Time is a valid asset. It’s the most valuable asset we have in our lives. It doesn’t scale. It’s impossible to scale time.

We - as programmers, developers and tinkerers - have a multitude of interests that aren’t always compatible. This means reading and learning things at speeds that are not always advisable.

This is way time seems to always slip away. If more time is available to us, we’ll spend it until the last second.

Today I read a very interesting article about one of Linus Torvald’s talks. In the midst of talking, about software development, Linus said something that strikes with me:

“The innovation the industry talks about so much is bullshit. Anybody can innovate. Don’t do this big ’think different’… screw that. It’s meaningless. Ninety-nine per cent of it is get the work done.”

I’m not sure why but this quote resonate a lot with me and what I’m thinking about at this moment.

The work of a software developer, or an engineer, is getting the work done. It’s sweating out the details. It is delivering the solution to a problem, with quality, in a timely efficient manner.

It will never be just about creating innovation. Sometimes it’s just about fixing a problem - and that’s hard enough.

With that in mind, we have to be very selective of what we want to do and why. There’s a lot of noise in the development community and we have to focus and be there to work out the details.

To build what really matters to us.