The Tragic Fate of the Developer

Software developers have already chosen their poison, picked a side and decided their own fate. We are in a perennial battle against bugs, poorly written code and tech debt. Our tools? An IDE supported by Jira tickets and Slack messages.

Now imagine living in a past time when Docker wasn’t an option, as computers had not been invented. Instead of fighting over story points, people wielded swords, fought for honor, and rode into battle to defend their kingdoms.

Then imagine a time when the capability to write GO has long faded it to irrelevancy, and the argument about tabs vs. spaces now seems pointless. It’s a time in the future where cyber-enhanced warriors fight intergalactic wars, wielding plasma rifles and piloting mechs across the cosmic battlefield.

Which is the best time to be born in? Clearly not the one where Slack reigns supreme. Oh, what a cruel fate.

The Mundane Battlefield of Modern Work

Instead of an epic call to arms, we get calendar reminders. Instead of battle cries, we hear the ping of Slack. 

We battle vague business requirements and passive-aggressive comments in code reviews.

It’s a mundane existence where we pretty much know what is going to happen on any given day. Where are the great adventures? The treacherous journeys? The conquests? Oh, right. My great conquest today is fighting Git merge conflicts while my PM asks if I can “just quickly” add a feature that will then add a ton of tech debt that I won’t have time to fix later, because the same PM will tell me “We’re too busy”.

If Only We Had Mechs

It’s not even that I want to fight in a war (I’m a software developer; I don’t even like phone calls). But if I must be trapped in a timeline where everything is about efficiency and productivity, at least give me an exosuit. If we had some cyberpunk enhancements maybe I wouldn’t dread opening my inbox every morning.

But no. No jetpacks. No laser swords. No space colonies. Just an inbox with 200 unread emails.

The Tools of Our Time

We don’t get swords. We get:

Jira
The ultimate weapon of bureaucracy, ensuring no task ever truly dies.

Slack

The constant background noise of modern work, an endless stream of notifications that will haunt you even in sleep.

VS Code

Our blade of choice, sharp but still requiring a hundred extensions to be actually useful.

Google Meet

Where souls go to perish in the abyss of pointless meetings.

Notion

A dumping ground for thoughts that nobody will ever read again.

The Future We’ll Never See

A thousand years from now, historians will look back and wonder why an entire generation of knowledge workers spent their most productive years debating whether we should use tabs or spaces. Meanwhile, their cyborg descendants will be punching through asteroid fortresses with their bare hands.

I don’t have an answer to that, but I hope you do.

My Experience

I really don’t think the tools we use are particularly interesting or effective. In fact I’ve been working at home alone for so long that a collegue chased me for my pronounciation of Jira. If in my general life, I never need to say the name of the product I think that speaks volumes about the place it holds in my heart, like these other tools I dislike them.

Conclusion

I guess we’ll just have to make peace with our fate. You can’t wish you were born in a different time anymore than you can wish you were born to different parents. Although I do wish I were the child of Angelia Jolie and Brad Pitt. 

Where was I? Yes, modern software development is frustrating. It’s not always easy. But it is what it is, and what are you going to do?