My day job pays me to write the applications that automate the criminal justice system (I work in Canada, for the Provincial DoJ). The tool of (not my) choice is Powerbuilder, which to me is the station wagon of programming languages. It's so boring.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: I never like to blame the tool, since most tools can be learned to work and be productive with. But anyway you look at it, Powerbuilder a.) bores me, b.) is dying a slow and painful death c.) does many things to hinder the developer (the scope of which is beyond this post and off-topic). It's not a skill that will be valuable (either financially, or in terms of what really interests me).

Everyday I'm at work, I often really feel like I'm working. As in, the fact that I'm being paid to be there always looms over me like a dark cloud. I've seriously considered taking my credentials (okay, I've only got 7 months experience since finishing a 1.5 year programming course, but...) elsewhere.

Where is "elsewhere"? Well, I have two major interests, that I've basically stopped pursuing for the most part since finishing school:

1. Network security/Sysadmin'ing - I dream of being able to play with Linux and/or the BSD's at work, constantly following the latest and greatest minds as they figure out new ways to compromise the security of mission critical networks. It's never ceased to amaze me that it often times takes little more than the intelligence of a twelve-year old to compromise some of the most important networks in the world. Also, I've found that by learning how to break things, you also learn a lot about how they work.
   
   
2. Being a Perl/C/maaaybe Python Programmer - Which of course is a pretty broad statement, since I haven't specified (and quite frankly don't know) what specific type of programming I would do, I just know that in many situations given any kind of programming task, I would love to have the community support and extremely helpful environment that Perl runs in, and the generally high level of intelligence that the "average programmer" in each of said languages tends to display.

So what's holding me back? Why haven't I moved into one of these disciplines yet? Well, honestly, I worry about two other things:

• What if I look like I'm job-hopping on my resume? After finishing school in July '00, I got my first job within a couple weeks. Nine weeks after working there, the gov't came along and offered me $10,000 more, three weeks holidays, and every benefit in the book. Not to mention that I work 1 less hour per day now too. But if I quit here, I (quite possibly) lose all of that, with the possibility of gaining much more intellectual satisfaction. Which to me is a worth tradeoff but...
  
  
• What if the next job is just as boring? What if I take a position as a Perl programmer and it turns out I spend all my time writing simple (aka, boring) CGI scripts that read in data from a database and spit it out to a web page, lather, rinse, repeat? That's not my idea of exciting either. :)

So that definitely scares me. If I'm going to take the risk of getting into an area that really fascinates me, I better not end up with the same feeling of drudgery and boredom I do now. :)

What it comes down to though, is that if you know that this position will improve your happiness, from my perspective I would definitely take it. But then again, I'm young (22) and not married (but happily playing the field :), so maybe I'm just ambitious. =]