In the beginning there were coders and hackers.
Or rather hackers were coders.
Systems were fun.
Beginning with the growth of the web and the easy VC money, things started changing. Hackers became corporate coders. <Like the commercialisation of rap>. Rules were put in place. Methodologies were expressed. Most were good. But people looked at the system of people and how to incorporate meths on them instead of looking at systems.
This started a problem for the newbie, the script kiddie, the hacker, the beginner. He had to deal with the meth first. Big books took over small few paragraphs of writing. APIs took over APIs.
He started a junior developer and wanted to become a team leader and then a director of engineering. He thought about getting VC money and being super efficient with his time and his code editor. None of this was bad of course.
But one day he realised he is a bit depressed. Just coding doesn’t give him pleasure. But what is the code he was writing? Oh, that new dashboard for sales clients. Now there are dashboards and dashboards, this was the latter. But why was he depressed? He believed in the meth and the org.
Civil strife within? Oh Shakespeare help us. “To thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,” said you. But what is the way? Should he be a front end guy or keep tinkering with databases? His other peers are unfortunately in the same boat. Both were together swimming in this sticky river flowing through the green sands.
To feel the fire of art burning within is a true joy and many of us lost it when we became corp coders instead of hackers.
We did each other a disservice by acting as if this form of working has been there for centuries and we know all about it. Today we form packs, do scrum, and have team leads preparing weekly charts. This is just play acting. That is why most of us think if we can still continue doing this when we are 60.
What happened to the ways of the hackers of yonder? Why are we interested less in systems and more in getting that promotion and that joy. What happened to that internet where you could express your thought in code and break and mix systems in new ways.
Lets not be selfish and make it hard for the beginners and ourselves. Lets agree that coding is a very personal thing for each of us and we each have to find our own ways of expressions. And lets get more of the memached style tutorials out. Lets not be judging lest we be judged..
