What Poker Taught Me About Building Software
·1 min read
Before software, I spent 10 years as a professional poker player.
Poker trains one muscle that is very useful in engineering: making good decisions with incomplete information. You almost never have perfect data, perfect requirements, or perfect timing.
What helps is the same in both fields:
- think in probabilities, not certainty
- manage risk before results
- judge decisions by process, not short-term outcomes
In code, that means small iterations, reversible changes, and clear postmortems.