🎨 Why You Should Steal Like An Artist

Welcome to the eleventh issue of the Software Mastery newsletter.

In this issue, I want to share one tip inspired by the book, Steal Like an Artist, by Austin Kleon.

In this book, one of the ten tips Kleon gives on being creative is to “steal like an artist,” which refers to seeking out, collecting, and copying from sources of inspiration.

I believe as software engineers, we should do the same. Throughout my time reading code, chatting with LLMs (see 🤖 Supercharge Productivity With AI), and searching for solutions to technical problems (see 🔍 2 Tips on Googling Effectively), I’ve come across many great ideas worth keeping for the future.

For example, I often refer to pull requests (PRs) that previous engineers I respect have written whenever I have to implement something similar. I also bookmark exceptional design documents (see 🔗 Why You Should Bookmark Links) that are clear, concise, and organized.

When you have a collection of past experiences and inspiration to draw on, you don’t have to start a task completely from scratch as often, which helps you stay consistently productive.

Don’t worry too much about feeling like a fraud for copying from others either. As Kleon writes in his book:

Your Turn!

I hope this issue inspired you to build your collection of software inspiration.

Do you have a system for storing interesting software engineering ideas? Reply to this email or comment below to let me know!

Thanks for reading,

Sammy