Coding Lately

There was a time when I thought I didn’t want to let people down. I thought that coding as a hobby and means to get a job was a way to hold my friends on Twitch up.

I met a person on Twitch in March who I was in loose contact with and I didn’t want to let that person down. This pressure was something I felt in the middle of this month. But after going a week or so further, I changed my mind. I decided that the life I’d led in my 20s and 30s was enough to have shown this friend that I wasn’t a tool of a person. At that point, saying that I didn't want to let down my friends on Twitch wasn’t really valid anymore. I didn’t let my Twitch friends down. Why I work now is part of a different phase in my life. I don’t feel like making X dollars a month constitutes holding my friends up.

I had this recent weekend where I was watching a lot of dog and cat videos. I felt not well. When I finally started coding at the end of a day, I felt much better. Coding is what makes me happy.

Per unit time, there is a limited amount of things to do on YouTube, Discord, and Twitch. You can exhaust the content coming out of those machines in about 3 hours, and be starved for the next week. Coding is how I make my life interesting and how I provide conversation fodder.

I had this experience about a year and a half ago where I was working on this rather elite team. I was one of two coders on the team. But there were others attending the daily work meeting who were well-versed in a database system that the company used everywhere. One person in particular was a vice president at the company, which was a few hundred people large. He was both respected and feared, due in no small part to his combination of expertise and diligence.

One day he messaged me and we were talking about a programming req. I told him that I was watching music videos (which I was) and would resume working soon, to attend to the concern we were talking about. He didn't get mad at me. He didn't even balk.

This anecdote illustrates how I see programming. When you're a programmer, you are considered to be benevolent. You are considered to be so elite that (often) no one cares whether or not you wear a suit to work. No one cares if you take a break in the middle of the work day, beyond the lunch break. When the web servers are in panic mode at 11pm, you're expected to be working on them. But if the weather is fine, you can relax and work at your own pace.

At this point in my life, it's not obvious to me whether I will be able to continue my programming career. But I don't feel like I self-destructed. I don't really feel like moving into a different career is high on my list of priorities. Sometimes the world agrees with you, that you are doing good work. But this isn't guaranteed.

One can argue that I should be working so that I can secure financial stability for myself. But if the world got mad at me and no company wanted to hire me, at some point it's not my fault. I believe that I merit a nice paycheck, and that being able to afford my lunch should come easily to me. If the world disagrees, it isn't going to send a team of lawyers and other programmers to prove to me that I'm incompetent. I don't lie to myself about my programming past. I know when I've done good work and when I haven't. That no one sees me as a benevolent leader can be a peaceful disagreement between me and the world.

I program because I like it. Not because I want to be rich.