Note: This is a pretty unedited post. More of a reflection or venting or rambling. Don’t read too much into it.

Almost a full year has passed since my last post. I guess the resolution of trying to write once a week was a failure, once again. At least I am consistent in the way I fail. This year has been tough in some ways, I keep going back and forth actually. Last year’s trip was mainly to discover parts of the US we’ve never been to, but also had a secondary objective to take a breather from work as it was a bit too much front and center. I have been feeling that my passion for writing software has been decreasing slowly. I have been feeling desillusioned about the industry, and how inefficient software companies are in terms of energy spent doing - not much. I thought focusing on something else would help in recovering some of that lost passion, but, well, didn’t happen.

There has been this trend (or meme) about software engineers wanting to pivot to becoming farmers. This is pretty amusing as being a farmer is so much harder than being working on software. We have cushy jobs, mostly working from home, while not breaking our backs. Nonetheless, the idea of becoming a farmer is more about being able of reaping the benefits of our work directly, while doing some good I guess, and being self-sustainable probably?

The meme has merit. The more I think about it, the more I feel like my perfect job would be to own my little software company. I don’t dream of anything big. I would want to find a niche problem to fix through software, write the code, deploy it, debug it, add some new features that make sense here and there. Seeing people using my software and like it would be a great feeling. I think the closest I got to that was when I worked on iheartreading, a “track your reading” web application that was used by a few classrooms when my wife was still a teacher. Hearing “they tried to do <this> but <that> broke” was almost magical (sure, it was broken, but they used it! I can just fix it quickly).

Bref, I am rambling. I guess that’s kind of the point of that post, just letting thoughts out.

What about the title?

Oh yeah, we moved from San Diego, California to Buffalo, NY.

Wait why? It is so cold.

I don’t know, we wanted a change.

What about the farmer part?

Oh, we bought something that will need some minor renovation work. I am not handy whatsoever. I could not drill with the hammer to save my life! (Attempt at humor here, let me know). So yeah not becoming a farmer, but at least my mind will be somewhat busy with non-work stuff on my free time. I won’t feel pressure about not having side projects, or not playing with new libraries or framework, or leetcoding. I will just be thinking about what I need to do to make our place super nice, as cheaply as possible.

Isn’t it crazy what the software industry has become? If you don’t know how to use <insert new framework of the month here> a week after it is out, you are made to be obsolete?

I really have a dislike for tech influencers. I get it, you promote your stuff, but god it is annoying. I hate resume-driven development. I don’t care about Astro or Next.js, or React Server components. I just care about fixing problems, and will figure out what solution I should be using in a pragmatic way when it comes to it. I am at the point where I start to see the wheel being reinvented, and people touting those new approaches as the best thing since sliced bread. Honestly, just give me Laravel or Rails. Perfect solutions 99% of the time for 99% of problems out there.

Bref, I am rambling. I wish I could go back to being a junior. You know, kind of when older people were telling you as you were growing up: “Enjoy those years, they fly by”. That’s how I feel now, “Enjoy your junior years, when you are just a sponge, everything is exciting, you just need to code, figure out things without too much pressure”. Ah, how I wish I could be a junior for life (if money was not an issue of course). No ADRs to write, no performance feedback to give, no shit sandwich to manage when bringing up issues, no “don’t bring problems if you don’t have solution” speeches, no agile-_ish_ ceremonies when you are delivering software in a waterfall fashion, not being aware of execs compensated 150 times what ICs are. Just living in an idealized world of feeling excited when your small and mighty PRs get approved, or feeling stressed out when you broke a build and it felt like the end of the world. Now? The build broke, yeah, those tests haven’t passed in two years. How come? Oh who knows, reorgs and change of ownership I guess? I don’t know, I just work here.

Bref, I am rambling.