The less skilled you are something, the more impressive it is when you see someone who is skilled at it "do their thing". Given the average person's knowledge of the inner workings of computers, I'm not surprised when I impress people on a regular basis. That putting together a spreadsheet or website is impressive to most people says more about those people than it says about the coder, in a sense.

I think my main point was that we should look for the most basic things we can do that will help the most people do their jobs better. As cees said, most people don't even know where to start in using their computers effectively. I do have twenty-five years of programming under my belt, twenty-three of them for pay or in business, and I know I'm still learning more every day. I see the amount of learning and wisdom that's still ahead of me, and that makes me embarrassed when somebody is as effusive as he was.

It is all too easy to seek out the most intricate and esoteric challenge to spend our time on, but I find that my time spent identifying the biggest hole to fill is the best time I spend. I can admire the raw brilliance of somebody who digs into the internals of Perl to seek out a new way to use it, but then I go back to my desk and I look for a new place to stick my simple webifier that will make this day a productive success.

I don't disagree. (-: If I hadn't used up my votes by reading a lot today, I'd vote it up. I am writing documentation and take any excuse. :-)

But I still think you miss a point.

The complex work (*) is important. It is making tools for the tool users (i.e. us). It is a meta level higher. It is in the end needed for the "simple" stuff.

(*) I was going to write "like super complex music mostly interesting to musicians", but I quite like that music without having much musical talent. :-)

I agree with your first point. I think that we can forget just what skill is involved in crafts and trades, including our own. Have you ever tried to build a brick wall? It's really hard! To do it well anyway. But getting back to nails - the skill and experience involved in wacking in nail after nail, in just the right place involves much more physical dexterity than I will ever have. It amazes me! As do chefs and their hypersonic chopping skills!

In a similar vein, but on a much smaller scale - I impressed my father who is maintaining a web site recently when they were moving the site to a different server provider. The basic tool that the new provider provided for uploading files to the site required that the files be loaded one at a time through a web page. They suggested an ftp application to do the job of uploading about 2000 files, but the application was slow and only managed to transfer about 1 in 3 of the files (due to timeouts!).

I wipped up a simple Net::FTP/Tk app in about 3 hours to do the job and saved the day. Plenty of brownie points for that effort!

Well, actually, I do have a bit more food for thought. In a lot of ways, the things we consider challenging don't make a blip on management's radar or on the bottom line that The Important People^TM look at. I spent several months on a parsing project that saved another group from having to invest in fancy workstations that would have cost $100K a year, each, and another few months when I first got here building a specialized-environment launcher in shell script that is spreading rapidly throughout the whole lab as THE way to run eCAD tools, but neither of those apps has even been acknowledged.

What gets recognition are these simple little 'gluey' things that help people get their jobs done faster and more easily. The more basic the improvement, the more people it helps and the better things run. These silly little webifiers and spreadsheet dumpers aren't much from our perspective, but they sure do help things work better, and that's the real value in what we do.

It is the simple things that are often the most useful. One of the accounting staff where I used to work used to spend about 2 hours each day manually comparing two data dumps (one from the accounting system and one from the bank) to make sure all the transactions matched up. They would print out both reports and use a ruler to match up lines.

It took me about 2 hours to write a little webapp where the two files could be uploaded, and it would spit out a report of all the ambiguities in about a second.

It amazes me that every worker these days has a computer on their desk, but the majority still don't have a clue what computers are really good at. They are used for writing memos and playing solitaire!

[...] but neither of those apps has even been acknowledged.

Hmm .. I would recommend you document those cool tools so that you can remind your boss at Performance Evaluation time how useful Perl is, and how skilled you are at using it. You should add those to the living document that is your resume, as well.

Alex / talexb / Toronto

"Groklaw is the open-source mentality applied to legal research" ~ Linus Torvalds

I, too, enjoyed your post. There was only one thing, at the very end, that really stood out at me:

so now we're hammering together some trusses to keep your fab dry when it rains

I'm sorry to nitpick, but this just didn't make sense to me. In my mind, the primary purpose of a truss is structural. I guess they can keep rain out in an indirect way (by supporting the roof), but it just seems a bit off. Even still, ++ for the post! :-)

Update: Please keep in mind, I wasn't trying to detract from the point at all. As I said, I enjoyed and I agree with this Meditation. I just thought the phrase "keep the rain out" didn't quite fit. No harm intended.

Moral: have dwildesnl build your applications and website, not your house ;)

In my mind, the primary purpose of a truss is structural. I guess they can keep rain out in an indirect way (by supporting the roof), but it just seems a bit off.

I think that's exactly the point. From what the OP was describing, he was helping the engineers do their actual work with a little structural support.

thor

Feel the white light, the light within
Be your own disciple, fan the sparks of will
For all of us waiting, your kingdom will come

Well, that was actually what I said to him, so if I'd written something different it would no longer have been a true story.