It’s not really a secret, but I’m not a huge fan of the modern education system in America (I only speak about America, because that’s the only education system that I have experience with). I’m not just talking about “higher education”, but education as a whole. There are many problems with it, but I don’t really want to get into enumerating the problems. What I want to talk about is the lessons that education can learn from the Open Source movement.

Last weekend I was at the True North PHP conference in Toronto, Canada. Aside from being an incredible experience (really, it was an incredible conference, huge props to Chris Hartjes (@grmpyprogrammer) and Peter Meth (@mrpmeth)), it was an inspiration. I was particularly inspired by both of the keynote speakers. They both really took really unique spins on programming and how the culture of open source inspires, enables and empowers programmers to do cool and important things. The problem with all of this is that I hate the term programmer. I think it unfairly paints a picture of what we do. Let me elaborate.

As you can probably tell, the title of this post is based off the common saying “The Grass Is Always Greener On The Other Side.” I’ve always been amazed by this saying, because while we can find countless cases of it being true, we can also find countless cases of it being completely and utterly false. Take smart-phones for instance. People are quite dogmatic about which they choose, and they believe that the grass is definitely not greener. This is something that’s bothered me for a while. But yesterday, I think I’ve made a cognitive leap towards understanding why it works for some things and not others…