MrMr wonders sometimes, I’m sure, why I get up before dawn. For a long time it was simply that I hated driving in rush-hour traffic so much that going in to work early was the only way to keep my sanity. At this point, now that I work exclusively out of my home office, I really have no other excuse than habit.1 Even on the weekends, which probably bakes his noodle more than any other time.2
So here I sit on a Sunday morning, awake at the blindingly late hour of 9am3 and I have to make a confession: I suck at this code manipulation thing worse than I thought. But I’ve figured out why.
I’ve exclusively used GUI tools to do my job for so long that when someone says “Move the fooberhoozits out for now” or “Fix the merge conflicts”, I panic. Wait, what? How do I undo the thing? There’s no button for that. Conflict? It didn’t tell me there was a problem, dammit! How can I fix it?
So when something goes wrong, or worse goes horribly wrong, I’m usually left with either sobbing and rocking slowly in the corner until someone takes pity on me or screaming help at the top of my lungs. Neither are pretty. Certainly not Princess-Leia-begging-for-help pretty anyway. Fortunately I have awesome cow-orkers who save me each and every time.
But I can’t continue relying on them like this forever. I need to strap on my own damned light saber and learn some of this crap that’s stymied me for so long. So, I’ve enrolled myself in Code School4. Even told my boss about it. He’s all for it, of course. But it’s this new thing. This big fat scary thing. This thing that completely exposes my lack of working knowledge of underlying systems.
Why I’m confessing it here I have no idea. Perhaps to make sure that someone in my shoes knows they’re not alone. To encourage someone who’s been in the industry for decades like I have that maybe, just maybe, there’s hope.5
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We did discover, however, that actually having real curtains instead of a Scooby Do sheet tacked over the window does wonders for keeping out the dawn light. Who knew? ↩
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He’s a champion napper and 14 hours at a go isn’t uncommon sleep time for him if he can manage it. Me on the other hand? Five to seven. If I get eight or more I start to wonder if I’m coming down with something. ↩
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Spring forward in the Eastern time zone. Stupid time change bullshit. ↩
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The “Git Real” course for now, but there’s a lot more available that I could benefit from. ↩
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I did toy with the idea of it being a “last, best hope of earth” kind of post to sound all erudite and smart, but I realized it was more like a “last, best hope for peace” kind of post. Honestly though, Princess Leia is still more my generation, so her gif was the one that made it. ↩