Tuesday 29 August 2000

Pic of the day: The sunset gracefully offered an illustration for today's title. Sort of.

The burn-out

It is strange to think of now, but once I was a true computer geek. I was a regular reader of Byte and similar publications, remembering details about computers I would never afford to lay my hands on. But above all, my heart was in programming.

At trade school (a kind of high school) I met my first real computer, and I eventually advanced from pupil to teacher as far as it was concerned. (This has happened repeatedly, I might add, whenever computers were involved.) Later I spent my meagre earnings on programmable calculators, and later computers.

Programming was very nearly an obsession for me. I loved it so much, I did not care that it cost me money and didn't give me anything back. The feeling of accomplishment when I made some small pathetic computer do something useless! It was a joy so deep and so intense as to be nearly religious. The joy of a creator in creation.

***

Eventually I got the chance to put my programming skills to good use. A friend of mine would computerize his small business, and gave me nearly free hands. I bought a high-level tool called Dataflex (for their money, not mine!) which was quite good at database stuff. We also got a small network server and some PCs. And then things really took off.

I already had a (boring, poorly paid) office jobs, so I did the software design and coding on my afternoons and weekends. I did not ask for any pay except the food I ate in town. (Which suited my friend well, I dare say.) I loved the work, and the feeling of accomplishments. This whole thing started nearly 15 years ago, and the software was a niche product that barely even existed at the time. It was only available at an outrageous cost with unusual computers. So I was breaking new ground. Nor was I the only one to attempt doing so: We had competitors, companies with money and reputation and highly trained professionals. I ran rings around their well funded teams. On my free time.

I've probably never been so uppity in my life. :) I felt like some minor deity, or at least a superhuman, the equivalent of Mozart or Einstein. It seemed like nothing was impossible for me. Whatever I set my mind to, came to me. The days were a series of revelations in computing. It was quite literally revelations, as if some other spirit shared my brain with me, telepathically projecting the solutions into my mind without me having to figure it all out. Yes, it felt weird already then. But it also felt good. The glow of creation surrounded me, and I felt that I finally had found the thing I was made for.

***

But the good things on Earth come to an end, and so did this. My friend was fallen into debt after one of his many Great Business Ideas, and had to sell his business to a competitor. To the credit of the new management, they at once decided to transfer their business to our software. But they were real management, "suits" as we call that type nowadays. I had created a productivity tool; but they were mostly interested in detailed reports, preferably ones that looked good. I liked it not a bit.

As for my friend, he eventually broke out and started on his own again. And here we were in luck: The company had never hired me, nor bought the program from me. So they could in no way stop me from using it again. I rewrote it for a neighboring purpose, and my friend started selling the new software around in Norway.

But things continued downhill. True, at this point I occasionally got some royalties from the sales. Nice. But at the same time, my friend got into the habit of promising various new features or adaptations to the various customers, and then calling me to implement it as soon as possible. It irritated me more and more. I felt disconnected from the project, and exploited. I hated it more and more, and eventually started to make this very clear for my friend. Our friendship was indeed strained out of shape for some time there. Eventually I got out of it, and another company rewrote it into a Y2K compliant Windows version. More power to them. I was finally free.

But during those last years, something had died inside of me. (Things tend to do that, as you may have noticed by now.) I no longer loved or even liked programming. On the contrary, I felt a revulsion when looking at it. Where I had onced burned like a nova, there was now a black hole.

***

I still know more about computers and software than Joe Average. People still call me occasionally to ask for help when their computers don't work. (Quite apart from my coworkers - I am their user support, so they better do. During work hours, that is.)

But now at home I use my computer to read and write e-mail and journals, and to surf the Net a bit and to play games. Stuff like that. Ordinary user things. I don't delight in making the computer "do stuff". I keep my web sites simple, avoiding javascript and flash and that kind of jazz. I barely even bother to look at it.

Writing this, and thinking of my other Violet Pages, I get this creepy feeling: That there is a connection I have not noticed before, when I just lived it. Repeatedly I find that I have loved or wanted something, and then it sort of died inside me, leaving only ashes. Now that is a disturbing thought. I guess.