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Martins Gouveia
Martins Gouveia

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4 MasterChef lessons for programmers

Hello riders! You probably opened this post out of simple curiosity, perhaps. But you're already here and that's good. In this post I will show lessons that I learned watching MasterChef.

I really like cooking shows, the way of cooking and the presentation of the food is mouth-watering. After watching these programs so much I was able to notice some lessons that can be applied to the career of a software developer. Without further delay, here are the 4 lessons:

1. Improve your application’s UI

When developing an application, we sometimes tend to ignore the appearance of our application (UI), but this is a serious mistake that we sometimes make, especially back-end devs, who pay more attention to the functionality of the application itself and It's totally normal, it's their job. But for those who work freelance, the scenario changes a little.

In the Masterchef program, the first thing the judges do before making a decision is the appearance of the dish (food), the taste may be delicious in terms of taste, but vision is also important and this is one of the factors that the judges they take it very seriously. There was an episode where a participant failed simply because his dish looked bad, but the jury admitted that the taste was very good.

So if you are a back-end or front-end dev, pay special attention to the UI of your application, this will make a total difference when it comes to attracting people to use your applications.

2. Plan before execution

That would perhaps be the first tip, but that doesn't matter.

Before chefs start getting their hands dirty, they first prepare all the materials they will need to prepare a particular dish.

So when developing a project, please prepare everything you will need: Survey requirements, brief the UI of your application and put everything close to you, be it hardware or snacks so you don't have to get up all the time to carry out a small and futile task at times.

The chefs don't look for where the pans are, they already prepare everything. So be like a chef when developing an application.

3. Working under pressure

Working in a kitchen is generally synonymous with acting under pressure. In MasterChef this becomes evident during the tests, as reality participants need to create dishes in a short time and while being closely supervised. All of this speeds up the procedure and creates a lot of tension for the cooks.

In the work environment this is no different either, I say from experience. Sometimes there will be those calmer moments, but that won't always be the case. So get used to working under pressure. Although sometimes productivity tends to drop.

4. Knowing how to deal with criticism

If you think the Masterchef judges are unfair and sadistic, get used to it. Well, criticism is something you will hear a lot in life, even if you do good things, there will always be a “Doctor Doom from your Fantastic Four” or a “Green Goblin from your Spider-Man”.

If you're starting out in programming, some criticism will help you move forward, some will put you down, but don't give up, moving forward is the way forward.

Thanks for read!

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