Great article. Sums up a lot about how I feel about programming as I get older (and what I hear older programmers saying). Having to consume and retain so much

Great article. Sums up a lot about how I feel about programming as I get older (and what I hear older programmers saying). Having to consume and retain so much complex mind garbage every few years just to still be told what to do gets pretty old. But the one thing I still enjoy about programming, after all these years, is being in the center of a number of concerns and having to negotiate them all, while still delivering something of value on a fixed time frame. There's a certain thrill to seeing the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of a huge process converge on one person, even it's for the tiniest moment about minutest of details, and have that person be you. Simply because no one else thought of some important problem, it fell into your lap and suddenly you were responsible for solving it, and you had to think on your feet. Then you get to explain to everyone else what you did, why you had to do it, and what the plan is going forward, and no one has any option but to nod their head and say, "Hey, thanks! Good job!" There's a certain type of engineering mindset that sees this as a failure of process, and likes to hand out blame for letting such power fall through the cracks into the hands of a random developer. But to me, it's become the only fun aspect of the whole occupation. If it happens to me once a year, it's the highlight of my job for that whole year.