Life of a mercenary Coder

In the IT world, coding is probably the most creative work that requires patience, brilliance and skill. The level of creativity is so complicatedly confusing, obscure and incomprehensible to the normal being. The codes are literally a bunch of instructions to govern a certain system, and just by observing a bunch of code, one can only see chaos and disorder. But in the chaos of source codes, order comes into being, which only an engineer could call it beautiful.

If you enjoy coding, I'm sure you must have code before for friends, hobby and money. Well, I am coding today for the latter reasons and in that order particularly. As my friends and I gathered in the office, trying to finish a system we promised, we are tired, terribly dehydrated and hungry. The whole gathering thing was fun, its like a coding camp, that everybody comes to a tent and start coding. It feel like we are boys again, running around in the parking lot, pushing each other into the bushes...and playing with the water sprinkler in the park. But when the development became slow, it was terrible.

Its about 2.30 am now, and we are far from completing the system. The place we work in Cyberjaya, is an isolated city far away from human interaction. Hence, its name, Cyber-Jaya. It so hard to find a place that's open at night, that is, if you daring enough to go out alone. The roads are empty and the road lamps are dim. It like a scene from sin city, a ghost town at night and a technology city during the day.

To make things worst, the whole development cycle start-off badly. We have no CVS, use a central database and we use a live data for testing. What this means really in non-geek language is that there is no sane way to work concurrently in a group. Each mistake of one member in a group will effect everybody. Not to mention, the bandwidth that each person will consume, causing massive delays to each member of the group. To add to our pathetic ordeal, the office does not have any airconditioning at night. You can just imagine the heat that each PC and laptop radiates. It like being in a steam room, without the moisture.

Finally, the whole development stops to a halt when the database became to slow to do work. This is due to fahmi, who keeps on trying to insert new data into the database, and everytime he does that, nobody can do anything. Tension starts to built and we finally stopped coding to do other things until the server speeds up again. Below are fellow comrades, and a snap shots of their lifes, as a mercenary coder....

Syirman, cracking his head over his coding. He is overdosed by ciggarettes and drinho. He is hungry and the words on his monitor starts to dance with the "Samseng" music on the background.

Pian, the Project Manager, the guy responsible for it all. He is also responsible for not having a CVS by the way. But overall, he's managing well. I did try to get a tense picture of him, but this is the best shot i can get.

Zul, terribly frustrated with the slow database, has been complaining with slight sounds of hmmm, and ish...coming from him. He doesn't talk much, but I assure you, that if he does make sounds, he is pissed.
Here is a picture of him pissed....

Myself, not really stressed, but can't stand the heat in the office. I so want to go out and get some fresh air. All the smoke that pian and syirman produce, doesn't help either...heheheh