Focus on Family More Than Code

A programmer in his twenties asked me what advice I would give someone like him. I said: focus on family more than code. I think it is the best advice I have. I also think I am close to the last person who earned the right to say it, which is more or less how I know it is true. I spent my own twenties optimizing the wrong system. Very efficiently. With excellent test coverage. So take what follows as a field report from the far side of a trade I already made, not a sermon from a mountain. I am not your mentor. I am closer to your outcome, the one you are presumably trying to avoid. Here is the short version, and then the long and expensive version of each. Focus on family more than code. The mania looked like productivity. It always does. Marry the person who tells you the truth at cost. Do not make load-bearing anything you do not control. Warn the people you love before you ship the breaking change. Sleep is a load-bearing wall, not a productivity tip. Ship to a userbase of one, and…