Russ Olsen

The other day I was talking to a coworker about learning Ruby. He said that as a Java programmer the hardest part of learning Ruby was not the syntax nor the dynamic typing. Oh, he could write perfectly correct Ruby, sans semicolons and variable declarations. His problem was that he found himself falling back into his same old Java habits. He felt like he was missing something because his Ruby code always ended up looking pretty much like what he would have written in Java. This is not a problem that is unique to Java or Ruby or even programming languages. We all have a comfort zone of techniques and habits, our ‘happy place‘ where we feel productive and comfortable. The trouble with the happy place is that if you stay in your happy place too long you will be miserable. The world will move on and there you will be, eyes tight shut, hands over your ears, ... (more)