2019-06-01 net

PR

OF

IL

E

I have been interested in archery ever since I
was a child – I had one of those old Nerf
bows from the 1990s, which I adored! It was not
until my husband enrolled me into a local archery
club a few years ago that I finally started to shoot
with a real bow.
It is quite an unusual sport to do. Whenever I
mention to new colleagues that I shoot in my
spare time they are always intrigued by it.
Everyone has seen archery in some form or
another – whether in a medieval reenactment or
in a movie – but very few people have actually
tried it themselves. Unless you have, you don’t
appreciate how hard and tiring it can be. It is not
just the physical strain of holding the bow in one
hand whilst drawing your string with your back
muscles but also the mental strain of focusing on
your target and calming your mind.
It is that composure that has really helped me
concentrate as a developer. When you are staring
down your sight, steadying your hand and
focusing on calming your breath, you cannot let
anything distract you. Your attention needs to be
solely on your breathing and your target. Ignore
the person behind you laughing or what the
archer beside you is getting up to. Everything is
about being in complete control of what you are

doing and understanding how everything you are

doing feels.

In the same way, when I am developing a

website I need to ignore everything around me

and focus on the piece of code I am writing. I am

taking highly complex scenarios and breaking

them down into manageable chunks, whilst

holding the map of where different functions are

called in my head. Any distraction will cause this

to completely disappear. Naturally this can be

very mentally draining; however archery is

helping me to increase my mental stamina.

Reaching that state of focus and composure is

quite meditative. After a stressful day in the

office, forcing yourself to breathe slowly and

focus on the target offers a great relief. There is

also the stress-release benefit of walking back

and forth to the target to retrieve your arrows.

Archery is like programming in that if you hit the

gold with your arrow (or your function works the

first time), it is an unexpected delight!

ARCHERY

Natalie de Weerd explains how her love of archery helps her

stay on target in her role as a web developer

BEYOND PIXELS

De Weerd (@nataliedeweerd) is a

creative full-stack web developer,

cat lover and escape-room

enthusiast.

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STUFF I LIKE

BEN FURFIE

Web developer

textlocal.com

TAILWIND CSS

Tailwind CSS is a functional

CSS/utility-first framework

that is easy to configure and

extend. It isn’t a UI kit; it’s a

library of utility classes

mapped to one property and

value that lets me rapidly

build out websites without

worrying about the cascade

or breaking components.

https://tailwindcss.com/

TRELLO

As a team lead, as much of

my time is spent doing project

management as writing code

(if not more). Trello keeps me

up to date with feature

requests and bugs, what my

team is working on and gives

a high-level overview of my

team’s workload vs capacity.

https://trello.com/

STATAMIC

Statamic is my go-to CMS. It’s

a flat-file CMS based on

Laravel, so it plays with Git

and extending it is easy. The

development experience is

top-notch, the support and

documentation is unrivalled

and the user experience is the

best I’ve found.

https://statamic.com