CJ Eller

I fixed a technical problem I was having at work. Sure, I'm relieved, but the most frustrating part of it all is that I didn't have the satisfaction of knowing what the problem was exactly. All I did was remove cruft to start back at square one. No idea what cruft was the culprit. It just works now.

Something I've been trying to get better at is accepting that sometimes you won't know why something is now working. Not from a lack of wanting to understand, but from an acknowledgement that, no matter how much you dig, you won't understand. And that's okay.

There's a part in the video I shared yesterday where MPJ says that his mantra as a software developer used to be:

It's my job to bang my head against problems until I succeed.

But he soon realized that success might not be the end point. Sometimes problems can't be solved, can't be understood, can't be grasped. It was only until he removed that “until I succeed” part did he reach a healthier relation to his craft.

It's my job to bang my head against problems.

I wonder if this also aligns with accepting the mystery of certain solutions, admitting to not fully understanding how something was fixed, taking credit for it like some ego-inflated developer. Perhaps that is part of that healthier relation to the craft of software & engineering that MPJ was talking about.