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by David Heinemeier Hansson.
Original Post: Computerworld portait: Love it or leave it
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The print edition of the Danish Computerworld features a full-page portrait of yours truly on page 23 today. It tells the story of how I started out with gaming journalism, but left for web development when I got involved with 37signals.
It's also a story of "love it or leave it". How I fell in love with web development in Ruby and how that lead to Rails. I picked up this monicker from Chad Fowler's new excellent book My Job Went To India (And All I Got Was This Lousy Book). He writes about his own transition from music to programming:
Looking back on it, I was addicted, but in a good way. My drive to create had been ignited in much the same way that it had when I started writing classical music or playing improvisational jazz. I was obsessed with learning anything and everything I could. I wasn’t in this for a new career. In fact, many of my musician friends thought of it as an irresponsible distraction from my actual career. I was in it because I couldn’t not be.
That's how it becomes all worth it. The long nights, the single-track focus, and eyes on the work itself as the prize. And Chad's book codifies a lot of the techniques I instinctually followed to be at whatever position I am in today. You really should read it.
Regarding the Computerworld article, I can't distribute the PDF and they don't have the story up on their online version. So that'll have to be a paper pick-up to read.
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The print edition of