The Power of People
So today, I find myself thinking “what is it that makes things happen?” Many people would say, and perhaps somewhat accurately, all the technological advances, the tool sets, and other sorts of just plain “stuff”. What do you suppose Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna used to write the UNIX operating system? The C language… hmmm, wonder where the C language came from and what tools were used to create it??? Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie’s brains, of course!
Ok, so they just whipped out their laptops and fired up their favorite IDE, of course, right? Nooooo, I won’t go into a dissertation of what they used for tools, that is beyond the scope of this article. The whole point of that should be obvious… it came from their minds and intellect!
So, now I am thinking, how many coders are patchwork coders? What I mean is the first thing we do when we want to do something is type keywords into our favorite search engine, thinking “man, I know someone out there has had to do this already!” I would guess that at least 99.9% of us would hold up our hands and say, “guilty as charged,” I know I would and that is not all bad.
What is “thinking outside of the box?” Sometimes the experience found in figuring it out on your own can be much more rewarding that simply doing what everyone else is doing… now I know, even as I say that, of the power of community, but really, what makes up community? This is the whole point of this article! YOU do.
I am beginning my path into learning the Zend Framework… I won’t learn it in a day, a week, a month or even a year… I probably won’t ever learn all there is to know about it, because of the power of “you”. Together “we” can be truly great; did you know that if one horse can pull 1000 pounds by itself, 2 can do about ten times that amount?
The thing that makes things work is you, my friend, and me. The balance is found in knowing when you need the help of others, but don’t sell yourself short. If you read and understand this post, you are cognitive enough to understand how to do things on your own and when to enlist the help of others…
Thank you for reading and I look forward to reading your comments below!
Bud Manz
Manz Web Designs, LLC – Owner
