A Scandal in Software: Chapter 7

[Editor's note: Click here for the top-level page of Donna Davis's software development story, A Scandal in Software. You can also use the next, previous, and up links below to navigate the structure.]

"A long series of sterile weeks lay behind us, and here at last there was a fitting object for those remarkable powers which, like all special gifts, become irksome to their owner when they are not in use." The Valley of Fear, A. Conan Doyle

When a software developer dies, does his obituary include a list of applications developed, like the descendants of ordinary people, or film credits of Hollywood legends?

Obituary of a Software Developer

Joe Programmer welcomed the Blue Screen of Death after a courageous battle with the Global Assembly Cache, having been a 1995 survivor of DLL Hell, suffering numerous work breakdowns. It was the first time he met a deadline. Perhaps best remembered by close colleagues for his elegant stored procedures but unfortunate propensity to preserve dead code, he and his convoluted logic have broken the bonds of Boolean and ended the loop of life. His credits include the ground-breaking DIG (Drainage Inventory Geobase), MAD (Mailmerge Automation Database), WHAT (WareHouse Automation Tracking), CLUELESS (Code Line and Unit Logical Estimation Software System), WHO (Widget History Online), and STUFF (Software Tracking Under-Funded Fluff). He had been looking forward to a long and lucrative career as a maintenance programmer, self-appointed critic of software development process, and commentator on the deterioration of the contemporary developer work ethic.

This odd train of thought was inspired by the prevailing sentiment that I'd died and gone to heaven, or minimally, plush programming purgatory. Eighty degree weather, long white beaches, and a blue-green Atlantic Ocean stretching as far as the eye could see. That, and a souped up Sony Vaio in my lap, with wireless, high-speed Internet connectivity and everything a MSDN subscription could supply--the computing equivalent of a Starbucks Grande Caramel Mocha Frappuccino. Gazing at the frothy waves, distant sail boats, and dozens of tidal pools formed by the relinquishing tide, I knew this was the definition of off-shore and near-shore outsourcing I could get used to.

I was acutely aware of a vague longing that had been filled, like a reverse amputation curing phantom pains I'd unknowingly nursed all my life. Why shouldn't a software developer run on the beach at sunrise, settle down to comfortable coding with a mug of coffee, FTPing files to a corporate server before enjoying a late afternoon body surf? And if a change of scenery should ever be needed, why not a rough-hewn log cabin nestled in the mountains, with a two-story stone fireplace, Jacuzzi on the porch, and a grand view of a clear mountain stream and lush, green landscape? Or a Parisian cafe? Why, in this age of innovation and virtual collaboration, should a highly skilled software developer stew for an hour (one way) in bumper to bumper traffic, rushing to a confining cubicle?

Would code developed by happy, relaxed programmers be purer, more elegant, and error-free, like tender free-range chicken, grain-fed cattle, and organic vegetables? Would the interface include a splash-screen message that read: No developers were harmed in the production of this software by arbitrary deadlines, inhumane, mandatory overtime, or the injection of process hormones?

I pondered the curious correlation my mind was making between cattle and coders, pork products and programmers. Was this the true root origin of the term "spam"? Would the phrases "Vienna Sausage" or "deviled ham" make their way into the IT vocabulary next? Was this why so many programmers were vegetarians (I had been noticing a disproportionately high consumption of Boca Burgers in the industry)...an innate need to revolt against inhumane treatment of animals and coders alike?

Since Dr. Wirth had not come along on the retreat, I settled back in a deck lounge chair to send him an email update, inhaling deeply of air that smelled nothing like the pungent, too-sweet plug-in air-freshener back home labeled "Ocean Breezes". The real thing was an amazingly pleasant combination of salt, the smell your hands have after shelling shrimp, and the neutral, clean aroma of freshly washed sheets, or a new box of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda. As soon as the thoughts escaped the confines of my psyche, I realized that using man-made items to describe a wonder of nature was rather like PowerPoint driving a presentation, rather than the reverse.

To: Wirth, Phillip
From: Luther, Brian
Re: Wednesday

We're three days into the retreat and it's amazing how quickly we've adapted, substituting one routine for another. Mornings are personal time that some choose to spend in bed, on the beach, watching CNN, or sipping coffee on the terrace. We gravitate to a common room by 9:00 or so to lay out the strategy for the day.

I brought along my used copy of Douglas Coupland's Microserfs to read during my free time, and I find myself making logical comparisons between our beach house and the campus group house. I was even tempted to slide "flat foods" underneath Trevor and Andy's door to see if they'd get the joke.

You probably know that Dan (or maybe it was you) managed to convince the higher powers to carve out a distinct segment of the larger project for our team, so we feel that sense of clarity and purpose that comes from knowing what to do, and collectively, how to do it. I find it amazing how readily individual talents float to the top when people are left to their own devices. Despite the tempting distractions of the beach and nightlife, each of us is averaging about 10 hours of concentrated work time daily. That's 10 hours of work time in flow....so of course it feels more like four. A good deal of interaction takes place through the course of day, and we integrate our code before the evening meal.

Do you know they're even letting me do a little coding? I hope you don't mind. They knew I had a Computer Science degree and I think it was Rob who asked if I wanted to work on a web service. Don't worry...my coding is pretty confined so it shouldn't interfere with my ability to keep the project documented. I've got to say, I've missed it...coding that is.

As much as I enjoy writing, the pleasure of coding is hard to substitute with anything else. I've tried to make a logical connection between the two: I figure objects are nouns, methods are verbs, and properties are adjectives. While writing is a creative process for sure, by developing code I feel like I'm on another plane, some how transforming one-dimensional text into three-dimensional kinetic reality, like starting with individual blue and red plastic Legos and ending up with a working crane. I guess I'm like I kid whose impression of a fine-looking toy is summed up by his skeptical, "But what does it do?" It's the desperation of an athlete in training for the Olympics who's injured or away from home and unable to work out....sensing his muscles slowly turning to mush...feeling the layers of fat quietly settling in around his waist. But I digress.

Dan's beach house was a pleasant surprise--something of a showplace on the northern tip of the beach, with water on three sides of the house. At high tide, the surf rises to the steps leading up to the deck, leading me to wonder how many more Andrews, Frans, or Floyds it will take before the ocean reclaims its territory. Each of the bedrooms is a suite, with two large beds, meaning none of us had to suffer the indignities of actually sleeping with a coworker. By the time we finally retire, we're all so wiped out, we don't know where we are anyway. I've been sharing a room with Rob and surprisingly, he's not quite the neat-freak I imagined. He hasn't exactly made up his bed each day, but more like repositioned the covers--a practical approach if you ask me.

The house includes a ground floor with the walls lined in knotty pine, rustic, nautical style. Of course the best part is a pool table (that converts to ping pong if you don't mind a splinter or two) and a foosball table. We've been spending a lot of our free time there and Darlene has turned out to be quite a competitive foosball opponent. I think she'd stay up all night playing if someone would accommodate. I suggested she might be taking out her real-life frustrations through the game and she threatened to quit playing and just kick me instead. Did I mention I miss our ping pong matches?

You know, all this togetherness has had me thinking about the concept of pair-programming. When I took the Myers-Briggs work personality profile, I remember the instructor saying that extroverts are energized by interactions with people, while introverts find it draining. If that's the case, wouldn't introverts equate pair-programming to opening their veins and bleeding over the keyboard?

Having said that, I realize that introverts are probably the sort who could stand to benefit the most from forced interaction--gaining the benefit of other perspectives that they'd never seek out on their own. So does that mean it's like brussels sprouts or liver--good for you, even though it has a nasty aftertaste?

From what I've seen here, the best and worst of us (extroverted or not) need our group time and solitude in order to maintain a balance that can be loosely labeled, sanity.

So we're doing quite well here...I think you'll be surprised at the progress on the project when we return. I can't help but wonder how things are there, though. Will we have anything to come back to? Have you heard anything from the front-lines about the future of the IT department at Grey-Webber?

Brian

Just as I was typing the part about Grey-Webber, Anne came up behind me, so I ended my email rather abruptly and pressed Send. She was wearing a swimsuit with a sarong sort of thing tied around her waist. I was having a hard time getting used to seeing coworkers in recreational attire. Trevor hadn't worn anything but swim trunks and T-shirts brandishing Carolina Tarheels, vintage Budweizer frogs, or Family Guy all week. Was this their natural habitat and "the pharm" a poor facsimile, like a man-made zoo biome with Styrofoam boulders and artificial glaciers?

Andy had been suckered in by one of those fly-over advertisements for Wings, featuring skimmer boards for $4.99. I'm sure they had some piece of foam #$&^* for $4.99...strategically placed beside the premium real-wood boards with airbrush artwork, shellacked to a high gloss, for $29.99. He even bought an Elvis towel and a box of salt water taffy that must be subsidized by the Dental Association, considering all the work it must generate for them. I'm surprised he didn't come away with a Hermit crab or bamboo back scratcher.

Wings and Eagles stores are to Myrtle Beach what software methodologies are to programmers: there's literally one on every corner. At first you think, Wow they've got those cool T-shirts with the image of a well-developed body on them, until you realize, Oh, all the stores have them. So you still feel compelled to go in, look around aimlessly, and occasionally buy something so you can dutifully play the part of The Tourist, but walk away mentally calculating the lease for the well-situated building and wonder how they're able to make a profit.

For that matter, miniature golf courses are to Myrtle Beach what development tool vendors are to programmers. You see one every few yards, and each has its own flash and appeal--a pirate's ship in tantalizing blue water, a volcano spewing menacing steam vapors, a giant alligator with gleaming eyes--but each one pretty much involves plopping down your $7.00 per game for the privilege of standing out in the sweltering sun to hit a little ball a few feet over an obstacle into a hole. This is what we've come to.

I was leaning on the deck railing watching Andy's relatively competent surf skimming through my binoculars, enjoying his occasional spectacular falls immensely, when Anne suggested we walk on the beach. "Okay," I said, unable to concatenate two actual words together to form a reasonably coherent sentence.

Before Finding Nemo, the sound of sea gull chatter was a natural part of the beach audio-scape, like the rise and fall of waves. Now I found myself actually listening for words. Were they really calling, "Mine, mine, mine" in seagull-language as some animator or script writer imagined? Better to think of the Finding Nemo seagulls than Richard Bach's Jonathan Livingston Seagull, I thought. Otherwise I'd be getting all teary-eyed over white birds. (Now there was another fine example of a bizarre premise that inexplicably sold millions. Who would have pegged a ubiquitous scavenging, sea-faring bird as an appropriate metaphor for finding purpose and fulfilling one's dreams? I wasn't sure whether to take this sort of fluke as an encouragement for my future writing endeavors or as proof of the unpredictable buying patterns of the reading masses.)

Unsure what to do with my shoes, knowing there would be dry sand as hot as McDonald's coffee, I wore them until we reached the hard surface of the wet sand. I carried them thereafter, trying to keep an eye out for broken glass, an upturned seashell, or (God forbid) a beached jellyfish. I didn't know whether a dead jellyfish retained its stinging ability, but the very thought of stepping on one and having it squish through my toes like nature's Jell-O was enough to keep me staring downward, maintaining a healthy degree of paranoia.

Anne, on the other hand, seemed fascinated by the sky, noting unusual cloud formations, pointing out kites flying on the horizon that were little more than specks to me.

We'd been walking a while in silence when Anne said, out of the blue, "Have you ever thought about how artificial every thing we do is?" Anne edged the sentence out, like inching a kite into a wind gust, carefully testing to see if it would take off and soar, or spiral violently into a tailspin.

"Artificial?" I'd just gotten through considering the wonder of software development that was akin to procreation, and here she was, reducing it to an incomprehensible additive on the back of a bag of potato chips. "I don't exactly follow..."

"I guess I don't even know what I mean," she said meekly, stooping to examine a shell. I waited for her to continue.

"It's just the vastness and timelessness of the ocean and sky makes what we do seem so unnatural and insignificant. I mean, do you think God intended for computers to be created? You know the impact technology has had--for good and for bad--on humanity as we know it. Are we, in some way, tinkering with Divine Intention?" For a moment I wondered if she was joking, but her expression looked serious...pensive.

"You're thinking we're architects of a technological Tower of Babel?" I'd heard that argument somewhere--probably in church by a disapproving evangelist who believed there was a mainframe computer in Belgium called The Beast that was a fulfillment of end-times. "We're striving for a common platform, or at least interoperability, to reach the heavens of software spirituality?"

"And our punishment has been all these different programming languages!" Anne countered, laughing.

I laughed with her, but it was quickly swept away by the wind like a kite escaping a child's hand. The sky was getting darker on the distant horizon: a summer storm was brewing. I suddenly became aware of the distance we had covered and realized we should start back if we wanted to miss the inevitable rain. The wind whipped at my shirt and waves were starting to splash the pants legs that I'd rolled up to my knees, but I wasn't tempted to go closer to shore. It was an invigorating sort of feeling that made me feel super-alive, like every sense was stimulated. Anne was dressed more appropriately, but even she had let her wrap get soaked.

As we reached the dunes and sea oats leading to Dan's house, my cell phone rang. Turning to shield the wind with my body, I answered off-handedly, expecting it would be Andy or Trevor wanting to know when Anne and I were coming back, so we could plan where to go for supper.

"Brian Luther?" The woman's voice was unfamiliar, but clearly the call was intended for me.

"Yes?" I asked in the tone of voice that includes an implied tagline, "Who's calling, please?"

"This is Joan Maynard...you won't know me..." I imagined a telemarketer, but suddenly feared the worst...had something happened to one of my parents?

"He didn't want me to call you," she was continuing through my fog of thoughts, "but I thought you'd want to know...that you should know..." My stomach sank.

"Phillip....Phillip Wirth, my brother....has had a heart attack. The doctor has called the family in..."