Being a Wizard

Magellan

500 years ago Europeans thought they knew the whole world. Some of the map edges would fade to nothing and have inscriptions "hic sunt dracones," but they knew it all. Until someone found something new beyond the edge of the world. For a little while there was excitement and adventure to be had pushing back the boundaries of the unknown.

Science is that adventure, without end. The one thing we know for certain is that we know less than we don't know. The adventure pushing back those boundaries is like a drug, addictive and exciting, just without the side effects. (Ok, I may have been called a nerd or geek at some point but that doesn't count!)

Engineering is where the rubber of science meets the road. Computer science and software engineering are very different disciplines - some confused schools aside - but both grant the opportunity to learn and explore and create.

There is one critical difference between those early explorers and young devs today. It used to be that knowledge acquisition was difficult both for the effort of learning (reshaping your brain doesn't come overnight!) and for the a lack of access to information. I cannot stress enough how much of a game changer the internet is.

A friend of mine kept the reference documentation he got with an early commercial programming environment in the early 90s: A stack of books over a meter tall. Finding anything in there was a challenge all its own and if the answer to a question wasn't in there, ask a peer or phone tech support and pray - and be prepared to pay. Now it's 10 seconds in Google and StackOverflow.

There's a plethora of excellent learning materials for people who, like me, feel the drive to learn and create. Everyone seems to be learning JavaScript or Swift, and I love seeing their cool new products. But are they engineers, or scientists, or something else?

Product hackers, as I tend to refer to this third group, are people driven to create new and better products, to engage users and solve problems. The ease of creating apps and sites with modern tech stacks empowers them to follow their passions. 50 years ago they would have learned to draw and solder. Today, it's Photoshop and JS.

I don't separate these three sets into a hierarchy: variety in a community is critical to its success and each of these disciplines brings new dimensions to the table which we could not do without. Together, we push back the map edges in all directions at once.

Magellan's opportunity was incredible: the known world was smaller than the unknown. Even now, for all we know, I think this is still the case. All it takes to be an explorer, and the passion to follow your curiosity.