My name is Ivan Shkodkin. I work as a programmer and now I have a pause. And as expected, during such pauses, different thoughts come to mind.
For example: knowing what programming language you write in, I can say: where did you come from, how long did you go, how much did your language infuriate and please you, where will you come. I remember very well my first programming language at the age of 4: it was a hammer. I remember how I used a hammer to turn the altimeter cylinder of a combat aircraft into a cube (my grandfather brought it from somewhere from a military airfield nearby).
1. Start
The hammer was a magical tool. I could program any object into a cube or plane. I could perform miracles of hammering nails and breaking glass. Neighbors around were yelling:
- Calm down your boy! From his ugliness there is no rest!
But my mother always answered me:
- Son, if you picked up a hammer - hammer a nail to the very hat!
And I scored!
It's time to go to school. I was lucky: in our town there was a wonderful school, which had a computer circle. There were BC and Corvettes, there was a local network and a printer "Robotron-100". But, as always, the school was attached, and getting there was not easy. Somehow I got there. Right from September 1, I sat down at the BC. There I met the "Schoolgirl". In my life I met different languages, but I will never forget this one. I taught "Schoolgirl" to flash the screen, and she taught me to cycle. I taught "Schoolgirl" to say "Hello world!", and she taught me to console input. But there were also nasty kids. Their parents were abroad and they bought an Apple Lisa 2. They treated everyone arrogantly, looked down on the rest. And one day, someone from the class wrote a brilliant program that, in response to entering a name, displayed the phrase: “Write code, Vanya! Write!” and I was struck by lightning. From that moment on, whatever I did, I wrote code.
I wrote code in my head as I walked to and from school. I wrote the code when I went to the store, took out the trash or vacuumed the carpet. I did it all the time. Even traditional grandmothers at the entrance, when I passed them, wisely remarked: “This guy can write code!”
The school flew by quickly, in one breath, and in the senior class, one of our majors was brought by parents to an IBM XT. Speed of work, improved graphic characteristics. And the Adlib sound card on the ISA bus... I knew this machine was going to take over the world. When I came to my parents, I firmly stated that I would work in the summer, do anything, but I need this car. My parents were frightened by my excitement, but rightly decided that I should be given a chance and promised to add some money, even taking into account the fact that the dashing 90s were in the yard.
The final exams passed, and since my parents were more than standard people, I didn’t have much choice: I had to go to the university. I passed the entrance exams without attending training courses, and somehow immediately nailed to the Department of Informatics. There I discovered Modula-2. He began to participate in the programming team of the institute, where he showed good results. In the finals of the competition in the ministry, our team won. And even the dean, crying with happiness, who was indignant all the time that there were no monads, closures and lambdas in the Module, turning to the team coach in tears, he said: “Well, this son of a bitch runs so fast!”
Uni flew by like one day. And already six months before graduation, ebony merchants began to arrive at the department one after another. They looked out for everything, sniffed it out, chose the students of the ceiling. And so, on the day of graduation, one such respectable man comes up to me, hands me a business card and asks:
“Son, have you already thought about your future?”
The business card said Galera Production Limited. A satisfied boss in a decent jacket, a house behind his left shoulder, a luxury car behind his right, and just a phone number. I thought, why not purkua?
2. Galley
As soon as I crossed the threshold of the galley, the product manager immediately attacked me:
What are you doing here, noob? I'm crying for you! Well, go to mischief faster! ..
I thought that it was not a good idea - I did not have time to get a job and on the first day I was yelled at.
We had a big Open Space. To my right sat a swarthy guy from the same province. He greeted me first:
Hello, my name is Sanya Banin. And everyone calls me Banya.
“Hello, my name is Ivan Shkodkin, and everyone calls me Ivan Shkodkin,” I answered.
However, we looked like two idiots, because each had a badge on his chest. Galley corporate ethics, be it not okay.
The day began with a rally. We memorized slogans, sang stupid songs, repeated all sorts of rubbish from time to time and answered all questions: “Yes, of course, I’ll do it.” At some point, I thought that this is actually not such a bad place: cookies, tea, sporting events. You just need to do everything on time and on time, everything that is required of you. One day our manager gave us the task to optimize the build time of the project. I somehow did not think much about how to do it quickly. Just a couple of scripts, parallelization, and Bani connected the car. The project was assembled many times faster, which I immediately reported to the elder.
— Are you an idiot? Do you think we haven't figured out how to do it faster? Let us all be fired! Well, I immediately dismantled the cluster and returned to the previous scheme!
Apparently, I really scared that manager, because I was immediately transferred to another department. In the evening, while drinking beer and apple-grape juice in a cafe, I told my colleagues about it.
— I am transferred from testers to production. This is a completely different country. - A deathly silence formed in the hall ... Someone from the hall said:
- Listen to my good advice: when you roll out the deployment to production - do not be a hero. Just say you're a developer, not a tech support guy.
The evening ended in silence.
3. Product
From the very first day, it was hot in the product service. Just preparing another big deployment. Banya and I arrived at the new boss, and he immediately began to teach us about life:
-That's right, boys. I have only 2 rules in my department. First. Run tests whenever possible. Modular, integrative, whatever!
Then his assistant bursts in, shouting that all the servers are overloaded, and more needs to be cut. The boss gave orders to buy servers in the Amazon clouds, but not to be stingy.
Looking at him, I remarked to Banya in an undertone: “It looks like we have a smart boss.”
The chief immediately reacted and returned to us:
— Yes, I have 2 rules in my department. The first is tests. And secondly, don’t try to do something stupid, such as writing a feature yourself or doing aggressive optimization. I will strangle you both with my own hands.
What I liked about production was that there was always something to do. The chief constantly fancied that some bugs were noticed in the software. He kept saying:
- Everyone stop. See the logs!
We did just that. The best guys and girls of the country worked in our department. Bath from Arzamas, Kolya from Chernyakhovsk, Lera from ... I don’t remember where Lera was from.
And then came the day of release.
All of a sudden, all the support phones began to crackle. Angry comments on the support forum exploded with the force of grenades. Air bombs went through the reviews in the specialized press. It was hell.
We fixed bugs like crazy, spent the night in the office for 4 hours, closed the glitches in batches, did what we could. The boss was overgrown with a beard, his eyes and cheeks bulged, we also got it. Having rolled up the package of patches, we were finally able to exhale.
New Year
In each upcoming new year, prizes were handed out at the galley. And they were punished. Oddly enough, I was rewarded with a pretty decent bonus. There was a large banquet hall, the Chief called everyone on the list and handed envelopes. My turn came, I shook hands with Himself and he asked me a question:
- They say that your bug magically saved the entire cloud from a total fall? I would like to see your code...
Crap. But who told him this? I open the tablet, show this place. To which the chief responds with a widening of his eyes and remarks: “Well, son ... Well, you are a scammer ...”. They say that this glitch saved the company more than tens of millions of rubles, at least - the company increased its operating profit.
At the exit, our boss meets me, all overgrown, drunk and untidy.
Did they give you an award? You? Kosyachnik? Oberon? Who hasn't read Perfect Code by Steve McConnell?
- Yes, they did.
- Well, that's just great!
And the numb boss began to fall on his side. He became the owner of the golden distance.
What to do? I took him by the shoulder and went to a cafe for programmers nearby. All sorts of people were already crowded there, squealing and screaming, ready to meet the new year in a couple of hours. For some reason, the two of us weren't having fun. The transferred stress, hard work - affected every part of the body. We were sitting at a table with pretty young ladies and a conversation slowly began.
Girl:
- Boys, what do you program on?
— I love FreePascal — chief
"And I'm on Oberon," I said.
The second girl looked at me like I was an idiot.
Are you adequate? There aren't even generics? There are no lines as a built-in type?! What's wrong with you?
The boss stood up and turned to me: “Let's go get some air. There's something stuffy here."
We decided not to return to the cafe. New Year's snow fell lazily and rarely from above, fireworks were fired in the distance and joyful cries were heard.
“Well, why did you tell her that you were programming in Oberon?”
- You yourself, Alexander Nikolaevich, started the first. The whole room was told about FreePascal ...
Chef continued to philosophize on a loose topic:
- No, did you hear? Agile this, agile that, agile will make you a release! You heard?! RELEASE! Hell, ageil won't help. So kiss me on my old hairy ass!
In general, he did not like it when FreePascal was called “pascal”, just like me when they said about Oberon that his train had left.
4. Own company
I decided at some point that it was worth organizing my own company with some unpretentious name.
I tried to win tenders, participate in competitions, but somehow it didn’t work out. It turns out that being a leader is not easy at all. And I already began to think that the galley was a warm place.
And then I find out that the former boss - went on a corporate pension. I told him, showed him about my idea, he grimaced and said:
— Lando. Just don't expect me to call you boss!
- Yes, boss! I replied.
And things went well. He knew a lot of things that I didn't know. Not to say that we have earned a million, but we have begun to earn something. But it still ended badly. Because of the damned Obama, the ruble exchange rate sank, prices rose, a crisis came and the rise from its knees ended. The activities of the company had to be suspended, the boss went to another galley. It's a pity, but what were the plans ...
5. Curtain
Somehow I caught my daughter watching a YouTube channel dedicated to Component Pascal. The facilitator clearly explained how to work with extensible records, method overriding and procedure finalization. At the age of 14, she calmly perceives things that she herself grew up to only at the institute. Her hammer is much more skillful, powerful, light. Her generation will hammer nails far more skillfully than mine. I thought that in another 20 years, goroutine vs. threads in Erlang would seem ridiculous and naive. Or maybe they won't.
Eh ... I'll go turn on my ZX-Spectrum!)
Mood bun:
PS Huge thanks to Robert Zemeckis and his team for the inspiration.
Source: www.habr.com