Tell Me Where I'm Going To Die

25 years ago, my high school friend Brian* (name changed to protect his privacy) bought a pack of cigarettes on his 18th birthday. He wanted to see if they were addictive, so he smoked the entire pack himself.

I still remember the novelty of him being able to purchase that white and deep red pack of Marlboro Regulars straight from the counter at the gas station. He offered me a cigarette. I was just as curious about tobacco as he was, but I decided I wanted to see the outcome of his little experiment first.

I caught up with Brian the other day. He's still a pack-a-day smoker.

Intelligence is the ability to learn from your mistakes, while wisdom is the ability to learn from the mistakes of others.

That incident 25 years ago was the first time I felt that I had learned a lesson from someone else's mistake.

Fast forward 10 years later at Amazon, where my colleague Dave* was a rising mid-level developer. Frustrated with what he considered a spaghetti codebase, he embarked on a personal mission…