3 ms·

"It consumes you, body and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing else matters. When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred

"It consumes you, body and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing else matters. When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes lying around, it must be spring already." This rings so true for me. So true. Although myself is not exactly a professional programmer (I don't consider writing infra as code and Airflow as code strictly professional programming even though they are) this hits me like a train.

anelson 4y ago
I remember reading this quote in the original print magazine when I was a teenager living in rural Nebraska. For some reason a Safeway in the nearest town had a decent selection of magazines including Dr Dobbs Journal and MSJ. I cut out that particular quote and pasted it next to my monitor, because I was so deeply struck by the fact that there was actually another person in the world who felt the way did about programming. It’s quite the wave of nostalgia reading it again now in my 40s. How little has changed…
- markus_zhang 4y ago
  Yeah exactly. Nothing really changed. The magazines either closed door or turned to online but we get new magazines too, such as PoC|GTFO and others. People of like mind still burn candles to navigate the mazes that they out themselves into. Even at the age of 40 and far from my prime, I'd still burn all nighters to solve something. The only difference is that I usually quit at 4 or 5 and it takes a couple of days to recover.
alexchantavy 4y ago
Same. If you take out the “professional programmer” part it makes it sound like we’re recovering drug addicts. Is there something unique about this discipline that requires this borderline unhealthy level of focus and attention, or does it attract people with predispositions to work in this way to begin with?

anelson 4y ago

I remember reading this quote in the original print magazine when I was a teenager living in rural Nebraska. For some reason a Safeway in the nearest town had a decent selection of magazines including Dr Dobbs Journal and MSJ. I cut out that particular quote and pasted it next to my monitor, because I was so deeply struck by the fact that there was actually another person in the world who felt the way did about programming. It’s quite the wave of nostalgia reading it again now in my 40s. How little has changed…

markus_zhang 4y ago
Yeah exactly. Nothing really changed. The magazines either closed door or turned to online but we get new magazines too, such as PoC|GTFO and others. People of like mind still burn candles to navigate the mazes that they out themselves into. Even at the age of 40 and far from my prime, I'd still burn all nighters to solve something. The only difference is that I usually quit at 4 or 5 and it takes a couple of days to recover.

alexchantavy 4y ago

Same. If you take out the “professional programmer” part it makes it sound like we’re recovering drug addicts. Is there something unique about this discipline that requires this borderline unhealthy level of focus and attention, or does it attract people with predispositions to work in this way to begin with?