Episode 196 | Rob Conery - Keep Your Ignorance Close

Guest: Rob Conery @robconery Rob Conery talks with Dave Rael about dumb courage, family, dishonesty, hype, and the trap of mediocrity Rob Conery helps developers of all sorts learn what's new with technology. He has been working in the technology field full time since 1998 as a DBA and then a web developer. His original focus was the Microsoft ASP.NET stack, building tools like Subsonic and the first Micro-ORM: Massive. Currently he's working on MassiveJS, which is a dedicated PostgreSQL data access tool for Node. He ported this to Elixir and named it Moebius. While not writing data access libraries, he likes to write books. He just finished The Imposter's Handbook, which is a compendium of skills and concepts that you need to know as a self-taught programmer. Things like Complexity Theory (P vs NP), Big-O notation, Database theory, Algorithms and more. He tried to make it down to earth, using hand-drawn sketches and simple code samples. He recently founded Big Machine, where he plans to keep writing/selling books and videos. Before that he did videos for Pluralsight, which bought his previous company Tekpub.com. Chapters: 1:45 - Dave introduces the show and Rob Conery6:37 - Rob's huge recent undertaking - writing The Imposter’s Handbook - motivations and mindset10:38 - Rob's approach to writing the book14:06 - The audience for The Imposter’s Handbook and the much too common problem of not admitting what we don't know16:23 - Willingness to be wrong, mediocrity, the many sides of risk18:00 - A revealing and insightful story of Rob taking action - illustrating the evaluation of risk, dumb courage, and perception24:26 - Dave's story of committing to publishing Developer On Fire27:36 - Rob's background, education, and how he landed in software30:36 - Rob's early web development32:51 - Rob's progression from a web development newbie to a valuable and valued professional38:13 - Rob's story of failure - inability to communicate the limitations of reality, having to let people go, getting fired, and tweaking Tekpub to its business detriment43:04 - Rob's success story - family, executing on the desire to live in Hawaii, traveling for a year with his family, writing The Imposter’s Handbook, and the social rewards from the gratitude of others47:20 - The deficiency of honesty in software development48:33 - How Rob stays current with what he needs to know and avoiding "hype by default"53:11 - Rob's book recommendations56:42 - Rob's tips for delivering more value58:47 - Keeping up with Rob Resources: Rob's Blog The Imposter’s Handbook - Rob Conery Big Machine - Rob's Business This Developer's Life - Rob's Podcast with Scott Hanselman Scott Hanselman on Developer On Fire Big O notation Karl Seguin The Little Redis Book - Karl Seguin P vs NP The Lambda Calculus NP hardness Song Exploder Hrishikesh Hirway The Martian - Andy Weir The Martian (Film) Harry Gregson-Williams (Music Composer for The Martian) Jason Fried on Staying Small Jon Skeet on Developer On Fire Jon Stewart on CNN/s Crossfire Neal Stephenson Rob's book recommendation: The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel (P.S.) - Michael Chabon Pattern Recognition - William Gibson Version Control: A Novel - Dexter Palmer Rob's top 3 tips for delivering more value: Get over yourself Know you don't know Keep your ignorance as close as you can