Code of the Coder

People claim to be Code Ninja or CSS Samurai, but how many of them follow a code? How many of them practice daily katas to stay in the best shape? This book foolishly applies the Seven Virtues of Bushido and the Eighteen Disciplines of Togekure-ryū Ninjutsu to the art of coding, and mistakenly finds some wisdom along the way.

This book took a long time to write - as you can see I'm more of a coder than a good English... userer... but I really had a drive to put together my collected experiences/ thoughts on coding and the misuse of cultural touchstones like ninja and samurai. I did about a year of ninjutsu training when I was much younger and healthier, and I was lucky to have a great sensei and class. After training we'd talk about the culture and history. We had the code and the disciplines. Something I think that coders really need to have. Even more so now I look at web3 and NFTs and Muskworship.

I'm eating my own dog food here - I've made a poster of the Bushido code and Togekure-ryū disciplines as they apply to coding, they're up at glance-level at home and at work. It's actually helped me - re-reading my section on Glory and Honour, I've started contributing to issues in other people's Git repositories, filing bugs, working harder to evangelise developers and testing at work, sharing my skills as much as I can. Heck, even talking more on Twitch.tv streams to help and interact with people came from Respect. Similarly, in Disciplines, I'm checking libraries more, patching more, taking note of my surroundings. So writing the book distilled my thoughts, rereading it helps reinforce the action. If you'd like to buy the book, it's Print On Demand on Lulu. If you'd like to read it first, why not get a PDF version of the book and let me know what you think? Or even start with the Code of the Coder poster