Having Read The Passionate Programmer

	The Passionate Programmer (2nd edition): Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development
	Chad Fowler

The Passionate Programmer is essentially a book about self-motivation. It is neatly wrapped up into several sections about marketability and rekindling the passion for software development, and these sections are broken up into delightfully bite-sized chapters which make the book a breeze to go through.

This book preaches that we should be happy with our jobs but not complacent. The author, Chad Fowler, believes that, at all times, we should be looking for ways to better ourselves as professionals and as individuals. This is certainly a tall task. I've been having trouble finding time to do very many extracurricular activities lately, what with moving to a new city, starting my career, buying a car, and planning a wedding, but what this book really makes me want to do is search the internet for some new software technology I don't understand and learn everything I can about it. It's all about branching out from the norm and doing things one may be uncomfortable doing. I'm fortunate to have started a job at a company where I have the opportunity to frequently switch projects and do things that are completely different fairly regularly.

I also see it as a good thing that I was thrown into technologies I'd never had to deal with before during my first day on the job (Windows programming, .NET, WPF, TestStand, CruiseControl...).  All jobs should be like this. Companies hiring people for their potential to do anything instead of their potential to do a specific task.

Fowler also mentions being social as an important step in a passionate career. Managers, programmers from other companies, managers of managers, developers at conferences, managers of managers of managers, and even folks in online forums or blogs may be the link to an opportunity. I normally just live under the thought chain of "If I write it, it's good, and I'm efficient, I'll get noticed." But Fowler insists this is not true! Talking to these kinds of people and letting them know what you've been up to is beneficial in that it gives managers a sense of how the project's going, it may give other developers ideas or inspiration to solve problems, and it can help you feel more accomplished. It's a good mindset to be in, and it simply involves climbing out of the cubicle every once in a while and finding the right people to talk to.

This book provides good motivation to continue pushing oneself and it provides inspiration for how to better manage one's non-working life.