Routine and Practice

Many of my friends that I have cooked with have heard about one particular dish so many times that they have accused me of being obsessed. This is a dish that shows up in a large variety of cuisine in one way or another, and for good reason. It is simple to make, but it has so many possibilities once you get into fine tuning and experimenting with it. You can spend hours reading online for the best combination of ingredients and spices to make a perfect rendition of this dish, or you could literally look in the fridge and pick out the last remaining vegetables and meat and figure it out on fly. This dish, of course, is stir fry.

This is a consistently appreciated dish, and it takes a lot of mistakes to make a bad stir fry. But why is this dish so important to me, and what on earth could this possibly have to do with coding?

I taught myself how to make stir fry during college in order to entertain large groups of guests and to feed the masses before long nights of drinking and roaming the streets. Like many cases, this started out with buying large bags of frozen vegetables, meat, some soy sauce, and a wok. Sure, this was filling and passable as a meal, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that these were some of the most boring stir fry dishes I had ever made, and definitely some of the most bland that I had ever eaten. This made me wonder: what if I used fresh ingredients and bought a few more spices? This started a journey into honing my skills as a certified home cooked stir fry legend.

About once a month, I would find myself pacing around the grocery store considering what could be done to make things different. Which kinds of mushrooms should I pick? What makes a good bell pepper? How can I skip adding chicken but still keep it interesting? How does cooking tofu actually work? When I got home, I entered the kitchen like a mad scientist. I wrote down the steps and timing that I took and I made sure to record my opinion as well as the opinions of my test subjects…er, roommates. I began to find that there was a right time to add mushrooms, broccoli, peppers, spices. All to get the right flavor and consistency of each ingredient.

Though stir fry starts out as a simple meal to cook, it can become a performance of sorts. A feat of balance and memorization that over time becomes a routine. You can actually start to smell and see the moments at which certain elements are coming into their best form. From this point, I started to consider the flavors of each component of my stir fry. What was it missing? I tried garlic cloves, garlic powder, soy sauce, hoisin, sambal olek, chili garlic paste, even honey. Eventually my friends were absolutely sick of eating stir fry, but now I was ready to surprise and delight for any new friends of mine that weren’t subject to my learning process. Whenever I have suggested stir fry with a sparkle in my eye, people still question it because they know what to expect. But I can honestly say that I have received a lot of surprised reactions once the dish starts to come together in the wok because the routine I have created is unique and strives for a specific taste and consistency.

This type of obsession over the details of something that is seemingly simple is imperative to becoming a good developer. Setting up a node server or building out a react app can seem mundane or repetitive. Some may even go for the bagged frozen vegetable approach, by using create blank app and calling it a day because they know that it works. But, just like with a stir fry, doing the minimum to get something to function will never stand out among the rest. While it contains the elements that are necessary for your app to look and function like it should, you are stripping away your agency as a developer by relying solely on one-sized-fits all solutions.

Does this mean that aspiring full stack developers should spend hours on end starting from scratch and building CRUD apps using different frameworks, databases and libraries? Well, yes, actually. I know it seems like repetitive tasks and building practice projects will slow you down from building a million dollar app idea, but imagine for a second a situation where you are approached with that million dollar idea or something comes to you in a dream and you are not confident in your ability to create backend functionality. What were you doing this whole time? The point is, if you had spent more time digging through backend processes, routing, deployment of a minimum viable product, and all of the setup process, you would know it front to back and you would not be digging through stack exchange pages for hours on end trying to solve simple errors and roadblocks.

I know it sounds bleak but the truth is, you really can make stir fry with gourmet intention. People will love it, and your skills as a home cooking guru will improve across the board because you put long term goal setting and energy into making a simple dish interesting. You will know why you added certain spices, and, if someone suggests something knew to add to the wok you will have a full understanding of the composition of your product in order to adapt it to their needs. Additionally, your improvisation skills developed from this process can be used with any other type of dish.

Surely, there are other aspects of your development skills that you will need to hone. You will need to know how to interpret and manipulate data along the way. But, if you bring yourself to create a routine based on your experience, a majority of the process of building that million dollar idea into reality will be second nature to you.