Have you cut code today?

There are lots of people around me who are day-job software engineers - clock in by 9, clock out by 5, do the job and go home - they certainly don't waste time reading books or writing code at home.

For me, it's different. I code because it's something that I enjoy to do. I'll trade sleep for coding time - the day just isn't complete unless I've written some code.

Sometimes working at a big company as a software engineer, I spent a lot of time writing documents, attending meetings, triaging bugs, assigning work packages to my team, playing politics, writing an RFP or suffering compolsory training on some irrelevant topic. All these other things are necessary evils when you work at a big company.

At the end of the day though, I put up with all these things because eventually I get to do what I love to do - cut code. And writing software is what they are ultimately paying me to do. When you interview they don't test you out on how to write a document or attend a meeting - they want to know if you can code. Why then do big companies divert their software development staff to these other activities? As it has been said many times, a software developer does not a good manager make. At least most of the time.

And I'm a software developer - the longer I'm in this industry the surer I am. Why? Because if I haven't cut some code today, I'm just not happy.

tech/code | 26 Oct 2004 | #

The past weekend

A very nice weekend was just had by the Davies in Chicago. Lots of shopping on Saturday morning (because it was raining) - spent up big at Old Navy, Randhurst Mall, and Circuit City.

On Sunday it was beautiful weather, so in the afternoon, we drove to downtown straight from church. Feeling adventerous, we went via the I-94 instead of the I-90 - without a map. We didn't get lost, so I was pretty happy with my navigation skills. We visited Lincoln Park, 1200 acres of open space forming Chicago's largest park. We walked around the Clock Tower and found the zoo but ran out of time. It was very beautiful down by the lake, must do this again before it gets cold.

Footnote: I forgot to mention one important shop we visited, IKEA, which was amazing. From 10am 'till 10pm that store is full with people buying stuff - probably stuff they don't need too :) (28/10/2004)

travel/chicago | 26 Oct 2004 | #