The Beast
I was quite a druggie in high school and my parents never could figure out what to do with me. One of their attempts involved taking a computer programming course with my dad. I don't remember why I agreed, boredom, curiosity, but I did well then forgot all about it.
When I was twenty-one I wound up in Indiana, a story or so for another time, with no idea what I was doing or where I was going. It was time for college and I didn't know what I could do, what I wanted or what I liked. When it came time to decide I remembered that course with my dad and figured why not. Why not became twenty years and when it suddenly ended I breathed a long sigh of relief.
I love what programming can do but I hate the process. It's a painstaking cycle of program, test and debug that can consume the mind. We talk of little else, think of little but and dream solutions in our sleep. The stereotype is accurate, anal-retentive, mysogynistic insomniacs, but I'm not sure if people like that are drawn to programming or they are transformed by what they do.
A program is a beast-child, conception and birth are exciting but it soon becomes a dependent thing demanding constant, sleepless care. Eventually it can grow to be the powerhouse it was destined to be but getting it there is a journey of small joys and constant sorrows.
After twenty years I thought the job was over, a thing for younger people, but here I am nursing another little beast. I hate it, I love it, because this one is mine.
When I was twenty-one I wound up in Indiana, a story or so for another time, with no idea what I was doing or where I was going. It was time for college and I didn't know what I could do, what I wanted or what I liked. When it came time to decide I remembered that course with my dad and figured why not. Why not became twenty years and when it suddenly ended I breathed a long sigh of relief.
I love what programming can do but I hate the process. It's a painstaking cycle of program, test and debug that can consume the mind. We talk of little else, think of little but and dream solutions in our sleep. The stereotype is accurate, anal-retentive, mysogynistic insomniacs, but I'm not sure if people like that are drawn to programming or they are transformed by what they do.
A program is a beast-child, conception and birth are exciting but it soon becomes a dependent thing demanding constant, sleepless care. Eventually it can grow to be the powerhouse it was destined to be but getting it there is a journey of small joys and constant sorrows.
After twenty years I thought the job was over, a thing for younger people, but here I am nursing another little beast. I hate it, I love it, because this one is mine.
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Posted by RevrendZ - 8/03/2005 11:35:00 PM
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5 Comments:
Rev Z:
I admire your computer proficiency and expertise. Although I don't mean to imply you are one, computer geeks have acquired a very sexy image, in a way. I love that Geek Squad commercial--an adorable geeky squadron coming to the rescue of a damsel in distress whose computer has died on her, suddenly and without warning. Her scream of agony and despair is heard, and geekies emerge from parachutes, racing to the scene in their geek-mobiles, where the main geek presents his badge to the hapless user a la Dragnet.
I am techno-challenged, but since I started blogging I also have dreams about it. Yes, I can see where it can be a love/hate type of thing--we are the user/masters but sometimes our computers can behave like a rebellious wilful child, refusing to bend to our commands. But we love them just the same.
My baby is driving me crazy... sleepless nights nursing a cranky child is driving me up a wall.
I had no idea that the programming beast and your muse could coincide in such a way. Fantastic!
You have the producer and the product descriptions detailed to a "T", yet, like programming, kept to a bare necessity minimum.
Your muse must be treating you well these days.
Please, I invite you to be my guinea pig over at the laboratory; I always need extra subjects for my experiments. Test #2
It turns out my muse and I are not getting on that well... she's been giving me the cold shoulder. As my little technical beast has grown she has gotten further away from me. It's become a major struggle to write, my muse once had me all to herself, it seems she doesn't like sharing. I don't blame her, she once filled my every waking thought but now the beast-child has taken that from her. All day at work today all I could think about was getting back to the game. I'm not sure why the child was ever born, it certainly wasn't planned.
Sounds good doesn't it, actually it's all an excuse, the reason the child was born, the reason it claims my attention is because I'm stuck. It happened near the end of my last book, too. All the little stories are supposed to come together and it's just hard as hell to handle. I think about my program to keep from going nuts tyring to untie all the knots. I'm not a planner and I write myself into corners all the time. A vague idea glimmers in the distance and I keep heading toward it, but it's one of those things that seems not so distant at the beginning but the closer you get the farther away it is. I'm getting there though and if it takes nights of sleepless programming to get me there I'll let it happen.
It's a matter of subconcious, I find when I'm stuck on something the best thing to do is quit thinking about it and give my thoughts to something else. Somehow, in time, as if by magic a resolution presents itself. When that happens the little beast is on its own. It's part of the reason why it drives me so hard, it wants to grow up and be.
Henry, I'm looking at Test #2... I think I'll have to look at it a lot more before I can respond.
Skip the test. It's lame.
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