Lori M Olson 
OPED — Lori’s Unvarnished Opinion
A recent tweet by David Bock tipped me off to a great essay by Chad Fowler entitled Welcome to Impostor Club. (Think Fight Club as in “The first rule of Fight Club is…” It’s in that vein, I think.)
In any event, I think a lot of people experience this feeling. The feeling that what they know, what they have learned, is just scratching the surface of some deeper learning, that only real experts have.
I remember a fun discussion I had, when I was a member of TeamB (unofficial dev rel group for Borland IDE products, when Borland still existed). At the annual TeamB conference, we had finished all our group meetings for the day, and were sitting around having a couple of drinks with the Borland developers. I thought, at this time, that these people were operating at a development level far above where I was, even though I was one of the people out there in their discussion groups, answering questions about how to use their products.
Then the conversation came around to a bug that I and one of the other TeamB devs had experienced in JBuilder, the Java IDE. We were able to describe it precisely, and repeatably. The lead developer, who’s name escapes me now, was a German expat (trust me that’s relevant) and he looked at us in confusion and said, “That’s really weird” (say that in your head, in a German accent, it’s way more funny). Anyway, we all burst out laughing, and I suddenly realized that these people were ‘just developers’ like me, and for that moment in time, my imposter syndrome was busted.
Here’s a thought for you to practice, when you have that imposter feeling. What you know is always more than what some other subset of people know. Your Knowledge, Your Experience, Your Aptitude. And the people that know more than you? At one time, they had to learn it all too.
FITS — Featured in the School
I was off camping last week (it was a lovely week to camp, with only one cold day), so I don’t have a lot of new stuff going on in the school (branding changes are still in progress). So when I saw this tweet I thought I would highlight someone else’s work I have found immensely useful: Jim Gay’s Ruby DSL Handbook This is the ebook about creating Ruby code that speaks your language while avoiding metaprogramming hell.
Coding in the domain language is one of the greatest strengths of Ruby. Jim’s book lays it all out for you if you’d like to build your own or understand a DSL that you already use. When you are working on mobile apps in RubyMotion, RedPotion provides a great DSL for you. And if you are building games with DragonRuby, you can find several DSL’s like Maw or Draco.
Want to know more? Well, a great place to start would be my RubyMotion Jumpstart which features the RedPotion framework. And candidly, acquiring more knowledge is great way feel less like an impostor.
TALK — Talk of the Tech
Discord — Remember all that matrix math you blew off when you were in high school? Turns out that was a big mistake. For any sort of 3D programming, it really helps to understand it. Fortunately, there’s a Discord thread for that.
Motioneers Slack — There’s a growing thread regarding a problem with (and the solution for) a CocoaPods version mismatch.
GAME — All Things Gaming
OK, one of the dirty words in the indie game business might be revenue. But, y’know all that ramen is loaded with sodium, and sustaining yourself on nothing but that is really going to kill you someday.
In other words, at some point, you have to get off your ‘everything free for everybody all the time’ high horse and make some dough, instead of eating it. The latest from Curtis Hebert’s blog Slopes Diaries #42: Building Ramps, not Walls. As in paywalls, that is. There’s some really good ideas in there.
APP — All Things App
The Big A continues to throw their considerable weight around. The latest? Account deletion capability is required to be within your app starting January 31 of next year.
Best get right on that.
SPOT — Spotlight On…
Based on the games’ names alone, this might be a nod to all the passive-aggressive tension created from the whole work-from-home versus open-plan-office-hell debate still going on at the moment. The Boss Battle: A DragonRuby Game Jam just wrapped up, with nine entries all of which qualify for some quality ramen time.
TWIL — This Week I Learned…
OK, this looks like just so much internet bullshit. 💩 But apparently, it turns out the ‘hanger reflex’ is a thing according to the reputable researcher David Schoppik who works at NYU Langone studying balance.
What we really want to know is who discovered this and what on earth were they setting out to do when they did. And yes, this is what we TIL’d today, but it almost doesn’t qualify for the ‘L’. In fact, we feel a little less smart as a result. That said, we dare you not to try it.
HAHA — And They All Laughed
That’s a Wrap!
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“The beauty of the impostor syndrome is you vacillate between extreme egomania and a complete feeling of: ‘I’m a fraud! Oh God, they’re on to me! I’m a fraud!’ Just try to ride the egomania when it comes and enjoy it, and then slide through the idea of fraud.” — Tina Fey