Developer: a career to “serve”

Today, Professor Isidro is feeling philosophical. 🙂

As a Catholic myself (and with great joy and honor), I have been trying to engage in studies about the doctrine of the Holy Catholic Church to which I belong. But, Isidro, is this a religious publication? No! But I want to draw some parallels.

Last year, I came across this text by Father Francisco Faus that I used for a lecture I gave to a group of teenagers from my parish about serving.

And to my “surprise” (I put it in quotes because nothing is by chance), I saw a lot of our profession in those words. Without giving too much away, but hinting at some things from the text (I wholeheartedly suggest that you read it with an open heart), it says that the word “to serve” has two very clear meanings, present in the following sentence: “To serve, to serve.”

I confess that this left me intrigued in a certain way, and at the same time, my mind began to explode because of the similarities with our profession. But let’s try to understand this context:

The first meaning: “to serve” as “to offer oneself”

What do you mean, Isidro? Well, do we “offer ourselves” to be programmers? Do we have a calling for it? Do we embrace being Developers as our career, and not just as a job? Do we have the idea that we will study for a lifetime and always have the feeling that the only thing we are certain of is that we need to study more and more every day?

Well, if you understand that being a Programmer means knowing that this “cross” is part of your daily life, congratulations. Otherwise, it might be a good idea to reconsider whether you are in a career that fulfills you.

I confess that this stirred me deeply and left me even more convinced that I am in the career I love.

The second meaning: “to serve” as “to have the spirit of giving oneself”

This part is profound (and tense), lol. I don’t know if you’ve been told, but developers live to solve problems for others. We live to solve problems and serve people we have no idea about. I always tell my students (and in the lectures I have the opportunity to give) that software is only software if it is usable; otherwise, it’s just a bunch of lines of code!

We rarely produce software for our own use. Generally, we create systems for the local shopkeeper and large-scale cloud-based systems for millions of users.

The question I pondered while reading this text is precisely this: Do we have the spirit of service, creating software with care (and I’m not talking about feelings) to help people we will never meet?

The website that will be used not by our client but by our client’s customers (whom we have no idea about), the company’s system that has an employee who will be the operator (not the owner who will pay for it), and many other situations.

When we talk about “customer focus” in the DevOps culture, that’s exactly it: Do we have a spirit of service to work together, despite all the difficulties, to help a third person?

Well, without getting too carried away, I’ll end it here. Today, as I’m feeling philosophical and with my Catholic vein more pronounced (lol), I want to say that all of you, my students (in person or remote), are and will always be in my prayers, and I wish you all great success.