I don't know if my perception of things is distorted. But I have the impression that our profession attracts a higher proportion of people with slightly different brains - and I'm one of them. There are all sorts of acronyms to label us: ASD, HPI, ADHD...

Or in full, Autistic Spectrum Disorder, High Potential, Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder. The last one speaks to me in particular. It's what means that if someone is talking on the other side of the desk, my brain will disconnect from my code.

It may just be anecdotal, but I wonder: does software development attract 'neuro-atypicals', to use a deliberately vague term?

As far as I'm concerned, my attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity are both my strength and my weakness.

It's what allows me to put myself in a tunnel to code for hours without looking up. It's what allows me to run two Youtube channels (see below :)) in addition to my job. But it's also what makes it so easy for me to get distracted and lose sight of what's most important.

It's something I'm only really becoming aware of now. My mother used to complain about my hyperactivity as a child, but I never thought about what that might entail.

And finally, understanding your own brain (and that of others) is a bit like understanding software, isn't it? How many times have I heard people say 'he doesn't like that' when talking about software? We know where the weak points are, the things that work well and the things that don't work so well. One of the comments on the [Rust vs Go] video (https://youtu.be/ySF903Ht0kM) said

I've always thought that mastering a language meant intuitively understanding its 'philosophy'. From then on, your fingers code by themselves. You "guess" that the language is going to offer help on certain points without even thinking.

And I like that vision of things, but I wonder to what extent we can also apply it to ourselves. What do you think?

This week's (small) victories

This week, my French and [English] channels (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2DOovF-OjIQ6nHClUyLKKQ) both passed a milestone :) There's still a long way to go before it's all viable, but I like the idea of celebrating our victories, however small :)

This week's explorations

I'm thinking about the best way to implement a comments system on my site in NextJS, which allows people to express themselves and ask questions, but which also doesn't require me to spend my time correcting spam comments. And apart from implementing Google's reCAPTCHA I can't think of any viable solution at the moment!

I'm also fascinated by the youtube channel Coderized which only has 3 videos (about one every 3 months) and uses animation to present code concepts.

The "Taint" at React : a study of how to avoid leaking confidential information when using a React API that

The survey "State of React 2023" is underway, do not hesitate to participate!

Don't hesitate .

. to contact me if you have any questions, or to submit video ideas that you'd like me to cover!

See you next week, and thanks for listening!