I never expected watching the movie ‘Spiderman’ would give me an insight about social responsibility. In the movie, Spiderman goes on to wrestle a strong opponent for a promised prize money of 3k$. When he finishes, he is cheated by the cashier and given only 100$ citing some lame reason. As he walks out of the room a burglar breaks into the room, steals all the cash and gets away. Even though the burglar was within the reach of Spiderman to get stopped, he chooses not to act which gives him a satisfaction that something bad happened to the cheater. The burglar’s future action kills the uncle (foster parent like) of Spiderman to get away with the cash. This event makes him feel guilty and makes him go on a mission to protect people in need through his new found powers.
We face many situations on a day to day basis where we may choose to remain inactive as we are not directly affected/influenced by it. In any social setting the loop is closed and our inactivity will hurt us sometime later. We have social circles every where and there is an implicit responsibility to not cause hardships to others. The mutual feeling of getting protected by the others helps us grow in strength and channelize the energy into more productive tasks. The seemingly simple problem will soon grow to be a 800 pound gorilla or the elephant in the corner.
It is not necessary to sacrifice one’s dreams to do whats right like how Aunt May advises Spiderman but it is worth to nip the problems in front our eyes and it is our responsibility too.
Between Spaghetti, Pasta and Sandwich which one would you choose if you are writing and maintaining code, how it should be like? Definitely not the spaghetti right? I have come across spaghetti code and detest it to the core.; but I have also observed that wrong understanding of OO or TOO (too much object orientation) and obsession with modularization leads to pasta like code. This makes us go through multiple files and sections of code to understand simple functionalities. Cannot we translate most of the software requirements into code like how a well prepared sandwich can be nutritious and filling too?
I don’t have an answer to this question but my readings like Worse is better (talks about less and useful features) make me infer that like every person’s hunger can be satisfied with cost-effective, tasty, nutritious and simple to make food; most of the software requirements should also be delivered with simple to write and maintain code. Aesthetics, modularization and other bells & whistles should not come at a cost.
Clayton M Christensen’s writing on ‘How will you measure your life?’ made me have a re-look at my priorities. In the year 2010 I had been doing so much that I had never been so busy, stressed and tired ,eventually fell too sick. Yet when I recollect that year, nothing good stands out barring a few high points and most of the time I had spent trying to squeeze in more and more. On the contrary when I identified some core areas to work & concentrate; and try not to pack myself, I see a remarkable improvement in efficiency and my sense of well being.
I inferred Clayton’s writing as below
Get the priorities right and use the resources wisely, we have only 12-14 hours in a day. We should learn to amplify the effectiveness in the tasks we will be involved in every day instead of trying to cram in more hours. Keep revisiting the priorities as they change very often and one plan is never good for long
Avoid succumbing the temptation of this one time. Some positive habits are hard to catch on and difficult to follow. Have something like a Seinfeld calendar and make sure not to break the chain.
Stay away from the power tools both at work and the family. The best way we can win the confidence of others is to create a level playing field and help each other. Collective intelligence is far more superior than the sum of individual intelligence put together, team work will take us to new height even in a learning mode.
Every person we meet has something to teach us, right or wrong is always a perception. By being humble we will be approachable and people will readily share experience and knowledge to help us out. Individuals who act overly assertive or arrogant can leave a wrong impression of being successful, we should be careful not to follow them because mostly their arrogant behavior is to mask their shortcomings. They need to put someone else down to feel good about themselves.
Have simple rules and values by which we would leave our place lot better than what we found.
Clayton M Christensen is a professor at Harvard Business School. His work on which this blog is based on is available at HBR
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