Thanks for an intriguing and thought-provoking post.

It does one's heart good to stop and think about what path one is travelling in life and to consider whether it's the most suitable one. In my case, learning BASIC in high school and clustering around the clattering teletype to try goofy things was immense fun, and over thirty years later, writing software and coming up with database schemas is still frustrating, and yet still fascinating and fulfilling work.

I think math has always been my calling. My latest triumph is helping out my step-son with his Math courses (algebra, trigonometry, calculus) during a makeup year before starting university full-time. He managed two A+ marks, and was accepted this weekend into Computer Engineering at Ryerson, here in Toronto, starting in the Fall. How proud that makes me, to be able to pass on a love of math and logic to the next generation.

I've learned a lot by reading your posts. Let us know how the new venture goes -- we'll be waiting impatiently for your next instalment.

I'll try to keep people updated. But the truth is that I won't have a sense for how the new venture goes for several months or more. It will take that long for me to feel like I know the new company, understand what is going on, have a sense of where it is going, and know where I'm going in it.

I'm glad you've learned from my posts. I learned in making them and reading others. If some of what I've learned does not directly apply to my future life, other parts do. And I'll continue to do my best to find unexpected ways to apply past lessons to future situations in interesting ways.

Some people have the programming bent and others don't. At high school my interest was in science and focused down to electronics. But computers are electronics right? So I got a job as an electronics technician. However there was a large r&d component in the job and it just seemed to work out that most of the projects were based around embedded processors that required a fair degree of programming. :-D

For various reasons I left that job and joined to company I now work for - as a full time programmer. Looks like that was what I was destined for after all.

As a litmus test for "programmer suitability" I rather like xkcd's "Paths". If you find yourself in the situation depicted, chances are there is a degree of programming (or maths) in your soul.

A degree of math, I'll agree. But not necessarily programming.

I'm thinking here of some of the finance people that I know. Very mathematically inclined. But not particularly organized towards programming...

Optimising pathways in various ways is something programmers often do. Not with mathematical rigour to find a shortest path, but by rule of thumb to find a reasonable compromise between programmer effort and machine effort.

---

DWIM is Perl's answer to Gödel

And now, still (after 25 years!) at the company where I became a full time programmer, I have returned to my roots and am helping design embedded systems and am pretty much the sole firmware developer in the team. Not so much Perl now, but lots of challenging and interesting coding.

Optimising for fewest key strokes only makes sense transmitting to Pluto or beyond

Please don't let a label (or the lack of one) make you a stranger to PerlMonks.

I don't care what you call yourself; I enjoy your posts. (And as resident dragon, I'll cheerfully eat anyone who tries to bar your entrance. ;-))

Good luck and godspeed!

Being a stranger is, as I said, more a consequence of being a father than the label. Though the label does not help. But I will drop by occasionally.

It doesn't hurt anything to have some people out there in other fields with a good working knowledge of how programming works. In fact, I would say nearly every field needs people in it who are also, or have also been, programmers, people who have a good idea how to guage the difficulty of a programming problem and know what kinds of information programmers need in order to develop solutions that will really meet the needs of the field. People who can talk to the programmers and help them understand what is wanted -- and understand what they are saying too. (The reverse is also needed: programmers with a background in the field in question.)

I am in almost the opposite of your situation: I certainly have the temperament to enjoy programming. I thrive on solitude, and get grumpy if I spend too many consecutive hours around people, especially if they're talking all the time about things of no technical importance. There is little I like better than to be the only person within earshot for hours at a time. I strongly prefer written forms of communication, because they let me revise what I'm saying before people read it. Some of my personal programming projects that I did for fun were hundreds of lines long way back when I was first learning to program using GW-BASIC, so you know I don't mind a little heads-down dev time.

I'm not sure I'm cut out, skill-wise, to be a full-time programmer. Maybe I am. I've never had the chance to try, really. I'd probably have to move to a big city to find out, or else commute, and I'm pretty sure I don't want to do either of those things, so. Nonetheless, I do get to do some programming as a part of my job, and I find significant applications for programming in my personal life as well. I wrote my own playlist-generation algorithm for my music collection, and I like it rather better than standard "shuffle". I wrote a tool (that I'm thinking about putting on CUFP one of these days) to help with memorization, because I'm involved in a quizzing program. And so on and so forth. So although I am not a full-time programmer as such, I certainly do some programming on a fairly regular basis.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that programming doesn't have to be an all-consuming forty-hours-a-week career in order to be useful and worthwhile.

Myself I've also drifted away from programing - as a full time production DBA in a pretty large bank there isn't much opportunity at work, and not much time away from work. And after more than 20 years I find it harder to sit down and start a new project...

Michael

I hope you enjoy your life as a DBA. That's a path that was open to me which I considered then decided against.

I decided against it for a number of reasons. One of them is that the easiest path that was open to me was Oracle-specific. And my sense is that while Oracle is going nowhere for a long time (database lock-in is real), it isn't going new places either. And I just didn't quite feel that being a DBA was a great fit for me.

But I could change my mind on that. In my next job I'm likely to learn more about the internals of databases, and could still go further in that direction.

You inspired a lot of people in a lot of ways, and I thank you for it. Ill miss your thought provoking posts (already do actually), especially those on the craft of programming. Best wishes in your new endeavours.

By personality I'm a poor fit for being a programmer.

Programmator nascitur non fit.

(I'm sure some of those who maintain latin as an alive language also invented a latin term for "programmer", but a several minutes of googling didn't help. So I left it in English. Update: The correct term was suggested by jdporter.)

there is this text called "lingua latina per se ilustrata" that is all in latin and is designed to make you learn by context...I haven't bought it yet but some friends like it.

cheers --stephan

there is this text called "lingua latina per se ilustrata" that is all in latin and is designed to make you learn by context...I haven't bought it yet but some friends like it.

Oh, no! I studied Latin at school -we all do, in Italy- but I've long forgot it, with the exception of some idiomatic phrase, and for some reason, the praeneste fibula's inscription which I know by heart ever since I first saw it and I continue to like even though I know it's probably a hoax. Now, who's gonna find a link with Perl to pretend we're not too OT? (No, I don't think mentioning L::R::P is enough. How 'bout archaic Perl?)

I had a job once doing career/stress counseling with industrially injured workers who couldn't go back to their old jobs - truck drivers and loggers and nursing home attendants with broken backs or paralyzed arms. The general approach was : what did you like and not like about your previous job? ... ok, now what did you like about it that didn't require you to lift 50lbs every 10 minutes? ... ok, what other job has that part that's left over. One of the toughest was a cop who'd gotten shot. His response was (no kidding) "What I liked was being able to push people around."

Anyway, from reading your posts and having met you briefly, I'd guess that one of the things you liked about your previous job was "understanding how software works". And apparently one of the things you didn't like was "spending more time with pixels than with people". So, we do the math: understanding - isolation = ...

Being a career/stress counselor and being a programmer are only two of the half dozen or so careers I've had in my life. Change is good (but often hard). Good luck. Don't be a PM stranger!

Your guess is dead on. I do like to understand things. And I do want more interaction with people. My hope is that my new job will provide that balance. Lots of interaction with people as we try to find the right way to ask questions to come up with useful answers, and lots of opportunity to try to understand the business we're in.

I'll try not to be a stranger. If for no other reason than that you're one of the few people I've met whose jokes are worse than mine. ;-)

I also fell into programming and while I like certain aspects of it, I'm not sure that I'll ever be a great programmer. My personality sounds much like yours. In addition, I simply cannot force myself to RTFM -- I typically rely on learning new ideas and tricks by trying out suggestions made by those around me or things I see on PM. It also doesn't help that I work in a java-centric environment -- comments are continually thrown around that Perl programmers aren't 'real' programmers. It's a morale killer at times, however I try to ignore it.

I wish you challenges and joys in your new career move. I hope you find the changes more suitable for your personality!! :)

I'm not sure that I'll ever be a great programmer.

I'm almost completely sure I will never be. I love this thing though. And I feel like a programmer. Just not a great one.

This post, of course, makes me think not only of my own very current "am I a programmer?" simmer, but also of my also-previously-noted sidetrip into the world of theatre, where among other things I found that -- while I may have had some smidge of talent and a quirky appeal for some -- I was very definitely "the wrong personality" to be an actor.

I vividly recall the first time I auditioned for a play during my time as an MFA candidate in acting at a large midwestern U. Mind you, I was a graduate student in the theatre program. Many of the undergrads, however, somehow became convinced (I guess by the way I carried myself? I'll never know) that I had (and I quote) "wandered over from the Math department to try out for a play." I guess that should have told me something.

To this day, though, my personal version of the great Chuang Tzu's "butterfly" quandary is "I (Glenn the would-be programmer/IT guy) dreamed I was an actor; but what if I am an actor, dreaming I am Glenn the would-be programmer/IT guy?"

That's clunkily put but mebbe good enough.

At any rate, tilly, the very best of luck to you.

Regards,

G

Seems the world is filled with "accidental programmers". Like GrandFather I started out in electronics, moved into mathematics, and programming, because nothing existed to do what I needed. That was in 1970. Then into physics and somehow the ability to run up a few lines of dirty code always came in handy.

But programming is never where my heart has been. I would rather (and have done several times) design the computer that it all works on.

Again like you, I wondered about ageism, and have encountered the problem. But not in my current incarnation as a programmer! The ageist attitudes were most pronounced in engineering and academic circles. Then, of course, their were the technophobic management people who always ask "why don't you want to be in management or marketing?".

So good luck in your new endeavour, I hope it works out for you. But please don't be a stranger, I for one, have valued a lot of what you have had to say over the years.

jdtoronto

You tend to step away from the normal paths, question practices that others consider to be the common way to do certain things, and that's one of your best qualities, as a programmer. Just my personal opinion. :)

Perl Developer at Rent.com/eBay
Posted:  	 May 22, 2007

They are indeed. And as I said, I recommend it highly as a place to work.

They have a small programming team of good people working in a productive team with reasonable hours. The informal rules say:

1. Don't be late to meetings.
2. You can set your deadlines, but you have to meet them.
3. No drama.
There is an element of joking, but also seriousness about those. I spent close to 4 years there. In that time I have to admit that I saw people be late to meetings. But meetings started close to on time. And there aren't many meetings, for most programmers there is only one scheduled meeting per week. I only twice saw the second rule violated. The first time was a bona fide emergency. The second worked out. And I never saw the third violated (except in clearly good humor).

And there are the random perks. Whether it is the prime real estate (The Water Garden in Santa Monica), flexible working hours (I personally followed a 2PM - 9PM schedule), the game room, etc. The company is very productive and profitable, and doesn't mind letting people feel appreciated.

I am leaving because I have an opportunity to do something I want to do with people I want to work with much closer to home. I am not leaving because I was unhappy in any way, shape or form. And, even though I'm leaving, I sincerely recommend it as a good place to work.

PS: I think that if you go through jobs.perl.org you'll wind up with a recruiter. You'll probably wind up with more flexibility to negotiate if you go directly to aavakian@rent.com or msilvera@rent.com.

You know, I remember you posting in here (early 2000s) when I started programming Perl as well, and as I had BBQ as my mentor (and friend), I did spend a lot of time reading, learning and eventually even writing around here.

Well, all i want to say is that it is kind of sad to see yet another "saint" moving away from Perl, but I guess that is somehow, bound to happen. I want to wish you all the luck you might need in this next step in your life!

Take care,
- jp sama

I'm a code farmer.

A bigger reason is named Sam. It is amazing how much spare time vanishes when you're a parent. It is worth every moment, but it is still a lot of time.

I can confirm this. My big reason is called Niels ;-)