1 To the streets

I am lucky. I wrote my first program in the 80’s. It only took me turning on the computer, which took less than a second, writing two lines of code, typing “RUN” and voila! The screen was suddenly filled with my name. I was immediately awestruck with the possibilities ahead of me. If I could do this with three lines, imagine what I could do with six lines, or even 20 lines? My 9-year-old brain got flooded with so much dopamine that I was addicted to programming right there at that instant.

Today, software development is immensely more complex. It’s nowhere close to the simplicity of the 80’s where user interactions only consisted of “press any key to continue,” albeit users occasionally struggled to find an “any” key on their keyboard.  There were no windows, no mice, no web pages, no UI elements, no libraries, no frameworks, no runtimes, no mobile devices. All you had was a set of commands and a static hardware configuration.

1.1   What matters in the streets

1.2   Who’s a street coder?

1.3   Great street coders

1.3.1   Questioning

1.3.2   Results-driven

1.3.3   High-throughput

1.3.4   Embracing complexity and ambiguity

1.4   The problems of modern software development

1.4.1   Too many technologies

1.4.2   Paragliding on paradigms

1.4.3   The black boxes of technology

1.4.4   Underestimating overhead

1.4.5   Not my job

1.4.6   Menial is genial

1.5   What this book isn’t

1.6   Themes

1.7   Summary