Do I like to write code?
So much of being the technical person in a tech startup is just writing code, responding to emails, shuffling tickets and ranting on LinkedIn (it used to be Twitter but a child bought it). It’s incredibly unglamorous.
On a hot day your laptop is caked with sweat. On a cold day you’re wishing the heater worked better but you’re glad for your $3k Macbook Pro and its hot-to-the-touch chassis. Every now and then you notice the sun streaming in through your window, and you contemplate whether you made the right choice. The birds are chirping and you find yourself wishing to be anywhere but here.
But then something works. Some feature you created, either via a prompt or rawdogging with vim, elicits some generous feedback and you feel like it was worth it.
You don’t notice the birds anymore. They are dead to you. The only thing that matters now is shipping the next feature and waiting for someone to notice. Some don’t, some do and then something breaks and they need you.
Sometimes I wonder if maybe I didn’t get into this career for a love of code, but because it’s what I know and it’s what they know of me. Is it truly a passion, or just what I’ve fallen into? When the doubt creeps in, I’ll open Hacker News and read the latest posts. Nothing new interests me. The stories that stand out the most are the folklore — the tales of an early Apple or an early Google. These aren’t stories of a drive for wealth, or maybe they are, and I’m just looking at them with a nostalgic filter. Regardless, they feel different. Maybe it’s just the flannel and denim.
So here I am, writing code on a Wednesday afternoon. Maybe the answer doesn’t matter as much as I think it does. And neither does this craft.
As a developer and writer, I know the feels.
I feel the same in a lot of ways, and I think that might be related to the urge I have to move into science or research.
I think there's an experience I long for, of really smart people working together on really difficult problems. Problems that can't be solved by merely Googling or asking ChatGPT or even combing through scientific journals (though these might all be involved in the process). Problems that might be worked on for months, and, once resolved, have a dramatic impact on the industry or technology in general.
For instance, the Apple II Mouse Card https://www.folklore.org/Apple_II_Mouse_Card.html , not because it was incredibly impactful in the long run but because it involved a loose skunkworks team of a few very smart people doing brilliant work. I feel a strong attraction to those days too, perhaps because the technological limitations were fundamental rather than economic. There's only so much you can do with a 1MHz 8-bit processor or 4K of RAM - you have to be brilliant just to get the damned thing to show any sign of life.
IDK. I feel restless and I don't know what to do with it.