The Passionate Programmer Quotes

“Always be the worst guy in every band you’re in. - so you can learn. The people around you affect your performance. Choose your crowd wisely.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“You can’t creatively help a business until you know how it works.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“When I'm old and dying, I plan to look back on my life and say, "Wow, that was an adventure", not, "Wow, I sure felt safe." - Tom Preston-Werner”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“You could have chosen any number of career paths, but this one is
exciting. It’s creative. It requires deep thinking and rewards you with
a sense of being able to do something that most of the people you meet
each day can’t imagine being able to do. We may worry about progressing
to the next level, making an impact, or gaining respect from
our co-workers or our peers in the industry, but if you really stop to
think about it, we’ve got it really good.

Software development is both challenging and rewarding. It’s creative
like an art-form, but (unlike art) it provides concrete,measurable value.

Software development is fun!

Ultimately, the most important thing I’ve learned over the journey that
my career in software development has been is that it’s not what you
do for a living or what you have that’s important. It’s how you choose to
accept these things. It’s internal. Satisfaction, like our career choices, is something that should be sought after and decided upon with intention.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“With credibility comes influence.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“If you want to really learn something, try teaching it to someone else.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“Education requires both a teacher
and a student. Many of us are too often reluctant to be a student.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“The easiest way to never get anything done is to never commit to anything.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“The label “jack-of-all-trades but master of none” is normally meant to be derogatory, implying that the labelee lacks the focus to really dive into a subject and master it. But, when your online shopping application is on the fritz and you’re losing orders by the hundreds as each hour passes, it’s the jack-of-all-trades who not only knows how the application’s code works but can also do low-level UNIX debugging of your web server processes, analyze your RDBMS’s configuration for potential performance bottlenecks, and check your network’s router configuration for hard-to-find problems. And, more important, after finding the problem, the jack-of-all-trades can quickly make architecture and design decisions, implement code fixes, and deploy a new fixed system to production. In this scenario, the manufacturing scenario seems quaint at best and critically flawed at worst.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“If you want to stay relevant, you’re going to have to dive into the domain of the business you’re in”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“Concepts and patterns that your brain is sorting through and making sense of are much more scalable and universal than any specific vendor’s technology”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“Your skills should transcend technology platform”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“Humility is not just something we develop so we can claim to be more spiritual. It also allows you to see your actions more clearly.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“A generation ago, fun wasn’t a deciding factor when we talked about career choices. Jobs aren’t supposed to be fun. They’re supposed to bring home the bacon. Fun is what you do on your off days. Fun happens in the evenings and weekends. But if your job isn’t fun, as we’ve come to realize, you don’t do a fantastic job at it.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“Always be the worst guy in every band you are in.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“You do not win a race by trying not to loose”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“Take calculated risks with your career. Don’t let fear consume you. And if you’re not having fun, you’re not going to be excellent.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“a big company makes a wonderful place to go and semiretire
for a while if you’re burned out. But if you’re striving to be
remarkable (which you are!), a big company is a hard place to get into
the right groove in the same way that a bakery is a bad place to go to
try to work off your love handles. The solution? Go independent!”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“Set your sights higher. Don’t think of yourself as a programmer at a specific company—after all, it’s not likely that you’ll be at the same place forever—but as a participating member of an industry. You are a craftsperson or an artist. You have something to share beyond the expense-reporting application you’re developing for your human resources department or the bugs you’ve got stacked up in your company’s issue-tracking system.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“Instead of feeling like you are
the computer genius, descending from computer heaven to save your
poor customer from purgatory, turn the tables around. If you’re, for
example, working in the insurance industry, think of your customer as
a subject matter expert in insurance from which you have to learn in
order to get your job done.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“You probably know the old clichéd philosophical question, “If a tree
falls in the forest but nobody is there to hear it fall, did it make a
sound?” The correct answer to the question is, “Who cares?”

I mean, the fall probably made a sound. That’s not a very exciting answer on a metaphysical level, but it probably did. But, if nobody heard it fall, then the fact that it made a sound doesn’t really matter.

The same goes for your work. If you kick ass and no one is there to see,
did you really kick ass? Who cares? No one.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“Your leaders want you to have independence and ownership. Making,
executing, and communicating plans will help you attain both.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“Be courageous enough to be honest.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“I don’t know” is not a phrase for the insecure.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“Because we all make mistakes, we also know that everyone else makes mistakes. So, within reason, we don’t judge each other on the mistakes we make. We judge each other on how we deal with those inevitable mistakes.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“It seems backward, but keeping your mind focused on the present will get you
further toward your goals than keeping your mind focused on the goal itself.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“I learned that no matter how cool the technology seemed to be, it was valuable only if it solved a real problem that was urgent and provided quantifiable
benefits. - Vik Chadha”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“Sir Isaac Newton said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the
shoulders of giants.” Smart guys like Isaac know that there is much to
be learned from those who came before us. Be like Isaac.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“As you’re
reading through code, you will find things that you would have never
done. You will find things you might have never even thought of.
Why? What was the developer thinking? What were his or her motivations? You can even learn from bad code with this kind of critical, self-aware exploration of an existing work.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development

“Studying the work of masters is an essential part of becoming amaster.”
― Chad Fowler, The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development