What Sport Would You Play?

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What Sport Would You Play?

Ryan Booz

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August 4, 2024 at 1:03 pm

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August 5, 2024 at 5:57 am

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Rod at work SSC-Dedicated Points: 34017 More actions · Answer 1

Excellent questions and topic, Ryan. I'll answer your questions and add a topic of my own.

I've been in my current position longer than I thought I would be. One of the strangest things about working here is nearly all people in IT, both operations and developers, who don't want to learn anything new. Until I came here, I never encountered a developer who didn't want to learn anything new or improve their skills. There are exceptions, but for the most part most of the developers and IT people are perfectly happy not learning anything and resent it if they have to. A large part of this, I think, is no one has gone anywhere for training or a conference in over 30 years. I've talked to people who've worked here for 30+ years and they don't recall anyone going anywhere for a conference or training. I don't know how that got started. Maybe the IT people didn't want to get training. Maybe management didn't want to pay for training/conferences. Anyway, something happened years ago to prevent any skills improvement and now it has so much inertia that changing this culture will require major effort and more than one person working to change the culture.

For myself, I love learning new skills. I pay for an annual subscription to Pluralsight and spend time on the weekends and some evenings learning new skills. I also use Microsoft Learn, because it is free. The discouraging thing is I can't put into practice what I've learned at work, because my coworkers refuse to use anything I've learned like how to consume APIs I've written. They would much rather write the code to get a list of employees for the 50th time, rather than use an API I've written that can be used in multiple places.

And the sport I would compete in, if I could wake up some day with the ability to perform in it, would be weightlifting. I love lifting weights. It's something I do on a regular basis. Although I'm too old to compete in weightlifting so besides suddenly being able to compete at it some morning, I'd also have to be younger.

Kindest Regards, Rod Connect with me on LinkedIn.

Jeff Moden SSC Guru Points: 1004419 More actions · Answer 2

I probably wouldn't compete. I'd probably teach.

--Jeff Moden

RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.

Helpful Links:
How to post code problems
How to Post Performance Problems
Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

RonKyle SSC-Dedicated Points: 31558 More actions · Answer 3

Badminton. I was actually pretty good at it in college. I spent four years in South Korea, where it is an important sport. Most Americans have experienced it in the backyard with a net at volleyball height. But the actual height is 5 ft at the middle. Makes it a much faster game.

Steve Jones - SSC Editor SSC Guru Points: 736524 More actions · Answer 4

Learning is a bit part of my life. Neat to see my kids still trying to learn things, post uni.

For me, would have to be basketball or baseball. Enjoyed both of those, played a lot in my younger days.

P Jones SSChampion Points: 12361 More actions · Answer 5

With work life being building a new data hub in AWS S3 and Athena when my skills were focused on SSIS and SQL for the on-premises SQL Server based hub, there's a lot of learning this year and I'm enjoying it, even though I'm old enough to get my state pension (UK)! My only concession to age has been to take the opportunity of departmental reorganisation to reduce to a three day week which just means making the best use of work time to get everything done. The OneNote notebooks where I throw any gem I pick up are shared with the team and are so useful to refer back for "How to do" something.

As for sport, I'd like to excel at dinghy sailing such as the 470 (mixed double handed boat), a traditional boat not one of these foiling things that needs fairly specific conditions in which to perform. It's a sport I take part in regularly at grass roots level and your main opponent is not a person but nature - the fickle wind and water. Being able to read the wind shifts and tide, adjust the boat controls and have the balance and agility to get the best from it and add in tactics to take you to the front of the fleet are the skills I'd love to possess.

But along with the sport skills, top competitors need skills to handle all that comes with being top. People skills, stick-at-it skills, skills to win fairly without making others feel cheated and various other skills which aren't just for the sport. Those are skills I'd like even more!