---
title: It's fun to be competent
date: 2025-01-07
permalink: daily/2025/01/07/competent
tags:
  - software-development
cta: sponsor
snippet: |
  One of the key points from DHH's keynote from Rails World is that it's fun to be competent.
---

This was one of the key takeaways for me from DHH's [keynote talk from Rails World 2024][0].

It's more fun to be competent.

In this section of the talk, which starts around 32:45, he was speaking about his move from the Cloud to on-prem infrastructure and adopting Linux as his main development environment.

That people suffer from "server-phobia" when they could learn these skills from themselves.

As a self-taught Developer, I started to learn coding in 2010 and had to learn everything from scratch - starting with HTML and CSS before introducing PHP.

Since then, I've learned various other related technologies, including Linux, and exclusively run Linux for my computers and servers.

[I switched full-time to Neovim][1] in 2021.

For the past couple of years, I've been using NixOS as my primary operating system.

It was another language to learn and a different way to think about server configuration and automation.

But, I recently went to add something to my configuration and knew exactly how I was going to implement it.
I was able to do it quickly and easily as I'd invested enough time to be competent and feel confident and that I knew what I was doing.

I've been writing a new Drupal module this week and have been in a constant flow state as I knew how I need to implement it.

I've been doing test-driven development and working through a few different iterations, guided by my tests and ensuring I don't break what I've already written.

These are skills and knowledge that that took time to learn.

## Here's the thing

Whether you're a new Developer getting into programming or an experienced Developer learning something new, you will become competent.

And it is more fun.

It just takes time and effort.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cEn_83zRFw
[1]: {{site.url}}/blog/going-full-vim