It has been a little more than 6 months since I started working, and here are my thoughts. But, before I begin, I think I should caution my imaginary readers that I believe in stating things the way they are, and not the way I hope they will turn out to be. Sometimes this works, like when you need a honest opinion. Sometimes it doesn't, like in interviews.
I am surprised at the work/money ratio. This is probably the one point I have the hardest time accepting. Maybe I am just good at what I do, and I develop programs is what I do, but sometimes I find myself with nothing to do. Something I thought would take a while ended up getting done faster than anticipated (I believe it may be the Lord's doing, because I sure wouldn't expect the results out of me, and I think pretty highly of myself). Either way, so I end up with free time. Though my salary is nothing to boast about, in terms of how much programmers get paid, it is still a whole lot more than what many people get paid doing things which occupy a lot more of their time and energy than me. From an economics standpoint, this is either highly inefficient, or I am just the lowest-cost producer of programming skills.
The days pass by quick, week after week. I could see how 10 or 20 years could just pass by like a day. It seemed like yesterday, I was still applying for jobs, and wondering what it was that the Lord wanted me to do. Today, it's been more than 6 months that I've been sitting at a desk, staring at a screen, tapping my fingers on a board of plastic keys. If it wasn't common knowledge what computers were, I would be considered a lunatic.
Finally, work is monotonous. Every once in a while, when I'm working on something cool, there will be some excitement, but most of the time, it's so brain-dead that I'm wondering both what other people do to keep busy on the job, and why I haven't been "let go" yet. In fact, so boring, if you will, is the job, that it has driven me into taking more classes on the side, just so that I can claim that my time was not wasted, these years I'm about to commit.
One side effect of programming in Ruby is that my grammar has become a lot sloppier, or "flexible", if you wish. Thus, I noticed that I've been making a number of run-on sentences which would make my 5th grade English teacher regret she ever spent time teaching me. But, in this age of "lol"s, "brb"s, and :)'s, I doubt that this is a serious offense. It might be that I'm just too lazy to edit it, especially for non-existent readers, or it might be that this is just my style, the way I roll. Yes, I roll by writing run-on sentences. Because they go on and on, like this post is about to go if I don't end it right here.
There.
Written on November 17, 2010