ndanger.organism

Ok, so my last post was all about how much Tim Bryce doesn’t know how to manage programmers (or at least me), but I do have to agree with this:

Management must be aware of these factors in order to properly stimulate people to tackle their assignments. After all, people will only work on those tasks they deem important. Unfortunately, not all programming assignments are glamorous. The vast majority of all corporate applications require some rather simple logic (e.g., read a file, sort data, write a report). It thereby becomes a challenge for management (and the programmer) to make a seemingly mundane task appear interesting.

Well, mostly I agree that many programming tasks suck. I don’t think there’s a whole lot management can do to make them “appear interesting”–at least not in a way that isn’t disgustingly cloying. Programmers, however, can find ways to spice things up: writing more code.

I am extremely guilty of this. Why perform yet another mindless SQL query to graphic visualization when I can design a data query framework? That stores arbitrary SQL? And let’s you query it by tags? And retrieve the results as a Python object? And can automatically run programmatic transforms? And can package the data as CSV, JSON or XML? And return it via a web service?

The answer, of course, is that I will never ever finish writing that framework. It’s a pipe-dream. It stimulates the part of my brain that likes programming and holds the promise of making things suck-less the next time such a task arises.

Not to say that writing tools to scratch your own itch isn’t useful. I mean, that’s where 90% of software tools came from. But most of what I’m doing is really procrastinating by doing something useful: I know I’m not doing what I’m supposed to, but I’m doing something close enough I don’t feel guilty.

Over time most programmers–people in general–learn:

1. The wisdom to know when to build the nail gun vs. when to use the duct tape
2. The constitution to do things that suck.

I’ve found both lessons also apply to biking. Especially #2. I’ve learned a lot, but I can pretty much guarantee that at some point I’ll be under-dressed (mostly in early fall when it’s 33 and raining) or improperly-geared (and riding home with 2 pumpkins in my bag). These things happen… you just have to deal with them. Then put on fenders and some panniers.