242 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
242 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
{ datagubbe }
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[1]datagubbe.se » on working with your passion
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On Working With Your Passion
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Autumn 2024
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Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the
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days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and
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you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall
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eat bread, till you return to the ground.
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Genesis 3:17-19
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I recently read an old blog post by Eric Wastl (of [2]Advent of Code fame)
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entitled [3]Your Job Is Not to Write Code. The gist of it is that software
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development is, actually, a lot about writing code. Wastl's text is, I dare
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say, uncontroversial - including its final sentence and sentiment: "(...) Your
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job is to engineer things, and to love every second of it."
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Is it, though?
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As a software developer, I agree that my job is to write software that is as
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good as humanly possible given the circumstances under which it was produced.
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I'd argue, however, that it is not my duty to love every second of it.
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Let it be noted that I'm not trying to pick a belated fight with Wastl here:
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his text is fairly lighthearted and it seems fitting for it to end on an upbeat
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note. Add to this that the sentiment that software developers should love their
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jobs, or work with their passion, is extremely commonplace. I come across it so
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often it almost seems like a mantra, or perhaps rather a platitude repeated
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without much thought.
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This begs the question: Why is that?
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***
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There are good and bad jobs, and there are many various factors affecting this.
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Examples like colleagues, managers, salaries, working environments, tasks,
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workplace hazards and personal proclivities immediately spring to mind. I'd
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probably make for an abysmal a dentist, for example, but I'd like to think I'd
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make a decent farmer. Liking and enjoying most aspects of a job, however, is
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not the same as loving every second of it, or being passionate about it.
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A wise person once defined a passion as something you'd do even if you didn't
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get paid for it. In that sense, I'm passionate about a lot of things -
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including computers and programming. But my passion isn't perfectly aligned
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with what I do at work: there are many different kinds of programming. The same
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goes for a lot of other activities. Being passionate about food doesn't mean
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you'll love every second of being a line cook at an all-you-can-eat cruise
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liner buffet. Being passionate about cars doesn't mean you'll love every second
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of working on the assembly line at Tesla. And, of course, being passionate
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about programming doesn't mean you'll love every second of churning out yet
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another REST API.
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Conversely, this doesn't mean you should do a bad job. It also doesn't mean
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that not loving a job automatically means you hate it. Passion shouldn't be
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confused with things like personal growth, pride, satisfaction and enjoyment:
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the more of this you feel at work, the better. It's just that there's often a
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gap between something you'd do for free and something you're paid to do,
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regardless of your working conditions.
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Even when actually working with something that is your passion, can it really
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stay that way for long? I love [4]tinkering with my [5]Amiga. I'm not paid a
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single cent for it - I do it when I feel like it (which is rather often), on my
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own terms. There's no pressure, no demands and no deadlines other than those I,
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and nobody else, decide. Would that really feel the same if I, say, did it in
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front of an audience on Youtube - an audience on which my livelihood depended?
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How often would I have to think of some new project, and how much would I have
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to adapt that project to suit the tastes of those effectively financing my
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mortgage? As far as jobs go, I'm sure it could be better than most - but I
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doubt it would really be my passion and, more importantly, I firmly believe it
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would risk poisoning the well that's presently the source of much creative joy.
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I'm sure there are people who have successfully managed to turn their passion
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into a job they love every second of - though I think they're fewer than we
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care to admit. I'm also sure there are people who are perfectly happy
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performing some menial job as nothing more than a means to finance a
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commercially unviable passion - probably many more than the first category. In
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this context, though, this is an aside - it's the passion trope itself that
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interests me.
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***
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Where does this notion of professional love, or passion, come from? It's
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commonplace in some lines of work, whereas others are refreshingly exempt from
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it. Nobody expects a vacuum truck operator to go around exclaiming things like
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"Pumping sewage is my passion!" That doesn't mean their work isn't important
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(Quite the contrary!) or that they can't - or shouldn't - feel pride or job
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satisfaction, or earn a decent living wage.
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It seems to me as if this talk of passion has increased in strength and
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prevalence along with the shift towards a service economy - yet, not everyone
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employed in the service sector are expected to be passionate about their jobs.
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Sure, many Foodora and Doordash delivery workers have probably, at some point,
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been subjected to some trite motivational speech along those lines, but in
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reality - just as with the vacuum truck operator - nobody expects them to
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really feel that way.
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Hence, in what's considered the lower rungs of the service economy,
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professional passion is nothing more than an empty phrase. However, as we climb
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the ladder of status, prestige and - sometimes - salary, this phrase becomes
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more loaded with intent and ostensible sincerity.
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One reason for this could be the type of jobs that have proliferated during the
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last few decades. By channeling [6]David Graeber and [7]Peter Turchin, our
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current situation can be summarized as one where jobs with immediate meaning -
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manufacturing, farming - have, to a large extent, been replaced with highly
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abstract (and often seemingly superfluous) make-work jobs. Coupled with
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downward mobility and cutthroat competition within the middle class, we seek
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rationalization to help us reconcile with a reality not quite matching our
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expectations.
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Maybe churning out clickbait headlines about celebrities (and perhaps barely
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earning a living wage doing so) wasn't the desired outcome after spending lots
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of time and money on a journalism degree. Maybe polishing off yet another
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corporate powerpoint about DEI policy wasn't, in your heart of hearts, what you
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envisioned when enrolling in university. Maybe your friends earn more money
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than you, or seem more professionally fulfilled, or at least have a job that
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comes with more prestige. Maybe you've come to feel that "education is the
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silver bullet" was a lie you were told when you were young and impressionable.
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And maybe, just maybe, lies along that line beget other lies.
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Passion can be one such convenient little lie we tell both ourselves and
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others, making us appear a bit more accomplished and our lives feel a little
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more acceptable. When trying to invent meaning, or even explain why we've
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settled for something not matching how we envision ourselves, few things are
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more powerful than a deeply held personal affection for our work.
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***
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How does programming fit into this? Even though the tech sector has taken quite
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a beating of late, programming jobs are still associated with status,
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prestigious traits (such as intelligence) and, of course, money - even
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relatively modest developer salaries are usually enough for a comfortable
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middle class lifestyle. While the process of writing code may involve dealing
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with abstract concepts, the rewards and results of the work are more concrete,
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comparable to any other craft: tangible (sort of) consumable goods. I also
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believe that most programmers, like me, quite like their jobs. As far as work
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goes, it's pretty cushy: I get to sit on my butt in a comfy chair in a climate
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controlled office, I have a good work/life balance, I like my colleagues and,
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from time to time, I get that elated feeling of having solved a hard problem or
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helped someone else solve theirs.
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That, one could argue, should be enough for job satisfaction - and for a lot of
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programmers, I'm sure it is. But life is full of status games, unfulfilled
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ambition and dreams that may never fully come true.
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Just like a journalism major may dream of truthful reporting, exposing great
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scandals and scrutinizing corrupted power, so may a programmer dream of being a
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scientist of sorts. Not just because the associated educational path is called
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Computer Science, but because of the still relatively young lore of the
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profession. Not that long ago, computers where extremely scarce and most
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programming took place in academia or various mythical R'n'D departments during
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a time of exceptional economic growth. It was an exclusive, high status
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activity among very clever individuals whose work, in the end, generated real -
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and measurably massive - benefits to an economy still firmly dominated by
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traditional industrial manufacturing.
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These are the people who - given ample funding and almost complete freedom to
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shape their work - came up with some damn fantastic stuff: Unix. C. The GUI.
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Garbage collection. The Internet. Many of these pioneers are still alive, and
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will happily recount inspiring stories about what programming jobs were like
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during the golden heydays.
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Alas, the way places like Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, DARPA and tangential
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institutions like NASA operated back then isn't coming back. In short, there's
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too much politics and not enough money involved today, making it unfeasible to
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just lock a handful of guys with a vision in a room, let them tinker freely and
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then see if what comes out of it is useful - or if they should be given some
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more time and money for a second attempt.
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This, of course, is closing in on pursuing your passion and getting paid for
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it. No JIRA boards, no hard deadlines, no endless, agenda-less meetings, no
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customer demands, no MVP, no sprint deliverables, no "Can we get the icon in
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cornflower blue?": Just a bunch of like-minded juggernauts and a carte blanche
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to do almost exactly whatever you feel like within your area of expertise.
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I think this - be it romanticized fantasy or actual historical fact - is what a
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lot of us programmers, deep down, desire from our professional life. Sadly,
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we're not celebrated geniuses working at the research department of a telecomms
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monopoly during the rise of an empire. We're instead doing yet another customer
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checkout form for a mid-sized e-commerce site, helplessly watching our
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profession slowly, as Marx put it, "sink into the proletariat". Meanwhile, we
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secretly feed the little part of us that pretends to be Douglas Engelbart as
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best we can. This activity sometimes manifests itself as yet another JavaScript
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framework, the resulting bloated package dependencies rationalized by blaming
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our unyielding passion.
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Perhaps this is also part of why we suddenly start shunning or even mocking
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certain methods or languages: PHP, Visual Basic and Java, for example. COBOL
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was among the first: a pioneering high level language that empowered scores of
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new programmers, but also one that was soon openly ridiculed. Sure, it's funny
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and odd and a bit clunky (though very much less so compared to other languages
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in 1959), it was designed by a committee and isn't considered cool and elegant
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and interesting like, say, Lisp.
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More importantly though, COBOL is a language specifically designed for some of
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the earliest routine programming jobs, used for mass producing "good enough"
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systems intended for broad consumption. Its stated purpose is to write software
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with low intellectual merit, delivered according to exact specifications
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stipulated by a bunch of suits at a megacorp. The resulting code was dutifully
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assembled by swathes of office drones with zero real freedom to tinker. An
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anomaly, surely, tarnishing the exciting, groundbreaking field of computing
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with boring, everyday sustenance careers: A language laying bare the crass
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reality of applied computing already in its infancy.
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It's tempting to pretend we're above all that simply because the language we
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use has a different syntax.
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***
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Just like the journalism major churning out clickbait may despise what they
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write, so may the programmer come to despise the software they develop. Today,
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much of it is not only unexciting routine work, it's also completely frivolous.
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In many cases it's even morally dubious, intended as little more than a vehicle
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for harvesting personal user data and delivering ads. And even if repeating
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little lies can make us feel better in the moment, it will probably make us
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bitter in the long run.
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Alas, it seems we can't stop collectively fanning the flames of
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disillusionment. After all, we're working with our passion, and it's our job to
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love every second of it all.
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privacy notice: datagubbe.se uses neither cookies nor javascript. | [8]rss feed
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© carl svensson
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References:
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[1] https://www.datagubbe.se/
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[2] https://adventofcode.com/
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[3] http://hexatlas.com/entries/5
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[4] https://www.datagubbe.se/jol/
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[5] https://www.datagubbe.se/mkdem/
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[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
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[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction
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[8] https://www.datagubbe.se/atom.xml
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