Jen Luker Chats With Kent About Finding Inspiration From Anywhere

Jen puts knitting before the fact that she is a senior software engineer when she defines who she is; this doesn't make her a worse engineer than someone who eats, sleeps, and breathes code.

With each new thing you learn, whether you're good or bad at it, you'll tend to discover something about it that teaches you something new. With everything Jen learns, she tries to bring it back into the ways she interacts with the world, whether that's through some art medium or programming.

Technological progress has been an evolving process of standing on the shoulders of giants, one after another, learning how to take something they'd seen before and applied it to some new technology or new problem they were working on at the moment.

The short version is that you can find inspiration virtually anywhere, and not to close off those points of inspiration just because you're focusing on a computing problem.

Homework

• Watch at least one of the talks linked under resources!

Resources

TEDxBeaconStreet: Knitting is Coding; Lindiwe Matlali
TEDxRiga: Crocheting Hyperbolic Planes; Daina Taimina
TED: A delightful way to teach kids about computers; Linda Liukas

Guest: Jen Luker

• Twitter: @knitcodemonkey
• GitHub: @knitcodemonkey
• Website: jenluker.com

Host: Kent C. Dodds

• Website: kentcdodds.com
• Twitter: @kentcdodds
• GitHub: @kentcdodds
• YouTube: Kent C. Dodds
• Epic React: epicreact.dev