I’ve been struggling with something for a while now and ironically a sitcom from the 80’s finally helped me pinpoint the problem. My TV was on for background noise and I noticed that it was an episode of Family Ties. In the episode, Elyse Keaton was having a problem. A prominent building that she designed was being torn down and replaced by a cookie cutter mini-mall. She was struggling with her “legacy” - her mark on the world - disappearing. After the building was gone, what evidence would there be that Elyse Keaton was there?
I’m facing a similar issue. I don’t like getting into my day job too much online (for various reasons), but suffice it to say that applications that I developed for decades are being sunset/replaced. I’ve developed quite a lot over the decades, but eventually it would all be replaced. Once it is, what will I have as “proof that TechyDad was here”?
How do you handle the existential crisis of our works being digital and transient versus having an actual, physical product?
I revel in the knowledge that entropy will erase us all.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
-- Percy Shelley, “Ozymandias”, 1819 edition
(copied from Wikipedia)
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
Oh, there’s definitely upsides to that. There are posts I made to Usenet in my college years that I’m glad have been swallowed up by time and consigned to oblivion. I would hate it if all of those embarrassing moments were to suddenly resurface and become a permanent part of my present and future life.
But the idea that EVERYTHING that I’ve done will vanish freaks me out. Yeah, this is definitely a midlife crisis coming on.
I relativise: one human among billions, on a planet among 9, surrounding a star among billions, in a galaxy among trillions. Things existed before I was born, things will exist after I die and they will continue to exist for a nigh uncountable amount of time. We are infinitesimally important and life has the importance you attribute to it.
What’s most important to me is gaining more understanding and knowledge in the most comfortable manner possible, while trying to be a positive influence during my blip in universal time. A legacy is thus completely and utterly unnecessary.
Everything we build is on the shoulders of what came before. Your contribution now creates a world that makes other people’s work possible in the future. While the literal artifacts you produce will not be there for long, for the time they existed they provide a small piece of the platform upon which the next generation will be created. Like sand eventually forming rock.
This is not a direct answer, but I think you have the beginnings of a useful perspective in that episode of “Family Ties”. Namely, it is not a problem arising from the ephemeral nature of software, but the nature of time and change.
How do you handle the existential crisis of our works being digital and transient versus having an actual, physical product?
Well this topic is very subjective, but I’ll chime in…
Basically: You should be programming because you like programming - Not because you like that people like your program, or that it might immortalize yourself somehow - Or because people might use your program forever and will remember you by it
You can say the same for every profession: You’re the best doctor in the world and you healed millions of people. Great. 100 years later all those people are still dead anyways. What was the point?
Basically everything is temporary in the end, and everything is going to be forgotten. Seeing your job as a programmer as part of your identity and your applications as proof of your existence or digital legacy is pretty much pointless
Yeah, I think a big part of this might be a kind of mid life crisis. I’m not the “buy an expensive sports car” kind of guy, but I’m definitely the “worry that all you’ve done in your life was for nothing” sort of guy.
My wife crochets and I’ve got to admit to being jealous that she has a physical object when she’s done. I love programming. I love being able to take a big and complex problem, break it down, and construct an application that solves the issue. Still, at the end of the day, our works are 1’s and 0’s whose existence will be a lot shorter than my wife’s crocheted house elf.
My wife crochets and I’ve got to admit to being jealous that she has a physical object when she’s done.
It sounds like you don’t really have an outlet to create artsy or physical stuff, but as a programmer there’s plenty of stuff you can do…
For example, I’ve turned my entire house into a “Smart Home” - My house has smart lights that can be turned on be wifi, and my doors and rooms have motion censors that I’ve all programmed to work together, and turn things on an off when I’m walking around. You’re programming a bunch of physical IoT things to work together, and the end-result when everything runs smoothly is pretty cool
Also I recently got a 3d printer (where maintaining that is a hobby in of itself) - as a programmer you can create a lot of cool stuff with that. Like there are scripts to play with to generate a Sierpiński triangle[1][2] - work on that, physically print that, and see the results as a physical object.
As a programmer you have plenty of skills to start creating random physical stuff. Even if it’s not for your work, just pick it up as a hobby. Like I don’t think your wife is a professional crochetter - so what’s stopping you from crochetter or painting or sculpting or whatever
I do enjoy building LEGO. Not just the boxed sets, but I’ll get minifigures and then design and build biomes for them. After writing about my wife’s crochet, I realized that this is one reason why I enjoy this so much. I design a habitat for a LEGO minifigure using BrickLink Studio (a CAD program for LEGO)., I refine the build - both to improve it and to lower the cost of the build. Then, I order the parts and build it. (And then, I’ll often need to add additional parts to fix issues with the build that weren’t apparent until it was built.)
I’ll need to do some more of that building. Frankly, if I’m going to have a midlife crisis, it’s going to be a “build LEGO” midlife crisis and not a “buy a sports car” one.
