Ryan Bergman loves terrible code... and other things I learned recording his DevJourney (#150)
Tags: devjourney, career, learning, xp
Published: 2021-05-11 07:34:22

---
title: Ryan Bergman loves terrible code... and other things I learned recording his DevJourney (#150)
published: true
description: Ryan Bergman loves terrible code. After interviewing him for the DevJourney podcast, here are the key takeaways I personally took out of the discussion.
tags: DevJourney, Career, Learning, XP
cover_image: https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/articles/0bl45bg6h29e21dj0saf.png
canonical_url: https://timbourguignon.fr/devjourney150
---

This week, I published Ryan Bergman's #DevJourney story on my eponym Podcast: [Software developer's Journey](https://devjourney.info). Among many other things, here are my main _personal_ takeaways:
* Ryan's journey started with a TI-99, and all you could do with it was to program it. Learning to code in involved type-in-programs from the Byte Magazine and saving programs on cassette tapes.
* Bryan fought his way through high school with what he later recognized as ADHD and dyscalculia. Because of this, Bryan developed a real love-hate relationship with anything maths-related. So he ended up becoming a "total art nerd" (sic). He briefly studied graphic design in college before dropping out. He joined the National Guard, drifted for a few years, and finally returned to college, changing his major to city-planning, a.k.a. SimCity in Real-Life.
* When he was about to reach the job market as a junior city planner, he doubled back as a graphic designer. During his university time, he had learned some HTML, so he found a position as a front-end graphic designer in a dotcom tech startup doing Newsletters/eZines (before they were cool).
* In his next job, Ryan worked on a learning management system and discovered a learning culture, which literally changed his career path. He worked with Coldfusion and discovered pair & mob programming and automated testing. But most of all, he had to maintain software written by "real programmers." They had produced awful code, and it took him a while to realize that he himself was not in the wrong. It took him a long time to get rid of his imposter syndrome. Following this rewrite, the company experienced a re-org and asked the help of a few XP and Agile consultants. The company really embraced this movement and became a recognized Agile force in the De Moine area.
* _"We watched in amazement how the contractors, who didn't know the domain, make all the same mistakes we had made for so long before them."_ Letting a new team rewrite a new software will invariably result in some surprises like this. Ask me how I know 😅
* Ryan then joined JohnDeer, and the breadth of the domain has kept him there since. There are so many challenges to solve.
* Ryan joined the "larger agile community" in about 2010. He now calls it "his family." He loves to be with like-minded individuals who cherish the original idea of agility, like the coaches he met a decade earlier and from whom he learned XP. Talking about conferences, Ryan dropped this sentence: _"The sessions are a way to get interesting people to conferences so that I can talk to them for free."_ I couldn't agree more. The "hallway track" is the best!

Advice
* Find your thing, be curious about it, and don't expect anyone to dig for you

Quotes:
* _"When Javascript came out, I thought 'nah, who needs that'... I still feel like that though"_
* _"I don't hate Perl; I hate other people's Perl. But my Perl is perfectly fine, and there is nothing wrong with it, and it is completely readable."_
* _"Agility has a bad reputation nowadays, mostly because of all those agile consultants trying to sell you big agile transformations"_
* _"The sessions are a way to get interesting people to conferences so that I can talk to them for free"_

Thanks, Ryan, for sharing your story with us!

You can find the full episode and the show notes on [devjourney.info](https://devjourney.info/Guests/150-RyanBergman.html) or directly [here on DEV](https://dev.to/devjourneyfm)

Did you listen to his story?

* What did you learn?
* What are your personal takeaways?
* What did you find particularly interesting?