The ups and downs of the tech world
Tags: watercooler
Published: 2020-09-08 22:00:53

One day you wake up and you realize that you are the only one not using vim, and as you read everywhere, vim is the best editor for programing, so you dedicate a couple of months of your life to learn and master vim, but wait, what is that? oh no, vim is a terrible editor because it's too complex for the most basic things, making you waste precious time you could be using doing actual work, and since you just need to do a couple of things in your editor, nothing fancy, you should be using an IDE to actually help you, not be against you, so you find an IDE that helps you code faster by generating boilerplate code so you don't have to, and now you are happy because your productivity has increased, but wait, what is that? oh no, it turns out that by letting the IDE doing most of your code you are not learning properly to code, you need to have a strong grasp of the basics before you can actually do anything really, so you start from the bottom and start learning algorithms and software engeneering, and you spend a lot of time planning and creating diagrams and workflows so that you can be prepared for most of the possible problems you might encounter in your development process, but wait, what is that? oh no, you are wasting your time, sure you need to know the basics, but what you really need is to start coding from day zero and create your own projects, you need to fail in order to learn to succeed, practice makes perfect, and it's more important to get the product out in the world as soon as possible than it being perfect (that's impossible anyway), besides, the feedback from your users will guide you in your next steps improving your... wait, what is that? oh no, your users are furious because you leaked all their private information with an unsecured AWS bucket, but you know this happens all the time, companies are constantly messing up with their security, all you need is to publish a sincere-sounding blog post telling your users that you take their privacy and security very seriously, yeah, that will do it, so you do it, and hey, not only that worked, you also got a call from a big company that wants to invest in your project, it's actually working out pretty well for you, you are actually going to make some money with your humble project, but wait, what is that? oh no, they want to change some things, actually a lot of things to the point where your pet project will become an atrocity, all you ever wanted to avoid, you wanted it to be open source, they want to close it, you wanted it to be for everyone, they want it to be exclusive, you wanted it to be simple and friendly, they want to make it feature rich and sell training courses to be able to use it, how could this happen? you are losing control, you hear that word in your mind... "burnout", you need to take a break, you live to work and work to live, you need to prioritize, no, you need to stop, you need to meditate and practice mindfulness and learn to live in the moment, so you do that and you start to feel better, you spend more time with your family and doing what you like, and even when your life's work comes crashing down in flames you can calmly say "actually, I don't mind, because I have everything I need inside", and this works for a while, until you realize that you were lying to yourself and you can't live without your project and you hate your life without it, so you go to a board meeting and tell them to go f* themselves, and you start your own company and this time you will do everything right, starting with the correct framework for developing your next big hit, so you go with the cool multiplatform engine that will get you out making money in no time, but wait, what is that? oh no, that framework suddenly is having internal conflicts between the founders and the community of supporters and contributors, and they are splitting into 2 different projects, what do you do? which one you choose?, none!, you go native because you are too old for this sh*t anyway, if you want anything done properly you have to do it yourself with the best tools that are available to you, that is what you should have done in the first place instead of trying cutting corners, that's it, you will develop on your own all 5 variants or your app for every major platform because you are a professional and you can teach yourself anything you want, you did it before, you can do it again, only that that is completely false and you are lying to yourself and you are scared and confused and overwhelmed with everything around you and you are terrified of showing weakness or doubt so you keep that avatar of the successful you and keep imploding inside, until one day you had enough of all of this, all the trends and fads and the top 20 tools every developer should master and the best 10 programming languages every decent person should learn to even think properly, and the 5 secrets that every successful entrepreneur know and nobody told you and the single most important thing you must definitely do, or don't do, or know, or forget, or learn again or teach to your disciples, or experience at least once to have a fulfilling life, or avoid at all cost if you don't want to destroy your career forever, unless you follow this easy steps to become everything you wanted to be, it's so easy yet nobody speaks about it, but you are one of the few lucky ones to learn this, you only need to send to this address 5 bitcoin, yes that's right, I know it looks like a lot but how do you want to succeed if you are not willing to sacrifice a little, today it seems like a lot but tomorrow, but think of the day when you are in your own private yatch sorrounded with celebrities and your face is in People magazine and your work is talked about on YC and newspapers around the world write articles about your edgy and sometimes problematic tweets, and your habits and your goofy yet adorable quirks and your sometimes out of place remarks about a minority, or your random mood changes and the roumors about your breakup with the hottest celebrity and you don't care because you are above all of that and above all of them, you have reached the top and touched the sky with your hands, and yet... you feel a wave coming and you know it's coming for you, and suddenly you realize it's inevitable because everything is so fragile and things turn to dust so fast, so you find peace in the thought that it was all for nothing really, all you have will be gone and everything you did will be forgotten, and you don't amount to nothing in the world, or the Universe, and you are already forgotten and erased forever as if you never existed and what remains is a blinking cursor waiting for the next simulation to be started.