Hey this is Overpass insights my name is Eric and I make apps now
today I want to talk about being too comfortable as a software developer
all right so in a couple of weeks I'll be taking a trip to Croatia and I plan on working the entire
week that I'm there so I'm going to enjoy the weekends and then on you know Monday to Friday
I'm going to sit down with my laptop and work just as I would normally as if I'm working from
home or I'm working in an office I want to really try the digital Nomad style right I talked about
this for years like that's what I would love to do like as a software developer I should be able
to work from anywhere as long as the internet connection is good just take my laptop and just
work anywhere in fact a few years ago I went to Slovakia just by myself and it wasn't working
but I remember sitting in a coffee shop just sitting at a Starbucks and I could see this guy
I was like sitting behind him I could see his laptop and he was just coding in
Flutter and I you know on his little MacBook or whatever and he was just sitting there through
the day working and I thought I could do that I would love to do that just to be able to
work through the day and then at night go out and explore and just be able to travel
that way right I think that would be amazing to do a lot of you guys on the channel you told me
about your digital Nomad Lifestyles and I thought I'd love to do that but then it dawned on me that
I don't know if I could right one of the things has happened over the last few years and probably
my whole development career is I've gotten very comfortable with my workstation here at home or
whenever when I had an office my workstation in the office I'm comfortable with multiple monitors
in the keyboard and The mouse and the chair I got a chair a couple years ago with rollerblade Wheels
which is really really awesome but so unnecessary in fact, I try to make myself so comfortable
throughout the course of the day that it finds it difficult to do anything when I'm not here in fact
if I'm if I have like a task or something to do also say I'll wait till I'm back at my desk and
then I'll get that done just because it's easier that way right this summer I read a book called
The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter and it was really good it had nothing to do with computing
or software development or anything like that basically, it was about how as a society we've
become addicted to comfort just in general and it always seems to be going that way all the time
you know the stairs what's the elevator came out people stopped using the stairs or the escalator
you know people stop using the scare stairs when the remote control came out people stopped getting
up to change the channels and over the years we're getting more and more comfortable with
things which is not necessarily a bad thing since it's making us less more dependent on comfort
right and if things are optimal for us we find we just don't tend to do it and the more I started
thinking it was a really good book but if you're gonna like it's a good book but like there's a Joe
Rogan podcast where he's on there where he talks about the same thing so if you don't want to read
the book watch that it's really really interesting it's got the Comfort Crisis with Michael Easter
and I started to think about this a lot where I am definitely definitely getting addicted to comfort
the streaming services are always there you know I've got any bit of information at the computer
I want I need if I'm having trouble with a bit of code I can find somebody else stack Overflow who's
had it before hopefully although I've got I got a few dingers right now that I'm I'm chasing after
so sorry I think could I actually work from somewhere else from an Airbnb from just the
laptop from one little tiny screen as opposed to I've got well I've got two screens here in front
of me at one point I've had three screens I would have a hundred screens if I could I would love to
have a a virtual reality device where I just have this unlimited desktop where my coding window over
there my database diagram over there my brows over here my emulator over here but you know sometimes
it's just yeah but and that's just the way it was it's never been that way before so today this
week I'm setting myself this goal and yeah I'm gonna try to stick to it whereas I'm gonna move
everything to my little MacBook Air as opposed to my desktop so I've got my I have an iMac with 72
gigabytes of RAM I just loaded that thing up with ram II don't have to wait for that thing at all
so I've gotten really really comfortable with that move everything to my little laptop my 16
gigabyte MacBook Air and just see you know make sure first of all because when I'm traveling in
a couple weeks I need to make sure that I have everything there this is one of the problems I
have when I do work on it and I I take it to uh to an office or something like that I start realizing
oh I don't have the distribution certificates for this or I don't have the you know oh I've got this
one uh I got this one PNG which I it's on my local hard drive you know whatever or that thing didn't
get checked in to get properly when I downloaded stuff so that's a constant problem that I have
working between two different computers so I'm going to try to like consolidate onto this and I'm
I'm not quite sure what I'm gonna do I'm gonna try to do it just using the one screen and just
using the trackpad like no mouse and just get used to those shortcut keys which I've always
tried to do anyway so it's easy to get comfortable as a developer and you know it's one of the nice
things about our profession is we should be able to just take our laptop and go and work anywhere
and I know a lot of you guys do that and I've gotten lazy over the years I've gotten comfortable
so it's something that I'm going to try to work on this week but my
question to you guys though I wanted to ask you this to to to the group here is
how do you code you code on a single screen on a single laptop do you use a mouse do you use
you know or do you need to have those multiple monitor experiences
because that's going to be I think the multiple monitor thing is going to bother me more than
anything else I've gotten so used to that but you know it's just a case of switching back and forth
and back and forth back and forth between screens which I think I could do anyway I just
wanted to share that with you guys it's about been my that's my goal for this week is it is
to just rely on my one laptop and uh probably sit at the kitchen table so I'm not distracted by this
big beefy computer here unless I need to power it on to get a distribution certificate off of it or
something like that so anyway I hope you guys are having a having a great week having a great day
Thanks for liking and subscribing that is it for today I'll talk to you guys again next time