It doesn't matter

I’ve recently discovered Alysa Liu, she’s a figure skateboarding champion. She won Olympics this year after a two year hiatus from doing what she loved.

A major chunk of this comeback is being attributed to the fact that she’s having fun skating. You can see it in her eyes, she’s really. And the mindset is you can’t defeat someone if they’re having fun rather than chasing a goal.

While competing may seem like chasing something, it merely becomes a mode of having fun when you’re having “fun”.

Now coming to the context of all this, this actually doesn’t hold true for software engineering. It’s definitely applicable to most or all sports or anything where the outcome is truly dependent on your effort and you rather than any other unexpected variable. You influence yourself, you break and make yourself. You become the tool and you reach the point where it all becomes for fun.

It doesn’t matter for software engineering at all. It doesn’t matter if we take pride in what we built. It doesn’t matter if our product gets validation. It really doesn’t matter if we’re frustrated from things not going the way we want, because it’ll never be. The premise of engineering is not truly dependent on how much work or effort we put it, it’s dependent on countless other participants.

So we should stop treating software engineering like a sport. It’s not a sport where a team shares the burdens and celebrates the wins. We’re just chasing intangible outcomes which are invalid without any notice. We’re here to just do work, do the best work to our ability. Stop taking pride in it as an art form. Unlike sports, it’s just a medium to earn a LIVING.

It truly doesn’t matter.

This was written on mobile phone. Apologies for lack of better wording.