One of my all-time favorite movies is Groundhog Day. In the film, the main character, Phil, repeats the same day for thousands of days. I've heard rumor before that the author said that Phil had repeated the day enough times to have been trapped in the loop for 40 years. I don't know if the author really said this, but it seems like enough time to have learned and experienced everything that he claims to have experienced in the film.
I believe this comedy offers a lot more meaning that what it appears on the surface. I think that we should all be striving to live our lives as Phil did in this one. No, ignore all of the silly, crazy, and suicidal days. Focus on the days where he was focusing on improving himself. Phil did a great thing in motivating himself to learn to speak French, play the piano, and genuinely change his character and outlook on life. He attained many artistic abilities and social skills. He also learned a great deal by varying his days. He repeated the same day over, but he never really repeated the day the same as he did before.
One of the greatest weaknesses that we as humans have is our urge to do today the same things we do every day. If we don't get out of our confort zone and try new things we will never learn, grow, or master anything new. I think I should strive to live my normal life more like Phil's.
I've heard the reverse mentioned about many of the developers in our industry. On many occasions and from many people, I've heard the saying that someone may have 10 years experience, but it's really 1 year of experience repeated 10 times.
That terrifies me. I really don't want to fall into that situation. i want to make sure that I am always learning and growing as a developer. I look at my code from 5 years ago and can't believe I wrote things that way. I look at my code from 6 months ago and am also glad I've improved. Ten years from now, I hope I will still be saying the same things about my past code. I also hope that the software I am writing, the languages I am using, and the patterns I am folliwing are vastly different from the ones I am using now. That will mean that I am improving my skills as a developer and improving myself.
The best way to describe this is to say that Phil took one day and expanded it to more than 10 years of experience. As developers, we should make sure that we don't condense 10 years of experience down to 1 of fewer years.
Try new things and continue improving.
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