After nearly 10 years of programming, I feel free.
But that was not for a lack of wandering through the weeds.
I didn't set out to write a poem about this, but I am finding that it would be appropriate. But that will have to wait for another day. Prose it shall be.
For many years, there was something about working as a programmer, especially among other people, which I found occasionally frustrating. What started out as a creative expression became more like engaging in a multi-page contractual document—ironing out, arguing over, and digging up minutiae. And as with manure, minutiae can feel requisite for a healthy crop.
But so often I found minutiae the antithesis to the expressiveness and creativity with this craft. But more so, it seemed to stand in the way of getting something done. Arguing over the details and ever distracting myself with performance, sweating the small stuff—all has continuously stood in the way of completing things and creating things [1]. The world of programming lends itself to this dangerous knife, always present.
I'm talking about bike shedding, if I'm not being clear enough.
This year has been a shift for me, largely in that I've been exploring lots of creative work outside of the world of programming, and the programming that I am doing (outside of work) is creative as well. But when I find myself listening to several people bike-shed instead of get things done, I could scream.
Why do I say this now? Why do I write it down? A lot of it wasn't clear to me for a while. It can be fun to get into the weeds. Fun and distracting; I felt like I was doing the work that I was meant to do. But as time passed, I realized with growing dissatisfaction that it wasn't the work I was wanted to do. And I crawled my way out of the weeds and started walking through the mud until I reached the banks, and then I found the land. And it's vast and unexplored, and feels firm under my feet.
Footnotes
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Sometimes arguing over the finer details is actually important, especially if you are deep into some kind of optimization work, or perhaps if you anticipate the work you are doing having large performance implications down the line. ↩