Robbie Rambles | November 5, 2023
So Jen always tells me not to open these apologetically acknowledging how long it's been since the last entry, BUT when my best friend texts me asking where his Robbie Rambles has been at, then I know I've gone too long between entries.
The reality is that life has been very very busy. In my last missive, I naively mused that now I was done job hunting I would have some more bandwidth to write. Well, it turns out that when you start a new job, even if you're working a very reasonable number of hours and maintaining a healthy relationship between work and the rest of your life, getting oriented to your new responsibilities and absorbing all of the context necessary to do your job actually takes a lot out of you. Who knew?!
That said, I've been loving working at Second Front Systems. A lot of the work my team and I have been doing recently is more DevOps oriented, which is a significant change for me. Most of my experience has been around designing and developing APIs and database schemas, not configuring CI pipelines (apologies for the jargon to my non-technical readers). So I've been learning quite a bit, but having a blast doing so. It's a good team that is mission oriented and easy to work with.
When I say that my team is easy to work with, I mean that it is very explicitly baked into the culture. Before my start date, the company sent me three books (oh yeah, definitely gonna like working here), one of which was Kent Beck's Extreme Programming Explained. Extreme Programming is a set of principles and practices, which, coincidentally, are often applicable to life, but in the context of a software team help to improve the speed, quality, and enjoyment of software delivery. One of these practices is "pair programming". Historically, this has meant two programmers sitting side by side while one programmer "drives" with the keyboard while the other "navigates". For remote teams in 2023, this more looks like hopping on a video call and screensharing, or actively editing a file together using a feature like VS Code's Live Share.
Second Front has a very strong culture of pairing, and it's been enormously helpful in getting up to speed. I encourage anyone leading a software team to take a look at Beck's book and give some thought to the principles and practices therein. I hope to write up a more in-depth look at it in the future.
Of course, the new job hasn't been the only thing going on in life. I recently picked up a new hobby/exercise routine — Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. For a little over three weeks now, I've been training at Gracie Charlottesville. It's not my only exercise — F3 is still very much an essential part of my life, but I wanted something to do on non-F3 days. I did some Muay Thai classes for a few months with some men from church a number of years ago, and during that time attended one of the BJJ classes that the MMA gym offered. I enjoyed both sports, and had always wanted to give them another shot. Also, given my generally poor mobility, BJJ has been a great way to force growth and improvement in that area. Not gonna lie, I've been surprised at how sore the classes have made me. Nonetheless, it's been really fun. I can see how it can be addictive for many people — if I had more time, I would probably give the Muay Thai and MMA classes a shot too.
Jenoa suggested that my recent interest in BJJ/MMA is homesickness for Orange County manifesting. It's possible, but I never realized how deeply tied BJJ was to Southern California until I listened to this episode of the Jocko podcast with Rener Gracie. Turns out, the Gracie family brought BJJ to Torrance where they ran their first gym out of their garage. This may be basic historical knowledge for some, but it was news to me. Side note, Rener Gracie is a very loquacious individual, but I still enjoyed listening to his thoughts.
My friend and former housemate David also has a newsletter, which provided some additional spur for me to get back after things here. It's fun to keep up with friends in this former, way better than the Bird Site (I don't care what Elon calls it) and elsewhere. He also has an appreciation for beautiful leather bound Bibles, like yours truly, and I claw at the screen and might break the tenth commandment whenever he shares links to thems.
Yes, dad likes leather.
(Sorry not sorry for the juxtaposition of slightly crass humor and faith.)
Some linkage for you.
Seculary neglect, salvation anyway — Wesley Hill on the book of Esther — older but good.
Damn this all felt good to type out. Thanks for sharing your inbox with me, friends. Have a great week.
RJS
Thanks for the 'shout out' (do the kids still call it that?), Robbie. I always enjoy your Rambles.