Tag Archives: Alex

Prior Inclination

Earlier this year, Alex Honnold scaled El Capitan without ropes. That was an impressive & dangerous feat by Alex.

What stuck with me is this quote about Alex from Tommy Caldwell:

Alex once told me that he had never fallen completely unexpectedly—meaning without at least some prior inclination that it could happen.

That is amazing and shows that Alex is simply operating at a higher level. I would make the blanket generalization that most climbers have fallen while climbing without anticipating it.

Why this sticks out to me is when I apply it to other fields. Outdoor climbing can easily be a life or death ordeal. Software generally is not life or death during development.

Can you imagine a programmer who writes code that doesn’t crash without the programmer having some prior inclination? That sounds impossible right? Or a slow development cycle.

I’m not saying that programmers need to be able to anticipate every crash ever. But if someone were able to never have their code crash without prior inclination, that’s awesome.