I am now a 50 year old manager of a small piece of a very large company that purchased us about 1 year ago. Been into computers since grade school in the late 70's, having spent years working in the field, building, fixing, installing, selling, teaching, gaming, programming and now consulting on all the aforementioned topics. Computing life is good.

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

The Road

It has been a number of years since I attended any sort of multi-day training event. As I am presently returning home from attending the VSLive 2007 in New York, sitting on the train home, I find myself contemplating this point. I also find my thoughts filled with a plethora of ideas and aspirations that such a show will flood ones mind with. My last visit to such an event was a VBITS show last century. At that time I was fairly new to formalized development efforts in support of a large project. The company I was newly hired at sent me to that show for training. Now, having been in the role and similar roles for over 10 years now, I found myself sitting in another such show gazing upon all manner of new and wonderful technologies and techniques. Sitting in these sessions, one after another, with each passing minute bringing on something new and here to for unseen. The unfortunate thing in all this is so much of what zips by in the conversation at these sorts of events, disappears from the mind faster that it appeared in the first place. Seemingly now, no matter how often one pages through the piles of the slide presentations, that excitement first experienced, as the gigantonormous powerpoint danced on the wall, is lost in the dampening field of ones reality.

I suppose though that if one could simply sit in a dark room with hundreds of kindred souls all drinking the same bad coffee and eating the same semi-stale doughnuts for a few hours, and could completely absorb the content of the presentation, then I would likely not have a job in the first place. Software development is hard work, or should I say Proper Software Development is hard work. Sitting through such a set of sessions I realize that while I am not nearly the hack I was 10 years ago, I have a long way to go.

I am also struck by the diversity of the folks presenting. Some years ago I attended a much smaller venue in Boston. For me it was basically a one day affair where I was being introduced to a wacko new thing called C# (I’ll pause here until the laughter dies down a bit). One thing I remember from that event was the perceived arrogance of the presenter. Equating what I was currently developing in for my employer with the Taliban. I was put off by this at the time and I don’t believe that I got the message this person was sending. As they say though “Youth is wasted on the young”. Now it was many years later and I found myself in a session at a similar event for new stuff coming along. I found myself in a series of sessions some of which were presented by this same person. It’s amazing how I now had a very different view of this presenter. It was clear to me now that the presenters understanding of the subject matter was on a wholly different plain of existence than my own and that the arrogance displayed by the presenter was in fact designed to elicit the desired response from the group of “Hey maybe we are doing everything wrong and maybe we should listen at least a bit to this guy”. To me it felt like I was the only person in the room listening to this guy and he was looking right at me and saying “Ok there sonny, time to slide away from the kiddy table and sit with the grownups”

There were others at this show also who had the same effect on my thoughts but arrived at that effect in very different ways. One fellow that elicited a similar effect from my thought process did so with the gentle demeanor of my grandfather. He also showed off thoughts and practices and techniques that radiated an aura of correctness that shouted “Hey dummy if you are not doing things this way then there is no hope for you”, but in a good way. The effect from his sessions on me will have me buying a copy of all his books (I actually believe I have some of this persons older texts but I will now definitely be surfing on over to Amazon of get the newer ones).

There were others of course that I listened to over the 3+ days, each showing off some form of new stuff, each having a definite style of presentation that was unique, Some were nowhere near as polished as others, Uncooperative Vista machines, Cranky bits of presentation hardware, Ill conceived examples of technology application, Even sidetracking from a barrage of questions that created a time crunch on materials presented. All manifested themselves in these sessions, but through it all one clear message, to me anyways, was pervasive. “That I have been basically self taught through the years, and am reasonably competent at my craft, it’s clear that I have a long way to go”. I suspect that if you were to ask any of the presenters at this show the question they would echo a similar sentiment. The scary part though is that for me these folks are way ahead of me on this road. That I am metaphorically sucking on the dust of their wakes, is tempered by the now clear understanding that “Perfection is a journey not a destination.” I take solace in the knowledge that they also will never reach the end of that trip and the difference between them and myself I have come to realize is a few more miles on the road and a self awareness to have realized all this many miles ago.