Quote:
Originally Posted by Steven Lake
[...] To me, programming is no different than systems or network administration. It's work, but it's not relaxing. [..]
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Well, there is programming work involved in most systems and network administration, but for me, they feel most like short stories. I think that may be why I moved on to programming: I much prefer novels and epics. (Though, I do admit that designing a new network from scratch can be pretty epic.)
In my software development I can see a lot of similarities with my writing. Everything starts out quite nebulous. First there is the bright spark of "we need something like this", then imagining some of the major highlights involved in the work, and finally down to coding the details and making it all come together even though the code takes on a life of its own, with it's own design peculiarities, requiring things to fit together this way rather than that. (Not to mention the occasional major rewrite when you stuff up.)
The analogy carries even closer when I realise that there are some programming jobs that I particularly enjoy, such as when I'm exploring a new problem space and have lots to learn about the details (c.f. story ideas that can keep my attention beyond the first few pages of notes) versus those that are almost repeats of what I've seen or done before (c.f. story ideas that get abandoned as boring).
But the thing I like most about writing over programming is that there can be, eventually, an end to it, and that end is a tangible thing with a future*. Programming, on the other hand, has only one end: the great bit-bucket in the sky. The moment you stop actively working on a product it begins to die. If you're lucky(?) that death may be a long and drawn out one, with users scattered here and there still tenuously holding onto it as the best thing since sliced bread, but if you're no longer working on it then the final redundancy and demise is certain.
I have a product I've been developing for twenty years, and it is a very sad thing to know that it will never really be considered complete, and the day I retire and stop working on it - unless I can find a successor - will be the day that the product begins to die. Or it may catch a major ailment (like Pratchett's Small Gods, the users may stop believing in it) before I retire and have to be put out of its misery. Twenty years of creation, and the end is foreordained. It it any wonder I prefer to write?
* Sure, the future for many books will be to get lost amid the swamp of other work in the basements of Amazon and Smashwords collections (far beyond the front pages where anyone ever looks), but the book is still there, as complete and usable and enjoyable (or not) as the day when the last t was crossed and i was dotted.