Context

How would you like to be defined?

I have tried to figure out parameters by which we can define ourselves and while there are numerous one's in abundance allowing people to formulate their thinking,

the one metric in particular for which I want to be known for is "my work and the impact of my thoughts and ideas".

Up until this point, I have had my fair share of validations regarding what I am curious about and I have been more wrong than right.

Currently majority of my curiosity lies at the intersection of technology and fiction, hence I find the potential of NFTs as entry point to the world of fiction quite useful, apart from these I also find myself playing with some of Taleb's ideas and notions regarding asymmetrical upsides, some of which I try to project into my writings as well.

Thinking from the skills I currently inherit i.e., web-development, particularly front-end with React.js(JavaScript library for building Interfaces), it all seems interconnected to me, let me explain how!

Now there's this concept of modularization that fascinates me in particular and publishing my own component library in React has somewhat helped me solidify some of the mental models that I inherit to navigate my life in general, so let's dive right into yet another fiction that I am going to create with react and my not so interesting life.

Modularization

What the hell is modularization?

Now don't get me wrong but just like you I am also trying to figure out what modularization exactly means and I am willing to be wrong here so as to expand my horizons,

This is the first result I get when I google "modularization meaning", it is somewhat similar to what I had expected this word to mean but for the sake of the discussion let's also take a look at how react defines their design principles.

Now that we have a clearer understanding of what these heavy terminologies mean, let me simplify this understanding for the non-nerdier folks here and tbh(to be honest) turning reality into fiction is kind of my superpower you see!

Building a robot to save mankind

The year is 2050 and we have been attacked by our fellow humans residing on mars(dammmn Elon!!) and the only way for us to defend ourselves is by building a robot warrior on par with their superior Martian tech.

So without wasting any time let me just jump right into saving the people on Earth.

but wait!!!

building a robot is not easy! and not to mention, a complex entity like a robot probably has n different components acting in sync to make the central entity function, which means we will first have to get those individual parts.

Now we are faced with two options moving forward,

• acquire those individual components
• make those components from scratch

For the sake of making this story, short and crisp, I am not getting into the crux of these two options but still if you want to know, here are my views about these options and duh! we are already short on time, Elon's followers won't wait guys, this is not your basic fiction!

Of course we are going with the second option for this one!!!

-- Fast Forwarding 5 years of war ---

just look at who the protagonist is, obviously this story was biased form the start.

For people itching to discuss fain theories mail me at my-mail, who knows maybe we can co-author season 2 together!

Now inferring from my analogy I can to some extent map the impact of react on vanilla js as a library hence the central idea of this blog.

Thinking In Components/Parts

Iterating on a component library last week has helped me gain a wider of understanding about developing interfaces with react and hence my ability to divide components into smaller parts has also considerably improved, all this is good in general for building effective interfaces but the analogy I want to project today is more generic, more of how we operate in our lives on a day to day basis.

I oftentimes here people expanding on taking incremental steps to achieve their goals, have also myself tried breaking few of my targets into smaller chunks so as to achieve the larger outcome and it does makes sense right!

Elon Musk didn't start making Rockets, his story always expands on him thinking deeply with first-principles starting from the raw materials and numerous other things.

The Internet that we see today was not initially like this, it is the result of a decade worth of progressive iterations.

I am not writing this to expand upon the emphasis of first-principles as a mental framework to navigate life but for the sake of analogical jump that I am trying to make here, it is important to understand it's impact.

I have had a hard time with learning to learn, and progressive iterations is the only useful framework I have personally followed to upskill myself and of-course that includes building smaller components first.

Connecting the dots backward to make sense of things is a very common human bias we often fall for, things aren't as interconnected as we make it out to be.

There's a way we look at problems and it may differ depending on your mental model, I find it much easier to deconstruct the problem statement going forward even though the pieces may not connect and the components that I am building may not result in the end outcome I am hoping for but still it is the way I like to think about things and

I find it funny that the technology I use for my work and the mental model that I follow are in complete alignment with each other, which brings me back to my original question

How would you like to be defined?

Oftentimes people are blinded by treating their work as a metric of progress in life, which In my opinion is the root cause for the expert fallacy and pride, irrespective of this,

being defined by what I do seems to be the most accurate model to me for defining myself as it aligns perfectly well with my mental models.

End

This is how I currently think about defining myself and people in general, and may hold onto it for a while, do let me know if you disagree or agree, would love to discuss this, until then let me travel with Rick to another dimension and let's see if I can find some other answers to my question!