I would love to give a long answer here, but the short one is this.
1. Epistemology - knowing that all words have meaning, and concept formation in regards to higher and lower level concepts. It has helped me tremendously with understanding concepts and words that I need and use, despite all of the bastardizations and inconsistencies in popular use.
2. Ethics - Knowing what are objective virtues, then having the self-confidence and courage to honor them in my daily life. Life can be hard. It's harder when you are unethical or unprincipled (to paraphrase John Wayne).
Thanks for the great question! I'm new here to the online Gulch. Perhaps I'll come back to this older question to add more later. Cheers, Brett

***I had a poorly articulated comment here. I edited it out to give me time to refine it.***

Would it make sense to say...

var a = {}; a.argument1control = function(a){this.a=a;}; a.argument2control = function(a){this.b=a;}; a.resultcontrol = function(a){this.c=a;}; a.divide = function(){this.c.value=this.a.value/this.b.value;};

...is silly and somewhat worthless in and of itself, but via implicit polymorphism, JavaScript allows for the following:

a.multiply = function(){this.c.value=this.a.value*this.b.value;}; a.add = function(){this.c.value=this.a.value+this.b.value;}; this.subtract = function(){this.c.value=this.a.value-this.b.value();};

Suddenly, "var a={};", becomes anything you want. In this case, an instance of a calculator where a series of "buttons" call "a" methods to populate a "resultcontrol" with the results of a mathematical function performed upon the values contained in "argument1control" and "argument2control".

A real "object", in the sense that "var a={};", is an instance, an object, an interface, a container for constants, attributes, and methods, etc.

It is this precise profundity that instantly validated Ayn Rand's epistemology for me. If every JavaScript programmer read Ayn Rand's words on Objectivist epistemology, well...

As an entrepreneur Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead resonate the most with me. Anthem and courses offered by the Ayn Rand Institute have also been very influential to my daily life.

In particular, I apply the concept of an equal exchange of value for goods and services as touched upon during Atlas Shrugged. Furthermore, that novel feels like a manual for entrepreneurship in terms of entrepreneurial philosophy and the building of value and selection of those I wish to conduct business.

Concerning The Fountainhead, the concepts of the creative individual and second-handers stand out. In terms of daily life, I strive to be a first-hand creator of value and am wary of second-handers who will, given the opportunity, take said value without offering an equal value exchange.

In Anthem, I enjoy the concept of the individual breaking away from the collective for his own sake. Another follows and ultimately they seek to build something which draws in the best and brightest. This feel Ike a noble objective that I would someday hope to fulfill.

Lastly, I strive to read part of a previously unread work by Ayn Rand and/or review a portion of a course offered by the Ayn Rand Institute on a daily basis. I reflect upon what the newly learned material means to my life thus far and future actions.

Looks good. I'm excited to read it. Thanks.

Case in point, I'm prepping to write up a web-based sales and operations planning (S&OP) report where I'll depict hours of manufacturing load booked by week and chart it out across future weeks to help determine whether we're quoting lead times effectively (level loading for optimum use of our manufacturing capacity).

I could just write the whole thing from scratch, but by visualizing each cell within a table as a similar query (how many hours booked over week X will be due to ship in week Y (the conceptual common denominator)), I'll create a query accepting the parameters X and Y. Then I'll render an empty table and have an "on page load" script find the cells, parse the X and Y arguments out of a tag on the cell, and send asynchronous calls back to the server to return the content (number of hours) to the cells. Further, I'll have the script loop every minute or so such that the values will be refreshed in real time.

I may be a geek, but I honestly find it "fun" to do this sort of thing. Perhaps this is "happiness" per Ayn Rand's definition.

thanks for the link. I just passed that on.

You might be interested in this paper from Adam Reed, a longtime Objectivist and professor of computer science on Object Oriented Programming and Objectivist Epistemology.
http://web.augsburg.edu/~crockett/210/21...

I use her theory of concept formation via measurement omission in object oriented programming.

Designing reusable classes or interfaces that enumerate un-quantified attributes is vastly more efficient than writing code from scratch every time.

In fairness, I did this before understanding her theory of concept formation, but I do apply it much more rigorously these days, and often stop to think about how I might use a given bit of code (an "object" which is much like a concept) in the future before I write the program.

You might be surprised by the degree to which this very website utilizes extensions of "objects" that were brilliantly conceived of through measurement omission.

For me, epistemology is the most useful of her works.

As a technical writer, I was most impressed with the fact that Ayn Rand hired a professor of philosophy, Allan Gotthelf, to prepare the indexes to "Virtue of Selfishness" and "Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal." I always devote considerable effort to the index of a manual (or links of a website's pages, now).

As a trainer teaching robotics, I found conceptual "wrappers" for the specifics of performance of procedures. I explain why.

Also, Rand's fiction gives place and focus to all workers for their intellect as applied to concrete tasks. Whether delivering training to electricians or interviewing engineers as subject matter experts, I draw on their experiences and insights to bring depth to the content.

I was handed a copy of "Anthem" when I was in the 11th grade in 1966 and the first of the nickel-clad coins were coming out. So, I always knew about the economic issues and their application. But it was not until 1992 that I came to a deeper interest in numismatics as the art and science that studies the forms and uses of money.

Small-o objectivism is rational-empiricism, the so-called "scientific method." Theory and fact must support each other. No truth can stand in contradiction to everything else that is true. Reality is integrated. The metaphysics of capital-O Objectivism helped me to provide and maintain order in the disparate presentations of sciences that I studied over the years. The "chaos" in modern science is not limited to Mandelbrot sets.

On that note, though, I spent a lot of time with David Harriman's "Logical Leap" which I found interesting, but incomplete.
http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2012/...

Beyond all of that, both of my wives (series, not parallel) know the works of Ayn Rand, the first better than the second. I raised our daughter to be her own person, in part by taking advice from"How to Raise a Brighter Child" by Joan Beck, which was recommended by the Nathaniel Branden Institute, long before I was a parent.