On Awesomeness

I'm listening to All Kinds of Time by the group Fountains of Wayne who made such quirky pop-melodies as "Stacy's Mom", a song about a guy who's fallen for Stacy's mom (implied that Stacy is his age).

All Kinds of Time is about football, but more precisely, it's about reaching a kind of nirvana in a sport where avoiding mistakes is emphasized. To give you a sense of this, football (American) is essentially a game of errors. A quarterback tries to make good plays, while avoiding giving the ball to the opposition.

A quarterback's mistakes are no more dramatized then when he passes the ball, because this is a high risk move, that can lead to turnovers. In football, a turnover means the other team's offense gets control of the ball, and if you are deep in your own territory, it can be an easy score for the opposition.

In a typical scenario, the offense must move the ball about 80 yards to score a touchdown. They have three chances to move the ball ten yards at a time. If successful, they get three more chances, otherwise, they typically kick the ball to the opposition. Kicking the ball typically puts the ball deep in the opposition's side of the field, meaning they have to go about 80 yards to score.

If, on the other hand, the quarterback turns the ball over, the opposition might get the ball and only have to go, say 40 yards. In football, the shorter the distance, the better your chances to score. Turning the ball over means you've (temporarily) lost the chance to score, and your opponent may have a great chance to score.

When passing, a quarterback may only have a few seconds to decide whether a receiver is "open", i.e., it's safe enough to pass the ball without the defense (the opposition) intercepting the ball (thus, turning the ball over to the opposition). The more time a quarterback has to throw, the more likely they can be successful in making a decision. Even so, quarterbacks get desperate, and feel they can "squeeze" a pass, and often this leads to turnovers.

The song, then, is about when a quarterback has "all kinds of time" to make a pass. Even though the offensive line has a lot to do that, the song is about reaching a point when the quarterback "gets it", and that he's going to be successful. It's the aha! moment.

This leads me to Eric Hodel.

I was talking to Eric Hodel in what has to be the creepiest way to talk to someone (well, not really), which is merely to hang out while he's having a conversation. You resort to such breaks of decorum realizing such opportunities are pretty rare. After all, I'm not likely to meet Eric for months at least.

Oh, yeah, who is Eric Hodel. Hmm, well, that's a good one. From what I gather, he's a prolific Ruby coder who's contributed a lot to the open source community, in particular, writing autotest that removes one layer of human involvement in getting tests run. He's apparently written a fair bit of other code too.

From his talk, and from his general appearance, he seems like a meek personality, so it surprised me a little, when I followed up and asked him how does one become a good coder.

And he says (more or less) "Some people code, and some want to be awesome. I want to be awesome.".

Thoughts of Zig Ziglar came to mind. Zig Ziglar, as I mentioned in a previous blog, was a Christian motivational speaker back in the 60s, and might have single-handedly lead Americans to emphasize everything to the Nth degree. Rather than say "I'm good", you say "I'm great!". And of course, leading to "I'm awesome".

It was a brief comment, probably meant in the simplest of terms.

Eric Hodel wants to be awesome.

But as I am wont to do, I thought about what this meant, especially in light of what Marcel Molina (Junior) said about beauty.

Awesomeness, at least, when it applies to a person seems equivalent to "I do awesome things", which is more like "I write awesome code", as opposed to "My personality is awesome". Awesomeness, in this respect, appears to be about action. Getting stuff done. It is, presumably, also about a state of being. It is a goal, a task.

Awesomeness has a catch.

How do you obtain it? Part of it is, I'd imagine, inherent. For example, if you've never trained to be, say, a tennis player, then to be an awesome tennis player may be out of your grasp. However, if you've been a pretty good coder in some language, or if you're still in school learning to be a good coder, then becoming awesome might be in your grasp.

I had planned to ask Eric why he thought his talk was popular. He had given a talk on how to be more productive. My guess? People want to be more productive. But more importantly, they want to know if there's a secret. What does one of the most prolific coders in Ruby do, and can I do the same thing?

The likelihood is no, you can't do the same thing. You can only do better relative to yourself. Eric said that, in the end, he writes open source for stuff he cares about, and that he's not out to fix everyone else's wishlist of missing features. He figures they could do it.

Except, of course, they can't or won't because it takes too much work or smarts to be awesome. It's hard! They lack passion and brainpower. Eric might rightly point out, yeah, well that's your problem. And that'd be completely fair, which isn't to say some people don't ask anyway.

In some disciplines, most notably sports, there appears to be some criteria to judge how awesome you are. You can compare where you are to where you want to be. With coding, that's not nearly so clear. How do you know what to do to get better?

And in the end, why do we want to be awesome? Is it because society places a premium on success? That we strive to be better than others because we have pride? Or does it merely facilitate doing things. If I'm awesome, then I can things I want to. If I'm an awesome basketball player, I can dribble-drive and dunk. If I'm a chess player, I can compete against grandmasters.

And does the pursuit of awesomeness (as opposed to happyness) make one much more likely to achieve this level?

Somehow, I think it might make a difference.