I'm Only A Software Developer After All
I don’t know how to do anything else.
Al Pacino - “I don’t know how to do anything else.“
Robert De Niro - “Neither Do I.”
Al Pacino - “I don’t much want to either.”
Robert De Niro - “Neither Do I.”- Scene of conversation between the cop and the gangster. (Movie - Heat)
This above exchange of dialog captures the essence of this post.
Heads Up - This article is cynical and self-indulgant.
Another post is coming up soon that covers my current net-worth, monthly expenditures and miscellaneous logistical updates in the last couple months. For the readers that are here for FIRE posts, financial nitty-gritties and other logistical nuts n’ bolts, you might wanna give this post a miss. I respect your time, dear readers.. :)
You’ve been warned!
When you have complete control over your time, there are two options to choose from while deciding how best to utilize your time and energy.
Which of the below two equally-worthwhile, equally-fulfilling ideals do I want to pursue?
Should I aspire to be a Renaissance Man?
Or, am I better off not spreading myself thin, and go all-in into one or two pursuits?
In other words, am I better suited to be an Idiot Savant?
I’ve made peace with the fact that I’m better off trying to be the latter - an idiot savant.
To all you FIRE enthusiasts day dreaming of your post-retirement life of fantasy, I hate to be a buzzkill but I have to be one. If you believe that once you FIRE, you’re gonna fill your days up absorbed in all your unexplored interests such as music, arts and crafts, learning a new language, and other hobbies, it won’t be long before disillusionment sets in.
Fact is, most of your interests are likely superficial. You’ll dabble for a few months, get your fulfillment, flush that curiosity out of your system, and then run out of steam. You’ll write that song you’d always wanted to write, or set up your new blog and dump a couple articles, or put up a handful of paintings or digital art on your new Instagram account. Maybe you’ll learn some rudimentary French, German or Spanish for three months. And that’ll be it. The fourth month rolls by and you realize you don’t wanna continue doing it anymore.
There will always be exceptions and a very few committed ones will completely reinvent themselves in a totally unrelated field. But for the vast majority, early disillusionment is unfortunately the most likely outcome.
Speaking from first-hand experience here…
I hit the wall of disillusionment quite early on. I thought I’d be diving into music, vlogging, animation, guitar, comedy, writing, you name it. And I did dabble in them all.
Since I’m feeling ballsy today, I’m gonna briefly take off my cloak of anonymity…
Here’s a tiny portfolio of all my work in the above mentioned creative endeavors on my YouTube channel.
So, I dabbled in all the above mentioned areas (music, vlogging, animation, guitar, comedy) for a little bit and then I was done.
I’m deeply committed to learning the Guitar well, and yet I can’t imagine practising Guitar five hours everyday or pick up the instrument the first thing after getting out of bed. I can only do it for maybe an hour or two at best and only after I’m done with my “major tasks” for the day.
As an early retiree, it’s very important to figure out what those “major tasks” are. This is crucial for you to maintain your sense of self-esteem. Without this, you’ll soon find yourself falling into the hell-hole of listlessness and depression.
It’s clear to me that my major calling is good old software development.
In the last couple years, I’ve proven to myself beyond doubt that I can only be a software developer after all. Everything else is a passing fad, a superficial curiosity that’ll be very short-lived.
So in the last one year, I have:
- Picked up the Golang programming language.
- Did a complete source code study of BoltDB (a B+ tree key-value store written in Go).
- Brushed up my C++ and caught up on the latest feature additions to the language. (Shoutout to learncpp.com - Such a well written, comprehensive tutorial!)
- Read the book “Designing Data-Intensive Applications (DDIA)” cover-to-cover.
And there’s a lot more of study I have lined up, such as:
- Read a bunch of papers (BigTable, Chubby, Spanner, F1, the list is long..)
- Complete source code study of LevelDB and RocksDB.
- Learn PostgreSQL and Prometheus.
The one thing I most definitely won’t be spending any time doing is Leetcoding. Only real engineering work, there’s no place for toy programming and cheap trickery.
I might come across as a fool here. One might think - “this guy saved up, quit his dev job in the US, returned to India to FIRE, and he can’t think of a better way to spend his time other than doing software all over again? What a naive, one-dimensional idiot! Get a life, Dog!”
I don’t blame you for thinking something like this. It does sound sad, but only to someone sick and tired of the hi-tech corporate grind, and hoping that FIRE will help them get on a different course in life.
However, things feel different from my perspective. The joy of pursuing software purely as a craft, without being dragged down by all the bullshit you encounter in a high-pressure, office-politics-infested company is just different.
The Renaissance man ideal can wait. For now, I’m gonna focus on trying to be an Idiot-Savant software developer.
Until next time,
- Dog