Over the past year or so, my career has taken a turn toward what I would call “pure consulting” or put more plainly, “giving people my opinion”. During this time I really hadn’t written any code to speak of, minus some small side projects. There just wasn’t a need for it and frankly I had my hands full.
All that changed when I started a new project and took ownership of a large chunk of functionality. As the development lead I sure as hell wanted to get my hands dirty with the code, setup the framework, etc. So I jumped in head first and started coding.
I honestly forgot how cool it is to code something from scratch and see it grow from an idea to a fully functional application. It was total invigorating to see things take shape and evolve, each step of the way becoming more intricate and complex.
I never get tired of the code manipulation cycle. Making a code change, seeing the result and making another change, over and over again. It’s just one of those things that never gets old. It really feels like a disease is some ways. Your mind is consumed, all your thoughts spent strategizing on the next set of changes and thinking of the long term implications.
It’s a skill that feels intrinsic, not a learned behavior but something must have been inside you from the beginning. How lucky am I that I get paid to do this? Pretty cool.