Understand that the last few workdays have seen a significant up-tick in traffic between my development stations and the server. Alas, my younger, newer, PC with the snazzier OS is the one with the wifi hiccups. (The 2nd-hand Dell from 2009 shambling along with Debian? Rock solid. Nat'cherly. Get off my lawn, you snot-nose Ubuntu kids! ;~P)
Anyhoo. As I babysit the
And (mentally) sandwiched between all today's nickel-and-dime penny-ante (yeah, I just mixed monetary metaphors--roll with it) is sugar-plum fancies of the (mature) software developer.
In my favourite fairy tale, the record-locking gremlin (or something equally time-wasting) has struck again, the coffee thermos is both empty and cold, and our heroine knows better than to make another pot at this point in the day. And just as her shoulders droop in despair at the lateness of the clock and the shortness of her list of crossed-off tasks, The Programming Fairy Godmother appears.
The Programming Fairy Godmother (or, "PFG," as we'll call her from here on out) is dressed in a white silk ball-gown + tiara, both deliberately reminiscent of Ada Lovelace--though sporting horn-rimmed glasses like Admiral Grace Hopper. (Hipster!). In lieu of a wand, she carries a shining tablet computer (because tablets can do everything, amirite?)
"Despair not, my dear," she says. "In all your career, you have faithfully treaded that fine line between over-engineering and creating technical debt. You have sanitised your inputs. You have, despite their appalling lack of appreciation for data integrity, maintaining empathy for the end-user. Moreover, you have commented your code, unit-tested, spot-checked, made frequent source-control check-ins, and generally shipped on time. For this you have earned a reward."
"Huh?" says our heroine. "Uh, that's just doing my job. You know, like a real programmer."
"Oh, honey, you have nooooooooooo idea..." replies the PFG, with a near-audible eye-roll. "If you only knew what can bag you six figures plus stock options in Silicon Valley..."
"Good point," replies the programmer, "let's not go there."
The PFG holds up the tablet, which begins to play a PowerPoint retrospective of the programmer's career. There she is as a much-younger student, waiting in line waiting for the printout of her program and output on fan-fold green-bar paper. And regularly sneakernetting--as big floppy discs give way to smaller floppy discs, and then to CDs, and DVDs and flash drives, and occasionally, backup tapes. Somewhere along the line, punctuated by the "RRRRRRRRRR--broingity-broing-broing!" of a modem, memories of sneaker-netting were interspersed with waiting for web pages to download. Also, FTP, SFTP, SCP. Backups. Restores. And, regardless of decade or operating system, our heroine can be seen twiddling her thumbs while her computer boots up. Reboots to install the updates to the Adobe software updater--'nuff said.
If her fairy godmother had meant the presentation to be uplifting, she had failed miserably. The programmer felt the weight of all the, well, waiting. Minutes, hours, and (effectively) whole days of not being able to just tuck into the work at hand with her full attention--all flashed before her in a varied, yet monotonous panoply of wasted time.
Being an Upper Midwesterner only recently relocated to Canada, the programmer bit back her disappointment and considered the possibility that she was being trolled by a supernatural being. "Well, it's good to know that someone still appreciates the virtue of patience," she ventured once the excruciatingly soporific mini-biography had concluded.
The Programmer Fairy Godmother gave the programmer a blank stare. "You're seriously kidding me, right? No, kiddo. I'm giving you that time back."
"Wuuuuuuut?" was the best retort our stunned heroine could muster.
"You heard me," said the PFG. From the standpoint of your cubicle, time stands still until you fill all that otherwise wasted time. Now get off that mocha-latté-padded butt and build something awesome.
So, with scarcely more than a "Thank you!" hollered over her shoulder, the programmer immediately scarpered the heck off. Because her Momma might have raised a lazy, selfish git--but she for sure did not raise a fool. And, despite wasting a, frankly, inexcusable amount of time screwing off on the internet, the programmer managed to manage her time well enough to build A Thing. With (for a change) herself and her friends, and (incidentally) some of the rest of humanity in mind, thank you very much.
When all was said and done, code just plain shipped. Without answering to the mandarins of Marketing or Legal at every turn. Without enduring infinite fractal Groundhogs Day-esque strategy meetings. Without quashing the eternal food-fights over flat vs. skeuomorphic design. (Or, worse, Helvetica vs. Suisse fonts.) Without having to look over her shoulder for hockey-stick inflection-points in the adoption curve.
And, after a couple of iterations (and the inevitable hiccups), everyone involved was appreciably better off for the results, thank you.
Mind you, the programmer was never wined & dined by Y-Combinator or Andreeson-Horowitz. She didn't publish self-congratulatory business self-help woo, much find herself on the TED/SXSWi circuit. She never once did a reddit AMA or made the cover of Inc. or FastCompany...though she may have been interviewed by an intern for TechCrunch. Or maybe it was CNet. She can't remember now, but honestly it doesn't even matter--that piece never saw the light of day in any case.
But I think that we can safely say that this programmer, at least, lived happily ever after.
