Welcome, traveller, to the Decently Dressed Developer. You’ve made it this far, so you must have at least some interest in embarking on the quest to being well dressed. Perhaps you need a little more encouragement, or affirmation that your newly held convictions are true as true can be. Look no farther. You’ve found an ally on your journey. Let’s begin where all good journeys begin: at the beginning.

As far as I see it, there are two broad reasons you might be standing before me today. The first: you want to look better. Now, there are a range of motives that could be behind this, some “shallow”, some not, but I’m not here to judge that. Rather, I will tell you that it is an undeniable fact of human interaction that you will be treated differently based on how you look, in all kinds of contexts you may not have even considered. Dressing well will open up all new dialog options for our hero, you. Maybe you’ll make a better first impression on the first date you’ve been nervously anticipating. Perhaps clients will take you more seriously at work, and be ever-so-slightly less likely to ignore your advice that their requested changes will be terrible for their users. Even in smaller day to day interactions, you might begin to notice people acting in a slightly more positive manner towards you. But everything discussed so far relates to how you you will be changing your interactions with the world around you. What about your relationship with yourself?

That fantastic segue brings us to reason number two: expression. Just as hairstyles, tatoos, and piercings can be used to express oneself, as personal art, so too can clothing. And similarly, clothing can be used to portray some element of your personality, or purely to convey some aesthetic. Some may argue that choosing to display a particular aesthetic hints at a some deeper personality trait, but we will try not to get overly bogged down in psychoanalysis. To me, clothing is art, and to intentionally dress is to be an artist. I mean this in the least pretentious way possible, simply that dressing can provide a valuable outlet for creativity. This may sound ridiculous. Maybe it is. Nevertheless, I ask you to begin this journey with me, traveller, to the land of the Decently Dressed.