How to write code without confidence
The last few drops of black gold drips from the coffee brewer. The smell of “fresh berries, hibiscus and citrus” is almost visible in the ooze from the mug. The coffee will do me good. It will calm my nerves before I pick another task from the Jira board. Arild mentions something about looking forward to playing “WoW Classic”. I am not really listening. My mind is in a different place. It has travelled two years back in time. Back to day 1.
It is as if I have no knowledge or skills at all. Bob the Builder is just a cartoon for kids, not a tool on my computer. Linux is something only die-hard experts are able to use. I am still getting caught in Vim. For two years, I have stumbled around here at Sparebank 1. I have written code, made commits, searched through production logs, sometimes taken on responsibilities and tried to show myself from my best side. Have I gained any new skills? Have I improved on any of my existing skills and gained knowledge? Or is it just Aleks.age that has been incremented?
I walk slowly towards my desk, my legs are as heavy as they were 650 days ago. I am wearing the same white shirt, however, on the first day it was freshly ironed. Hello darkness my old friend, I have come to speak to you again. The anxiety is so “motherfucking real”. As Morrissey put it: “every day is just silent and gray”. I have listened to this song about a thousand times. It is in a way liberating. I’m not alone in this mess. It makes it easier to bear. Sometimes it makes it easier. Not today. Today is a day when nothing is easy. The voice on my shoulder is as heavy as a sack of potatoes. It feels difficult to breathe. The key ring around my neck is gnawing into my skin, and pulling my head towards the ground. Every step is a struggle to not look like the hunchback of Notre Dame. I wonder if they will ever sound the bells of Notre Dame again?
The running tracks painted on the ground gives me speed. Motivation. I feel like I am Usain Bolt, on my way to a new world record. Catch me if you can, Vim. The nervous thoughts casting a shadow over my confidence is long gone. I am in control of this. Everything is going to be fine.
The coffee spills from my mug and splashes to the ground.
The black gold; the black mess.
Go back to start.
I make a new try for it. I am calmer, slower. I observe everyone as I am walking past them. Small steps towards my desk. Three rows of people to pass. In this hangar hall we all need to find our parking spot. In the jungle of computer screens, cables, office chairs and keyboards, we all pretend to be unique. We mark ourselves as “frontenders” and “backenders”, in the hope of belonging to a community. The mark separates us on a fundamental level, making us different. Until there is a developer that can do both. “Full stack” they name themselves. Some kind of über human who won’t be stopped by the dividers we have spent so much time to create. Is this how an old race horse feels? There is someone younger, faster, better, stronger. Remember that you will turn old. Remember that your due date will arrive.
“Memento mori”
Arild is nodding his head in rhythm with “Du hasst”, and my thoughts quickly jumps to the giant concert Stadium north in Oslo. Back to 2006. The arena is literally on fire, as Rammstein is shooting each other with pyrotechnics. What if the hangar hall will be lit on fire? It might happen, any day, any time. A few days ago I broke the production build. I too wanted to call myself a “full stack developer”. With eagerness and courage, I took responsibility for a small change request within the visible layer of the application, the magical land of front-end. A nice play to start, at least so I was told. No one discovered my mistake before more than 50 customers had been blocked from their wish of making a quick transfer. When the support team informed us of the bug, it was as if someone threw me into a pool filled with ice. The ice cold darkness embraced me with its cold grip. Hello darkness my old friend, I have come to speak with you again. As I sank deeper and deeper, I was sure this was the end. In a matter of minutes, someone would walk in with a cardboard box, telling me to fill it with my personal belongings. Kthanxbye. The biggest mystery was not how to solve the bug, it was the fact that no one walked in with a cardboard box. The storage must have been emptied, no other explanation made any sense. Why would they still allow me to stay?
Rune, our product owner, did not speak a single negative word about the incident. No one was asked to leave, no one was even asked to stay late. Instead, he gave us a pat on the back and kind words. It was as if he spoke Greek. The words made no sense. Was it all a joke? An early April fools joke? I was absolutely convinced this was some kind of hazing.
It was not last week that I broke the production build, it just feels like it. The memory is still so clear. It has been a year. Sometimes, me and my colleagues laugh about it. I laugh nervously, while the others laugh because they too have broken the production build, or done something as severe. Today we can all cosplay the laughing hyenas of Lion King. We have reached the final countdown. It is time to roll out the application we have been building for two years. While Europe is singing their merry way, on their way to Venus, we are the unlucky ones left to carry the burden of installing “MOBE”. Hand us protein pills and helmets to put on, we won’t survive for long.
Eirik heightens his gaze, and looks straight at me. I respond by giving him a weird look. I give him my best imitation of the legendary football referee Pierluigi Collina. Eirik sends his imitation back, before we both shake our heads. What a weird and silly game. A bit funny, but weird. Sometimes I am scared that they will all see right through me. They will all disclose that I am not that smart. My secret; that I am not that skilled will be known to everyone. It is probably why I have chosen the Collina imitation. If my stare is scary enough, I won’t be disclosed. I have to watch out not to bump into the desk of Claudio. Not that I think he will take any damage from it. He is like an artist, writing his code so elegantly, it could be printed and hung on the wall in Galleria dell’Accademia, next to the statue of David. It is for my own sake I want to avoid the crash. I don’t want to have to endure the physical pain of crashing into a sharp table. I also don’t want to spill any more coffee. The magic liquid, bought at the doughnut shop down on the corner. It was expensive too, but that is how it should be. It is important to show off a little. Take on an identity. Be the guy who drinks hand brewed coffee, not what comes out of the machine. Coffee connoisseur is an identity too.
Someone speaks my name, and all my muscles tighten. This can’t be good. It is seldom good news, when someone interrupts you like that.
“Aleks, did you see the latest feedback on our project?”. The words are as sharp as a sword against my throat. I do not dare to check if someone is pointing a sword at me, or if my imagination is running wild.
My stomach turns itself into a sailor’s knot. Pearls of sweat start running down the side of my face. Feedback? Of course I haven’t had the courage to look at any feedback. Strangers on the other side of an internet connection rarely have anything nice to say. Especially when they are using a new system. Five years of traversing the halls of my University. Five years of preparation and search of a job opportunity. When I tell my friends I work at an international firm, they consider me lucky, and answer that I must be living the dream. I have the dream job. A job I have no idea how to do, and no confidence I am able to accomplish. Heaven knows I’m miserable now.
It is my turn to be on “incident watch”. It is not enough that my heart jumps every time I have to roll out a new version. I am forced to watch over the incoming feedback and incidents for the following week. A straitjacket of paranoia. Every incoming e-mail a warning sign that something has been lit on fire. An electronic message informing you that the office soon will be turned into a war zone. You have about 10 minutes to write your speech of defence. Hoping the others will understand, and don’t mark you with the seal of incompetence. My heart beats faster than in the 90’s hit “Sandstorm”, the sound of it is louder than the mechanical keyboard of a Vim-programmer. The world is going dark before my eyes. My only wish is to evaporate into thin air and disappear. Unfortunately, I have not been given any choice. No matter if it will be the last thing I do, I have to open the email and read the feedback from the beta testers. My fingers are shaking uncontrollably as I try to type my password. It feels like I am making the inscription on my own gravestone, lonely on a pet sematary.
-*-*-*-[ENTER].
Here I am, staring into the eyes of my anxiety. My personal devil. My arch nemesis. My closest partner in conversations. The monster that is growing inside of me, until it has grown bigger than I will ever be. The ghost no one else can see. The voice only I can hear. The darkness that keeps expanding, swallowing more and more. Speeding up when I try to run into the light. The abyss reaches out its hands, ready to swallow me. I fight it, well-knowing I don’t stand a chance. It knows all my moves, even before I thought of them myself. The restless eyes find me, no matter where I hide.
“Aleks, did you check the feedback or what?”. It is Vidar speaking. It could might as well has been Heisenberg, pointing a gun at the back of my head. I am kneeling before my own grave, and it is only a matter of time before the credits will roll, and I will be written into history as “Developer number 14”. I try to open my mouth for some last words, but the words won’t come out. I open Outlook and click on the last email I got.
This is the end.
“The new user interface looks nice”.
“I like how systematic everything is. This is a good upgrade, however, I wish that I would be able to rearrange the list of accounts”.
“This is really good. It looks modern and fresh”.
It is as if a wave of happiness flows over me. I am on a surfboard, wearing my brand new Ray Bans, as I am cruising away. If I had seen myself from afar, I would have guessed that I just won the National Lottery. I can see my colleagues, they are speeding away on water jets, laughing and fist pumping in joy. Some of them are dancing around a bonfire on the beach, cocktails in their hands and loud music playing. It is as if it was taken out the commercial for Fyre Festival. It is a beautiful sight.
I feel someone tapping me on my shoulder.
“Pretty cool, huh? The project is live, and people seem to not hate it”.
I am speechless. Speechless because I have never experienced this before. I have built a product. From the beginning. As a kid, there was nothing better than ripping open a square gift, well knowing that it contained a box of Lego. The feeling of putting together the pieces, building yourself a grand castle, was unbeatable. Brick by brick I was the architect, the entrepreneur, the interior designer and finally the king. The king of my own castle, with four rooms for gaming, three pools and of course a machine making infinite amounts of chocolate and ice cream.
Now I have grown 25 years older, and I am building systems. Systems that makes the wheels of society turn. I have built systems for the municipality administration of Oslo, the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration and one of the biggest banks in Norway, Sparebank 1. I am not always as clever as my fellow developers, but I contribute to the success, and when the castle is built, it is not only I who get to play with the finished product.
I am a software developer.
It makes me want to cry. From happiness. From pride. From the feeling of success, the rush of confidence and excitement. I want to hug every person I see. Freddy Mercury sings to us “You are the champiooooons…… of this project”. Our product is live, and we are the ones sitting in the tour bus, waving at the crowd. We never walked alone.
The feeling is indescribable.
Would it have felt this good, without going through what felt like trials of fire on the way? It is impossible to say. Looking back, I would not have changed anything. We got to the goal, and it felt so good.
In my youth years, I was an individualist. I wanted to build my own success, from the beginning, on the biathlon arena. I wanted to take the blame if I failed and feel the joy when I succeeded. Alone. It was not until I realized that even biathlon is a team sport, that I finally experienced success. Within software development, it is the same. We are not lonely islands, linked only to our computers. We must build bridges, like Sam Porter Bridges, we must make strands to tie each other together. You will never be stronger than the total of your team. They too make mistakes. They too feel insecure at times. Together you can make something bigger than the sum of the individual builders. And when you can stand united, gazing upon your success, nothing feels better.
Thanks to Sparebank 1 Utvikling, who chose to believe in me in 2017, and kept on believing in me all the way. Thanks to the more than 30 developers of “PM Betaling”, that I have had the pleasure of working with, you are all great people. Thank you to Acando/CGI, who has supported me when I was at a low, and lifted me forward when I have experienced success. Thanks to Anja and Niki, for editing. Thanks to Idar, you are a damn good manager. Thanks to Christine Lund, you are a source of inspiration. Thanks to Nova2018, you give more than you think.
Take care of each other.
Ask your colleagues and friends how they are doing, and don’t just brush it off with a “nahhh, i’m doing okay”. Tell each other how you really feel. There are others experiencing what you are going through. When everything is at its darkest, remember there is a light that never goes out; that light is you 🕯️
Together, we stand strong ❤️
