Programming

(written by me 6/6/2002 – shared for the first time here on erica.biz)

Do you know that moment when you are programming something that really pushes the limits of the language you’re working in, and you just sit there and wonder, “Is this going to work?” And you draw out 50 possibilities and narrow it down to the one that uses the least amount of code, and suddenly everything just seems to click? You look up and it’s 30 minutes later and all of a sudden you dare to test it and it WORKS.

And it hits you that this minute, this instant, this moment when it all fits together, is why you are a programmer. Because you can make the language do things that no one else can. This is exactly why you are here right now — to show the entire world that you can throw all this random gibberish together and really make something that benefits everyone else. And this little piece of euphoria is your ultimate reward, because you’ve just done something that no one else quite has before, ever.