I have to disagree here. A good example is StarCraft. If you play StarCraft by yourself, you can become a good player. If all of your friends play StarCraft, however, then they can help you become a great player. The sheer popularity of the game in Korea is largely responsible for Korean dominance at the professional level.
Right now I'm a programmer living with a mechanical engineer, a finance major, and two biologists. I appreciate the worldly perspective they provide, but the fact is I'm missing out on a lot of news/discussion/debate/learning related to coding.
If you want to be the best, you need constant feedback from other people who share your expertise. For most things in life, there are diminishing returns on how far you can get by yourself. It's not a coincidence that the best and brightest in any field tend to cluster in the same area.
You're looking for someone who is a fan of the same progr. lang. as you are, who uses the same text editor, the same VCS, and even the same libraries/frameworks. You're looking for a designer who uses the same version of Photoshop that you're using, or at least uses the version you think he/she should be using.
Yes, agree with both posts. You shouldn't care what language or library he's using.
There aren't "Ruby programmers", there are just programmers. I honestly try to stay away from people who claim they are language x programmers and those who think one language is superior, because quite frankly they're often not that good.
Honestly are Ruby programmers really better than those who code in C or haskell and honestly what does it matter which text editor I choose to use?!
What would you learn if he knows and use the same things as you? Wouldn't it be a lot better, and a lot cooler, if your roommate could teach you about compilers, creating games or advanced algorithms or something that you don't know already?
It's a great idea to get a roommate with similar interests, but really I think you're focusing on the wrong things.
Way to go and miss the point. I said that he might know something that you don't know which could be nice to learn, or are you seriously saying that you know everything?
I'm sorry that I offended you, I didn't doubt your knowledge.
And my point wasn't that he must only know ruby, but that you should focus more on programming skills and not focus on a specific language. A competent programmer should be able to jump between languages with relative ease as long as they have some related skill.
I guess I started thinking about a friend of my when I read your post. He's someone who says C is the best language in the world, poet is the only worthwhile site on the web and everyone who didn't use linux was bad and wrong. Different opinions was never allowed and he was right all the time.
Maybe it's me but maybe the post does give out a little smugness, like saying you want (prefer) him to love textmate.
No you haven't offended me... and I haven't missed your point either.
But I do feel like you are putting words in my mouth: "are you seriously saying that you know everything"
Where the hell did you see myself saying that?
If you read my other replies - I said I have an intense passion for learning. This means I do learn from other people than myself.
You're right... A competent programmer should be able to jump between languages.
I don't think Ruby is the best programming language in the world - but it has suited me well for what I'm doing and allows me to iterate through development cycles quickly with ease, plus there is a large community built around it in San Francisco.
When something better for the job comes along I'll pick it up just as quickly.
The fact that you seem to be getting a little upset pretty quickly by the criticism in this thread probably says more about you as a roommate than the tools you use. I'm past my roommate days thankfully, but take it easy dude!
Because you can talk/discuss something other than computer science / software development to them, hence you would not be limit your learnings in one direction.
I, for one, would not like to bring what I do for living to my home. If I need to discuss my CS ideas, I can find likeminded people at other places, (say where I work/study), but living with "like minded" people 24 X 7, is not something I'd like to do. (Unless I am starting a startup or something)
You are severely oversimplifying people. There is nothing that prevents a software developer from writing poetry, or a poet from designing websites. Interesting people have a wide range of hobbies and interests.
1. You should not live with your co-founder(s). It's important that you can take breaks from the startup/each other by going home.
2. You should be friends with your co-founder(s), but not "best friends". A startup is a bussiness relationship which is incompatible with "best friendship".
This is my experience based on doing my own startup and watching others.
I don't have to look far for a counter-example: reddit. From the articles and interviews I've seen, I think rooming together was a very important part of reddit culture early on.
Right now I'm a programmer living with a mechanical engineer, a finance major, and two biologists. I appreciate the worldly perspective they provide, but the fact is I'm missing out on a lot of news/discussion/debate/learning related to coding.
If you want to be the best, you need constant feedback from other people who share your expertise. For most things in life, there are diminishing returns on how far you can get by yourself. It's not a coincidence that the best and brightest in any field tend to cluster in the same area.