Be the Worst

The Passionate Programmer

• 作者: C Fowler
• 出版社/メーカー: Pragma
• 発売日: 2009/05/22
• メディア: ペーパーバック

先日紹介した書籍ですが、4項目として、「Be the Worst」があります。その冒頭で次のように述べられています。

Legendary jazz guitarist Pat Metheny has a stock piece of advice for young musicians, which is "Always be the worst guy in the every band you're in."

つまり、技量的に自分が最も下となるようなグループに属しなさいということです。それにより、自分の技量が向上するということです。つまり、

The people around you affect your own performance. Choose your crowd wisely.

そうは言っても、そのような開発組織を渡り歩くのはなかなかできないと思います。それで、本の中のAct on It!セクションででは、次のようなことをやってみてはと述べられています。

Find a "be the worst" situation for yourself. You may not have the luxury of immediately switching teams or companies just because you want to work with better people. Instead, find a volunteer project on which you can work with other developers who will make you better via asmosis. Check for developer group meetings in your city, and attend those meetings. Developers are often looking for spare-time projects on which to practice new techniques and hone their skills.

さらに続けて、

If you don't have an active developer community nearby, use the internet. Pick an open source project that you admire and whose developers appear to be at that "next level" you're looking to reach. Go through the project's to-do list or mailing list archives, pick a feature or a major bug fix, and code away! Emulate the style of the project's surrounding code. Thurn it into a game. Make your design and code so indistinguishable from the rest of the project that even the origianl developers eventaully won't remember who wrote it. Then, when you're satisfied with your work, submit it as a patch. If it's good, it will be accepted into the project. Start over, and do it again. If you've made decisions that the project's developers disagree with, either incorporate their feedback and resubmit or take note of the changes they make. On you next patch, try to get it in with less rework. Eventually, you'll find yourself to be a trusted member of the project team. You'll be amazed at what you can learn from a remote set of senior developers, even if you never get a chance to hear their voices.

Internetとオープンソースの普及により、個人でもこのような活動ができる時代になったということでしょう。