April 24, 2025
This week I ran into a junior colleague.
He had switched projects.
The one he is currently at uses a different cloud vendor
than the project we were together.
I asked him which cloud vendor he liked more.
His answer: "I like the old one, it has a no code solution."
Meanwhile, I had spent the whole morning
click opsing through his no-codes,
trying to figure out where a table was written into a database,
wishing for grep.
I had a conversation this week. A colleague stated that he would rather use no code tools, because he had seen horrible things in code.
I've seen horrible things in code. I've also seen horrible things in no-code. When it comes the time to fix things:
grep, prints and if you are lucky a debugger.I articulated those thoughts, and True Wisdom was shown in his reply: "That's only a problem because you fix things. I'm an architect."
I wrote a script this week. It recursively grants permissions on objects in a proprietary ecosystem.
I wrote because on Monday three of my colleagues independently complained about how baroque the process for granting those permissions is. Those three are quite competent coders. But they would rather sit through long click ops sessions than write a script.
The totality of the thing is 113 lines of code. That counts tests and imports. I wrote the very basics within a coding session. It was something I would be happy to share internally. I though it was a generally useful thing, so I spent a bit of extra time cleaning the thing up, wrote tests and a README that caused hilarity within my team mates.
That last example showcases an extreme level of conformism: "I need to spend an hour clicking on workflow items. That is the way things are."
The whole point of technology is: Change the way things are. I find quite hard to grasp that competent technologists would rather suffer through tedium than spend some time coding a solution.
The first level where I am lost is the tedium bit. Is coding fun? I think it is. This is where my architect colleague looses me. I really enjoy the coding bit. And what's the point of the coding bit? Is changing the way things are truly at the core of being a technologist? If it is not at the core, it's definitely a significant chunk of the ordeal. That script I wrote today: 113 lines. And now, anyone can run a command from their terminal and shave some minutes of tedium of their day. That is true power and maybe dangerous.
But of all the things that are, the one we change the most as we develop new solutions, is ourselves. Through the struggles and frustrations of birthing an idea into a concrete program, we also give birth to new, wiser, better selves. That gold nugget is technology's true reward.
Maybe it's fear of failure that beats them into click ops tedium. Maybe they don't want to write the script, afraid they will fail These kinds of little scripts work wonders for deliberate practice. You could spend an hour tops writing a proof of concept. And even in failure, you have grown wiser. Every bit of my script is small and accessible. From the concept, to the tests and README. And you could do without two of those three bits (for a project this size). But each is a chance to change and improve yourself. To hone a skill. To strive for better.
And there is where my architect friend lost me again. It's not about doing the things. It's about doing them well. He saw me writing the README and asked: "Why don't you generate it the AI?" My answer was: "AI will be longer, it does not have the context of the problem, and it cannot cause hilarity within my team mates." Yes, AI would do a better job at explaining the structure of the code, but nobody cares about that. I care that the README is readable. And my colleagues will read a short funny README. A README that serves it's purpose well.
Without that endless strife for improvement, we cannot get the aforementioned gold nugget of self improvement. Without strife for improvement, the best we can strive for, is another bit of tedium.
Is it fear of reprisal that prevents my colleagues from writing a script? Nobody asked me to write the script. I didn't ask for permission. I sat down and wrote the thing. Now, I am not going to go to my boss and tell him that I wrote it. But now we are all better off, at the cost of some of my hours.
There is some strange force, that prevented competent coders from coding a script. I cannot figure out which force it is. Maybe I am out of touch. Maybe I am a weirdo. But I am joyous and glorious and they are click opsing (hopefully, a little less than yesterday.)