23 years ago, I was shopping in Sears for some work ties.
While paying for my purchase, I got into a conversation with the male cashier. It so happened that he had been a mainframe programmer, big iron CICS and Cobol to be exact. I was just starting out in IT and very excited about the bits and bytes, he was burned out from years of coding and was content on punching keys on an NCR machine.
That short encounter left an indelible mark on my subconscious. I couldn’t fathom someone painfully learning to program then up and leaving for Do you want fries with that?
Fast forward 23 years, RPG II begat Visual Basic, Ritchie’s C, Delphi Pascal and the programming language list goes on. I can’t say I’m burned out by this point, nor could I get away from technology, what with personal computers being so prevalent. But there are times I think about doing something else, Would you like to Super Size that?
And if your train’s on time, you can get to work by nine
And start your slaving job to get your pay
If you ever get annoyed, look at me I’m self-employed
I love to work at nothing all day