A lot of people are curious about what exactly it is that I do and why I do it, so Id like to take a few minutes to describe life as a software developer. Software development or programming as most here it, can be one of the most stressful and most self-rewarding professions.

First I will discuss a lot of the stressful situations, when applications are first designed a lot of factors are left unknown, uses the application may have at a later date things people do that werent taken into consideration. Most of the time the design of the application changes several times from start to finish, this causes a lot of rewrites of the code, so in essence more code gets thrown out then used, not only do the design specs change but also technology changes therefore you must take into account these things and often redesign portions of your application to account for these changes. Unreachable deadlines are always thrown into the equation, and it always seems that if you are ahead of deadline for a particular milestone that some wrench gets thrown in.

Bugs are probably some of the most stressful things, you are usually in a crunch to get these fixed before the application is released to its user base or the application is already in use in a production environment and you need to isolate a bug before it causes any major havoc on its user base. Then you have the time involved to find certain bugs, they become noticeable in one part of an application but triggered in a completely different area leading to many hours of debugging and troubleshooting to isolate where exactly the problematic code is, and I cant count the number of times I have spent hours searching for bugs that didnt exist, the user wasnt using the application properly, or the bug existed solely because of a typo. All of these lead to very long hours worked, and a lot of sleepless nights to get things done on time. Its stressful at the time but in the long run the challenge is nice it keeps you motivated and determined to solve a certain problem.

These are just a few of the stresses involved in the career path, so Im sure by now you are asking yourself why on earth would anyone want to do this, Ill explain. As mentioned above it can be one of the most self-rewarding professions, I say self-rewarding do to the fact that not many understand the profession or the level of technical and creative skill involved, they see a button that does a particular task without realizing their may be 100’s of man hours behind that button, the people who appreciate your work most are fellow developers. Usually you here nothing when things are running smoothly and nothing but bad feedback when the slightest bug is found. Think of it in the way, the task you are trying to do is usually difficult and not easily manageable now we as developers need to know how to develop in the first place which is a lot of knowledge and be creative enough to write an application that is capable of completing the same task, and easily used, this makes it highly taxing on us, so I have tremendous respect for other programmers, there are a lot of brilliant people in this profession who have excellent problem solving skills and a ton of creativity. The same problem can be solved numerous ways so its interesting to see how others solve the same problem.

Anyway to get back on topic, the feeling you get is indescribable when you see 100’, 1000’s, or even millions of people on a daily basis using something you made, and seeing the amount of time that it saves them, I compare this to the feeling a contractor must get when he sees his finished house, he does a lot of tedious manual labor, long hours, but when he steps back and looks at the house completely finished it brings a smile to his face, the same holds true for software development there are a lot of hours involved, as well as a lot of stress but seeing the end result is a huge reward.

Technology is forever changing so there are always new challenges, new technologies to learn, and new problems to solve. I myself love learning; Im a big sponge, so its nice to work in such a fast moving industry. I think the amount of happiness, gratification and respect not just from others but from myself  I get from doing this far out ways the stress involved, and  I look forward to the years to come and all the knowledge and achievements it brings me.