Instead of thinking, "How do I want this program to work?" I had to think, "How do I want every program to work?"
Instead of organizing this data, I had to organize any data.
Instead of worrying about what my customer needed, I had to worry about what to put in my toolbox before I called on that customer.
Instead of handling the current outlying case, I had to learn to anticipate possible outlying cases.
Instead of worrying about instances of what we do, I had to worry about classes of instances of what we do.
Instead of benchmarking and optimizing performance, I had to understand the kinds of things that affected performance.
Instead of scaling, I had to design an architecture that would scale.
Instead of conducting analysis and design, I had to build an application to handle and apply system parameters.
Instead of covering bugs, glitches, and inefficiencies, I had to eliminate them before they compounded exponentially before my eyes.
Instead of having fun, I had to build a world within which I could always have fun.