I was planning to write today about Java streams in depth, but something happened this week.
One of my work-pals told me about this awesome blog I didn’t know about, in which the main Java 8 features are already explained. Not that I thought that I was going to be the first one to talk about Java 8, of course. It’s just that… this blog, man, it really made me reconsider: it was exactly the post I was planning to write!
So I saw two options:
- Fuck it, let’s go ahead and write my own post anyway as if that blog didn’t exist already.
- Lament myself, saying shiiiiit , and don’t write any post today and move on with the rest of my weekend!
Finally, I took the third option which, I suppose, is the one that takes the best out of the other two: being flexible!
Be flexible, my friend
One of the most, if not the most, important skill of a programmer is being flexible: to be able to adapt to unexpected circumstances.
…be water, my friend…
Bruce Lee
Don’t get rigid being the container. You can make plans, sure: be prepared, that’s good… trying to sculpt your reality… But remember, always let room for reality, always allow life to sculpt on you.
Don’t take the tree for the forest. Yes, metaphorically, we are individual trees, but you belong to the forest. Today I’m feeling more visual, so I’ll let the pictures speak for me. When you’re not flexible, sooner or later this is what happens:
If you are able to flexibly flow with the circumstances, you welcome the circumstance, you become a bridge for the circumstance so you can still drive your point through that bridge, maintaining the connection with reality:
I am I and my circumstance; and, if I do not save it, I do not save myself.
Ortega y Gasset
Although sometimes it seems otherwise, each passing day reinforces this vision inside myself: life is not hitting us, it’s just passing us the bat to hit the ball.
So not only adapt to change: love change. It’s like the splendid subtitle of one of the books I’m reading now: yeah, the great Kent Beck‘s Extreme Programming Explained. The subtitle says: Embrace change.
So to practice what I preach, to embrace change, I’m not going to talk about Java streams today. If you want to quickly introduce yourself to Java streams (or Java 8 in general, for that matter) please do yourself a favor and visit Benjamin Winterberg‘s blog (by the way, thanks to my pal, Carlos García, for sharing that blog with me: you saved me a lot of time, man!).
Change is inevitable… Growth is optional
John C. Maxwell
Talking about change, who knows, maybe I’ll write about Java streams after all. If I do it, I promise I’ll just try to complement Benjamin’s posts, putting some light here, or even better, as a tribute to Plato, just focusing on the shadows, as shadows usually reflect better the idea behind, the object’s final abstraction, the dark light beyond…
