It is wonderful to be a developer. I've spent the last 11 years doing the whole jack-of-all-trades thing. Everything from telephony to Clipper, multi-terabye RAIDs for Sql Server databases to Visual FoxPro windows apps, Perl to COM, networking to .Net web apps. Oh, and everything inbetween too.
I’ve learned more than I could have ever imagined, and I don’t know squat. I’ve met some really great and intelligent people, and some people who aren’t so great.
I love reading books on development, design patterns, languages, methodologies and I love to spread the knowledge. I love teaching. I think I’m good at it, and I present topics pretty well.
I’m definately a coder. I love to code all day long. I like trying new things, examining MSIL, and trying something else. I like taking ideas and putting them to work. I like being successful. I love to produce results that make people happy. I like to produce desired deliverables accurately and with maximum value.
I love being a developer.
So what is the best job in the world? Every single night, right before her bedtime, my 22 month old daughter runs around the living room and gathers up all her books. She stacks them up all on the ottoman in front of my chair. She climbs up on me, squeezing herself down between me and the side of the chair. She cross her legs, holds her hands, looks at her books and then looks up at me. She’ll then point at her books, not saying a word, waiting patiently for me to pick the first one up. We then read each and every one of them. Sometimes I sing them, sometimes I use funny voices. She points to things and tells me what they are. “Chichen!” She’ll say. “What does a chicken say?” I’ll ask her. “BOK! BOK!” We’ll do that with the half dozen or so animals she knows. She tells me what shapes and colors and animals she sees.
That is the best job in the world. Reading to my daughter. Every day. I love it more than anything. Even if it were only for 5 minutes, those 5 minutes reading, just her and I, are better than years worth of my love for being a developer.