Why am I doing it?

Why are so many of us staring at screens for hours, reading and writing code? What is the motivation behind it? I am not sure there is an universal answer to this question. Do we like solving problems? Do we like the feeling of creating something? Or do we like the feeling of being in control? That sounds like the beginning of a therapy session.

It has always been for the thrill of it for me. Sure, I like seeing that end users and clients are happy about it, but that’s not the main reason. I like the feeling of creating something beautiful, something that works, something that feels like it is better than what I have done before. Something that inspires me to go deeper. Something that challenges me to go further, always further. Something that I can be prouf of.

Predictability and rationality are boring. Sure, I need to keep that raging creativity under control, but I don’t want to kill it. I want to be surprised by what I do, and what it leads me to. I feel like the power of creating software has been dompted by the industry. We are here to create value and make money, manage risk and reduce costs. But that’s not what programing is about to me. It’s an intellectual and creative activity that is an integral part of my life. It is a way to express myself. Sometimes, I need to just improvise, and see where I end up.

Improvisation deals with the unforeseen. It involves continual experimentation with new possibilities to create innovative and improved solutions outside current plans and routines. The explorative nature of improvisation necessarily involves a potential for failure, leading to the popular misconception that improvisation is only of a spontaneous, intuitive nature that happens among untutored geniuses or in immature organizations.

— Dyba, T.: Improvisation in small software organizations (2000) ¹

I’d like to think we’re at the edge where scientific research and art meets: a bridge between the structured world of science and the boundless world of art. I wonder what Einstein would have come up with if he had been a programmer. I wonder what kind of code Beethoven would have composed, what software Picasso would have painted. I am not as talented as these geniuses, but still, I like to think we have that same flame inside us.

Mathematical Science shows what is. It is the language of the unseen relations between things. But to use & apply that language we must be able fully to appreciate, to feel, to seize, the unseen, the unconscious. Imagination too shows what is, the is that is beyond the senses. Hence she is or should be especially cultivated by the truly Scientific, — those who wish to enter into the worlds around us!

— Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron’s Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer ²