‘Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning how to dance in the rain.’

This quote stuck with me during my undergrad years. Everything was smooth sailing until I graduated; I was securing good grades, and I had a loving family and supportive friends. It was after graduation that I was initiated into the world, and I knew that it was going to be a roller-coaster of a ride.

You see, what college education teaches you is to excel in the program you are undertaking, but nowhere near prepares you to be ready to face the world head-on. At least, this is the situation for most graduates in my country. I felt like a dinosaur in the ever evolving tech world with a heavy feeling of extinction. Then, it dawned on me that, in order to be accepted in this world of competent software engineers, I had to be like one. This brought in a burning desire, a hunger to learn whatever I could to make myself ready. It paid off, and I got a job at a reputed company with a good salary. Also, I had my solid educational background to back me up.

One day, as I was thinking about my life in retrospect and the future, I had an awakening. I was in a better position in my life than I was when I graduated college, but was I making a difference? Was I aiming to be a better person? My employers might say otherwise, but I was brought up with the philosophy that the primary goal in life is to make a positive difference and to help others who can’t help themselves. Well, it might sound a bit philosophical, but the gist is that I was only helping myself and not others. Sure, I was earning good money every month and was developing better softwares for my employer, but I had become selfish and single-minded in my pursuit of becoming a software engineer. I had not wandered into the unknown territories of software development, and I had not pushed myself every day but was just programming for the sake of it (and some papers 🙂).

This changes today. Today marks the beginning of the day of unlearning. Unlearning? Well, you know, when software engineers tend to solve problems, over the years, they will develop a bias of solving them in the same way rather than considering newer and novel ways to solve them. That is, until one challenges himself and his methods to tackle a particular problem. I remember meeting an engineer who had been using the same language for 10 years, and the surprising thing is that he was not willing to learn a new programming language or framework because he was comfortable with it. My friend, comfort is the achilles heel of growth. If you succumb to it, it will cripple you and rob you of your potential until you are too weak to start again. And after a few decades have passed and you look back at the years you spent in comfort, you will hate yourself for it. I despise being that person.

From today onwards, I will aspire to be a better person and a better software engineer. I will share with the world what I have learned over the years so that someone reading this will not have to repeat the same mistakes. I will fill my blog with tools and techniques to enable programmers to increase their skills. Some posts might be me venting, but among them, you will find genuine posts that might help you excel in whatever you are doing and inspire you to be a better human being. After all, from dust we rose, and to dust we will return. We don’t carry riches to our grave, but only our legacy.

This is an ode to my former self, farewell and thank you for all that you have done.