(written by me 6/6/2002 – shared for the first time here on erica.biz)
Do you know that moment when you are programming something that really pushes the limits of the language you’re working in, and you just sit there and wonder, “Is this going to work?” And you draw out 50 possibilities and narrow it down to the one that uses the least amount of code, and suddenly everything just seems to click? You look up and it’s 30 minutes later and all of a sudden you dare to test it and it WORKS.
And it hits you that this minute, this instant, this moment when it all fits together, is why you are a programmer. Because you can make the language do things that no one else can. This is exactly why you are here right now — to show the entire world that you can throw all this random gibberish together and really make something that benefits everyone else. And this little piece of euphoria is your ultimate reward, because you’ve just done something that no one else quite has before, ever.
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28. May 2008 at 6:41 am
well put.
28. May 2008 at 7:29 am
It’s a wonderful feeling indeed, but the description seems a bit offtopic in a blog aimed at more at entrepreneurs than at programmers.
“This is exactly why you are here right now”
Where?
28. May 2008 at 11:01 am
@Leo: It probably is, but I still enjoy programming…and I really enjoyed that little quote from my journal in 2002. It brought back a lot of good memories.
By “here” I mean here on Earth, present, alive, in the moment. Definitely a flow state.
28. May 2008 at 11:03 am
29. May 2008 at 1:15 am
Yes!! Thanks for posting this. What are you coding?
29. May 2008 at 10:54 am
Well said! I’d have to disagree though with this being irrelevant to entrepreneurs. As someone who has owned her own business for many years, I’ve had quite a few of these moments and it wasn’t even in regards to programming. Doing something on your own, pushing the limits, and having it “click” is why I love owning my own business. That’s not a feeling you get often working for someone else’s vision.
29. May 2008 at 11:31 am
I remember that feeling when AJAX first came out and I used DHTML and AJAX to make a webapp GUI for a database table that allowed drag and drop reordering of the rows in the table with realtime updating. The customer’s jaw literally dropped and he said, “Wow!”
Good feeling. Well that and outrageous rates we can charge.
29. May 2008 at 11:32 am
Also, to expand on Michelle’s point, many programmers ARE running their own business.