Journal Entry (Sunday October 23, 2022)
I’ve been lucky. I spent most of my working life laboring at something I enjoyed doing (most of the time). I suspect not everyone can say that. I was a software developer. It is perhaps a bit of a stretch to call myself that (it largely depends on your definition of software developer) since I worked on the same system for virtually my entire career. I was a part of it’s evolution over the years and I like to think the system provided a capability that was integral to my company’s success over that same time period. It is worth noting however that shortly after I retired, the company turned the maintenance and development of the system over to a contractor. I think that says a lot about our time, enough said in that regard.
I remember with a good bit of pride the day I went into my boss’s office and told him I wanted to write a software solution which was only related to my primary responsibility in a peripheral way. I proposed writing a software migration tool for database objects that not only managed the version history of objects, but also automated their promotion from test environments to production, womb to tomb automated management of software objects, providing significant third-party labor savings. The boss said it couldn’t be done. I managed to persuade him to give me three months to deliver the solution. I wanted six months — because of his pessimism he was not inclined to make it easy. There was nothing available in the commercial sphere that performed this function. It was a big deal. The project was a success and I delivered it within the three month time-frame. This is the reason I like to think of myself as a “software developer” rather than a “software laborer.”
Of course, now I just write a personal blog, and promote my blog entries to the publishing platform manually… It’s more fun that way…