's one big caveat to all of this and that is that it's always subject to change as we learn more as I learn more in creating this show as as I receive feedback from listeners as I see new things in the world as we experience new things in creating new episodes for this show we might find that this is inadequate everything is an experiment we're always able to respond to change and this is something that I believe to go back to our previous discussion is a principle that growth is a good thing and growth requires change if you're not willing to change then you're unable to grow these two things are kind of connected eternally to each other growth and change are necessary and whether or not you know it and this is a second principle here change is always occurring whether you wanted to or not so even if you feel like things are staying the same for you you relative to everything else you're changing you're falling behind and so this motion is constant and so as you listen to the show I would hope that you are identifying principles that apply to you that you're adopting things from this show or you're rejecting things from this show as you see fit I hope more than anything else that this show incites you to personal growth and more specifically personal growth that helps you uncover your own purpose thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer TeaI hope you're looking forward to 2018 like I am I'm very inspired as it turns out this episode is actually being released on my birthday so I'm really excited to be able to share this with you this deep sense of purpose with you and to share this journey with all of you who are listening to this show I can't wait to hear more from you and really I want these lines of communication to be closer I want the people who are listening to this show to feel more connected to this community so I'd love to hear from you please send me an email at developertea@gmail.com with any kind of comments thoughts questions that you have you know any kind of resources even that you want to share with me or share with the community broadly I also recommend that you go and join spectrum spectrum is a brand new tool for cultivating communities it was built by Brian and Brenn from design details and the rest of their team max storyboard is on their team go and check it out it's an excellent product beautifully made but it also encourages thoughtful communication and conversation around specific questions ideas it's hard to explain it's actually a very cool product there's nothing like it out there except for spectrum go and check it out spectrum dot chat and the spec community can be found on spectrum as well just head to spectrum dot chat slash spec FM that's all one word spec FM thank you so much for listening to the show today but also throughout the year of 2017 I encourage you that if you connected with what we talked about today that you subscribe in whatever pie-gassing app you use so that you can stay connected with us throughout 2018 thank you so much for listening thanks again to Lynn out for sponsoring today's episode had to spec dot FM slash Lynn out make sure you use the code Developer Tea 2017 if you get this in the next two days and of course until next year enjoy your tea