#Adam Grant: The surprising habits of original thinkers Just wanted to share this great TED talk about original thinking; hoping it helps developers think better about the role of procrastination in original thinking.

tl;dr: I’m following up on my “Start Simply, Simply Start” from a bit ago with some more practical thoughts on starting simply. My hope is to also write on the second of these ideas, “On Simply Starting.” Simplicity is a prerequisite for reliability Edsger W. Djikstra I wrote a short(ish) post a bit ago about starting and starting simply. It was a rather “in the moment” piece of writing, not one I’d spent a long time actually composing.

I am grateful for my experience in the Boy Scouts and thankful I was able to make it all the way to Eagle Scout. While everything wasn’t perfect (like anything else), I learned invaluable lessons about leadership, teamwork, respect for nature, and survival skills. One of the recurrent themes involved in our outings, gatherings, and organization was “leave things better than you find them.” It applied to the wilderness, where we would try to leave any camping areas we used (or created) cleaner than we found them to minimize our footprint and environmental impact.

One of my favorite books on programming so far has been Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship (Get it here). It’s full of great wisdom on writing–you guessed it–clean code. Clean code not only makes your life better, but it will save your friends and teammates hours of headaches. And perhaps even more importantly, it reflects a care for craft and excellence in your work. Anyways, enough from me; here’s a few great quotes from a few greats on writing clean code: