Developer on Fire
Episode 030 | David Heinemeier Hansson - The Pareto Principle and Stoic Philosophy
David Heinemeier Hansson was born in 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. After he graduated from Copenhagen Business School in 2005, he moved to Chicago, USA. He is a partner in 37signals. The company behind Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, Writeboard, and Ta-da List. They run a popular weblog at Signal vs Noise. He is also the creator the web-application framework Ruby on Rails. The infrastructure software used to build all our applications at 37signals. For the work on Rails, he won Best Hacker of the Year 2005 at OSCON from Google and O'Reilly. And in 2006, I accepted the Jolt award of product excellence for Rails 1.0. Similarly, for the work on Rails, he's been featured on the cover of LinuxJournal and in the pages of Wired, Business 2.0, Chicago Tribune, and other publications.
Chapters:
- - Dave introduces the show and David Heinemeier Hansson
- - Business and programming
- - Programming as writing
- - David's definition of value
- - The two versions of Basecamp, software updates, and complete software from the perspective of the user
- - Technologists play with computers for the sake of playing with computers
- - The things that "light DHH up"
- - David's criteria for good software
- - DHH's thoughts on failure, defining success for yourself and no regrets
- - David's greatest success story, choosing his own priorities and sources of accountability - "lifestyle design"
- - "Rails is not a framework"
- - DHH on competiition
- - DHH and racecar driving - focus and flow
- - How David stays current with what he needs to know
- - David's book recommendation
- - The things that have DHH most excited about his present and future
- - DHH on pain in life - lifestyle design and removing pain - "it could be worse"
- - David's top 3 tips for delivering more value
Resources:
- DHH's Home on the Web
- Signal vs Noise Blog
- Basecamp
- Ruby On Rails
- Rework - David's Book with Jason Fried
- David's Books
- The Pareto Principle
- The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich - Tim Ferriss
- Stoicism
- Are Your Lights On?: How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is - Donald C. Gause and Gerald M. Weinberg
David's book recommendation:
DHH's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
1. Restate the problem
2. Get out of the office
3. Lead a healthy, balanced life