It was the end of the ’80s, and I was in the middle of 5th grade. In math class, I was given an issue of Math Journal—a publication made for students interested in math topics beyond the regular curriculum. I was a bit above average in math, so the teacher subscribed me without even telling me. In that terrible socialist country, these things—and many others—were free for those who showed interest.
Of course, I didn’t like math. I flipped through the pages and didn’t find anything interesting. Toward the end, there was a chess problem, which caught my attention a bit. But there were too many possible solutions, so I kept flipping. Chess is for nerds, I thought…
And then, on the very last page, there was something I had never seen before: a task from computer programming. What the heck is programming? It immediately captured my interest.
I couldn’t understand how I was supposed to solve the task. I couldn’t possibly imagine how I would tell a machine to calculate the area of a triangle. Any given triangle! Oh boy.
There was also something mentioned about programming languages. Wait—there’s a language that the machine understands? And I can learn it?
At the bottom, there was a solution from the previous issue. I saw a “program” that told a machine how to calculate the modulo in a division. For any A and B at the input!
It was a way to solve a math problem by specifying the logic that would calculate the result. And it would work for any input! This was how you told the machine what to do and always get the correct answer. Boy, this was a way to talk to a machine.
This was a revelation for me. Ever since then, I’ve been into programming and computers. Some of my friends also got interested, but they were mostly into games, while I was buying every programming book I could find. I became obsessed.
But there wasn’t much literature available back then. English books were out of reach, and only a few local authors wrote in my native language. Still, there were some great computer magazines in that terrible country.
I read anything I could lay my hands on.
Man, I was reading the original Commodore 64 manual—written in German! And I didn’t even speak German. I still don’t.
Programming became a true passion of mine. It was the only thing I wanted to do in the future. My friends wanted to become astronauts, actors, footballers, carpenters—most of them didn’t really know. But I always knew what I wanted to be: a programmer.
I had other interests, sure, but programming was my passion, and I planned to turn it into my profession. Doing a job you love and have a passion for—what could be better, right?
And I did become a programmer. I studied computer science, started working, and learned so many things. The dream came true.
For a couple of years…
Today, after more than 20 years in the industry, if I were to find a lamp, rub it, and a Genie offered me three wishes, the first two would be for my family and for a stranded humanity. But the third one would definitely be: Please don’t make me write a single line of code for the rest of my life.
And I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what went wrong. What happened along the way?
Is it because the industry changed so much that I, as a software engineer, do everything but software engineering?
Is it because of all the processes and constraints we impose on ourselves, making it feel impossible to deliver?
Finish the coding. Test locally. Push. Test in staging. Code review.
Do all the changes from the review. Change code. Test locally. Push. Test in staging. Fix tests. Fix linter. Static analysis. Merge.
Oh, someone merged something. Conflicts.
Resolve. Test locally. Push. Test in staging. Fix tests. Fix linter. Fix static analysis. Merge.
Oh, someone just came back from vacation and had a small comment on your pull request…
Is it the growing expectations companies have for me? All non-tech-related expectations. Or worse—wrong-tech-related.
And I keep asking myself the same questions, feeling like I’m stuck in an endless loop.
You know, while(true);
Maybe I should be asking better questions:
When was the last time you really solved a problem with your code?
When was the last time you actually had fun coding?
When was the last time you felt the same excitement you did when you opened that Math Journal in 5th grade?
What happened to that passion and drive that made you struggle to understand a book in a language you didn’t even speak?
Fatal Error 