henderjon

A Journeyman Curmudgeon and Oxford Comma Apologist

I am a self-trained developer whose hobby turned into a career. At my day job, I currently oversee the development of an education based SaaS reading platform that serves an ever growing number of books to hundreds of thousands of students around the world every day. I enjoy learning, but enjoy my family more. I currently live in Minnesota with my wife, kids, and dog where I spend most of my free time cooking, reading, learning to walk, and training to be a curmudgeon.

Proverbs and Axioms

I have many principles that inform how I approach what I do. Some of these are borrowed, all of them are relevant.

Learn to entertain yourself
Keep first things first
Understand solitude
Without exception, tell the truth
Walk humbly
Take relationships seriously
Say "thank you"
If you're wrong just say so
A quiet river runs deep
Clear is better than clever
Readable means reliable
If the implementation is hard to explain it's probably a bad idea
Maintenance is usually the most significant cost
Patterns are not rules
Rules are not reasons
Solve one problem at a time
The less you do, the more of it you can do
Assume it will break and you will have to fix it
Simpler is better
Every house must have it's builder
It's only worth what you're willing to pay
If it's not yours, don't touch it
Show up on time
In the face of uncertainty, don't
If it ain't broke, don't fix it
More often than not, you'll find exactly that for which you were looking
Safety Third
Read the instructions
It's not what you have, it's what you do with it
In order to know anything you must first believe something
Truth is found in the correct interpretation of facts
Use the correct categories and measurements
Solutions are seldom the same size as they problems they solve
It is more important to learn how to recover from failure than it is to avoid it
Coram Deo
God doesn't call you to be successful; he calls you to be faithful
Where your treasure is there your heart will be also
Do your own laundry
Don't take down a fence until you understand why it was built
Haste makes waste
Waste not, want not
Why matters
Coherence is a necessary property
Culture eats strategy
For what purpose is the system optimized?
What if the system is working correctly?
Virtue without humility is vice
Autonomy and ownership are better than governance and control
Cliche as it seems, follow the money
If you want to be good at something, do it every day
Never lose your sense of wonder
A government big enough to give you what you want
is a government big enough to take from you what you have