A weird journey

I want to share with you (whoever you are) this weird journey that I am now into. Its always been a passion of mine to do this travel and here I am finally living it. Before you unleash the reins of your imagination horses and let them run around all over the place, let me break the suspense. Its the journey of being a developer that I am talking about.

Did I see that weird expression in your face just now ? (or) perhaps that sarcastic grin even.. be it whatever, once I am done with painting the picture of this journey perhaps things might make a bit more relevance. If not, dont be too harsh on yourself, I guess you are losing it off-late :p (Just Kidding)

I have always profoundly confessed to whomever I met. I have always wanted to be a developer, but ended up being a QA. Lets face it, who wants to be a quality guy, who earns his bread and butter by cribbing his heart out, on things, by whining like a spoilt brat and by making a big fuss over things. LOL, incase you have your jaws dropped down in shock, relax, because that was my perception of being a QA.

I have had my own chances of being in the limelight thanks to me being a QA. I have rightly earned the reputation of being called as "A developer's nightmare". But writing code has always been a passion of mine. Its like the first love, which just refuses to die its natural death despite you doing whatever. So sometime back, when I was offered an opportunity to wear the hats of a coder, I thought... finally this castaway coder is being asked to come back to mainstream. 

Ever since its been no looking back. But now is the time to confess a lot of things, which in turn would only mean I am singing laurels at developers.

• A developer's job is not easy as it seems. Trust me I learnt that the hard-way especially when I had to stare at my PC for days together just to try and understand what has been created. Understanding existing systems is always such a herculean task and I too was confronted with it. But strangely my testing instincts took over me, and I started looking at the system as a user, trying to understand bits and pieces. This approach worked for me, and instead of being this mundane developer who scrolls through his code editor up and down a zillion times, I had managed to break open the system.
• The second biggest challenge I faced was, when it came to knowledge on technologies. I felt as if I was in the middle of Russia, on a dark evening, starved to death and not a single person who speaks English except me. I didnt know where to start with (I still am pretty much in a similar situation) and ramping up was a never ending task.
• As a developer, you are expected to have this unique ability to not only write code and fix bugs in your own creation, but to step into someone else's shoes, understand like him/her and tread the extra mile by fixing the short comings in their code as well.

The woes of being a developer only seem to be unraveling in front of me, as I dive more into this journey. But now there's no looking back, for now I have decided that come what may, I shall perish in my vain effort of being a developer.

So as I get beaten up left right and center by the police who are profoundly called as "Code Reviewers" in their futile effort of making me write those "wonderful poems in technologies" flawlessly, and having the so called "Unit Tests" for literally "Even the sneeze" in my code, I cling on desperately and hope that someday, when I am near the destination, I would turn back, take a look at this "Weird journey" of mine, smile at it and say "That was a good one" !!!

But I must admit, I have made some progress... Wanna know what it is ?

Here it goes.

I now have learnt to tell people, "That is not a bug, you were just too dumb not to know how to use it".

I now have learnt to reject bugs, by saying "Not a bug".

I now have learnt to say "It works fine on my machine, wonder why it doesnt work on your machine"...

I fix bugs, by giving countless hours of explanation and not write one line of code :D

Wonder if I am gonna end up in a situation, wherein thanks to my blatant honesty I am a castaway from the development, and thanks to me being a "Two timer" if you can call me so, I am now a castaway from the "Testing" world as well.. ! 

That would make me a look like a "Drum" that gets beaten up from both sides wouldn't it ;-)