Aaron Petcoff

aaronpetcoff.me

@ughitsaaron

hello@aaronpetcoff.me

Goals

• Beat a path for newer developers
• Help experienced developers reflect

tl;dr

Own your curiosity and embrace community

What's Great

• Vibrant field
• We make cool things 💅
• The AH-HA moment

Challenges

• "Inner critic" 👿
• Pressure to know everything

Inner Critic

Hypothesis

Program only does what we tell it to do

Errors remind us of the limitations of the human condition

(Existential crisis )

Pressure to Know Everything

Hypothesis

Necessarily interdisciplinary field

We want what others have

(Eat their brains; gain knowledge )

A Messy Combination

Loud inner critic

+

Pressure to know everything

Imposter Syndrome

Consequences

• Discouragement/Burnout 👧

Strategies

• Personal 👧
• Collective 👭

👭

• Request feedback
• Gain more familiarity
• Teach others
• ∞

👭

• Test
• Write docs
• Help fix bugs/triage