Can I Help You?

Drive Time

A question that I end up spending a lot of time with is, "Who wants this?" Both inside and outside of a work context. I find myself circling this quandary. Even for basic things, like grilling up some food for a party. It's great that I have stacks of burgers, brats, veggie dogs, corn; etc. but if I can't figure out who wants what I'm probably going to end up wasting a bunch of food. Waste is bad, not just for food, but time, people, and resources are expensive to waste. When I'm doing something I want put as much of the input as possible directly into the output.

I Want to Believe

I loved the show The X-Files. It had the perfect mix of creepy, cheesy, science-y themes that kept me hooked. To me TV that works, is grounded in knowing who it's for. The X-Files seemed to have it's peak audiences in its 5th/6th and early 7th Seasons, airing 1997-1999.

Though there's certainly a stack of well reasoned autopsies on why the show grew through Season 5 and then slowly lost audience share; but I'm stuck on the notion that the Target Audience for The X-Files was likely everyone who was a bit anxious and unsure of of what the popular turning of the millennium on Jan 1, 2000. (Peep that website for a trip down memory lane)

Living through the news cycles definitely had a frothy mix of unhinged exuberance and crushing dread. We were going to rocket into the future and we're doomed. The X-Files captured that hope, faith and fear and fed the audience what they needed. After the clock ticked, and possibly a pay dispute, the show slowly shed it's guiding light, delivering less of what it's audience wanted.

Downward Value

The cost of everything is everything, but nothing is free. In the shifting world of AI assisted development I'm becoming increasingly aware that I need to understand my own value proposition. I need to spend as much time as possible doing things that I do best.

But, that's not really good enough. The most critical pivot is going to be to ensure that I re-double my efforts to understand who I am putting my best foot forward for. With Github Copilot I can generate thousands of lines of code incredibly fast. With a dozen tab-enter couplets I can generate tons of boilerplate, or for giggles If I wanted to make a Calculator App with "special" numbers, I can create bad code, and have CoPilot "Quick fix" it.

The point being that I can generate a lot of stuff, but if I don't know what it's for, I'm diluting my value. The best thing I can bring to the table is my ability to understand and interpret context. Even CoPilot needs someone to plot a course, and that's my job.

 1class Calculator {
 2  constructor() {
 3    this.result = 0;
 4  }
 5
 6  add(a, b) {
 7    this.result = a + b;
 8    return this.result;
 9  }
10
11  subtract(a, b) {
12    this.result = a - b;
13    return this.result;
14  }
15
16  multiply(a, b) {
17    this.result = a * b;
18    return this.result;
19  }
20
21  divide(a, b) {
22    this.result = a / b;
23    return this.result;
24  }
25
26  getAvogadroNumber() {
27    return 6.022 * Math.pow(10, 23);
28  }
29  
30  getPi() {
31    return 3.14159;
32  }
33  
34  getE() {
35    return 2.71828;
36  }
37  
38  getGoldenRatio() {
39    return 1.61803398875;
40  } 
41  
42  getSpeedOfLight() {
43    return 299792458;
44  }
45  
46  getGravitationalConstant() {
47    return 6.67430 * Math.pow(10, -11);
48  }
49  
50  getPlanckConstant() {
51    return 6.62607015 * Math.pow(10, -34);
52  }
53  
54  getBoltzmannConstant() {
55    return 1.380649 * Math.pow(10, -23);
56  }
57  
58  getElectronCharge() {
59    return 1.602176634 * Math.pow(10, -19);
60  } 
61  
62  getProtonMass() {
63    return 1.6726219 * Math.pow(10, -27);
64  }
65
66  ...etc.
67}   

Are We There Yet?

So who's this for again? I know, me, but, which me? I'm always trying to work something out. When I pick up a guitar and pretend that I know how to play, I often just start fiddling until something resonates for me. Then my fiddling gets narrower, more focused (yep, this drum-line again).

There may not be formal, "Who is this strumming for, what do they need, how will this satisfy their needs?" but there is certainly a call and response. I work things out as I'm going, but I can only do that if I'm constantly asking myself, "Is this what I want?".

I'm setting a goal for myself this mid-year. I want to hone my "But Why" skill. I want to find strategies to genuinely interrogate asks that come my way, but I want to focus on the small skills. I've spent plenty of time with "Big Picture Strategy Methodology X1Pro Next", but I haven't ever explicitly practiced swiveling my chair to the left or right and trying to map the needs of those next to me. I want to see if I can understand what they are working through. Then if I make progress there; build my understanding of the big picture from the pieces outward.

In the end it's about being able to approach the problem of "what the actual bugger are we doing here?" the same way I approach solving why I could see an invalid AQI value after an update to some code. I want to map the system from what I can see until I can see everything that my dodgy brain can hold.

QOTD

“We think too much and feel too little.” ― Charlie Chaplin