Ninjitsu

As the last leaves of autumn make their way to the earth and the days wane ever shorter, I'm inexorably reminded of the fact that the color is being drained out of my life, erm, my undergraduate days at UCD are drawing to a close. With the prospect of The Real World looming ever larger on the horizon, the "J" word keeps growing on the horizon. So, if you or someone you know is looking to hire a web developer in the Sacramento area, let me know.

In talking to others about my immediate future plans, I get the sense that no one really "gets" what I do. "What's a web developer?" "Do jobs like that really exist?" It's something that many people have trouble fully grasping—almost as if what I did bordered on the mystical realm.

You'd think I'm exaggerating, but I've lost count of the number of times people have called me the "tech guru" or the "resident web wizard." I get the sense that people imagine me as some sort of voodoo priest with a keyboard—I wiggle my fingers at the monitor, and stuff happens. Sometimes I laugh when I see this, other times I get annoyed.

The annoyance stems from two misconceptions that come from this image: first, it perpetuates the myth that I'm "good" with anything even remotely related to computers —and anyone who's had me attempt to set up their DSL will attest to the truth that, in fact, I'm not. No, really, I'm not being modest—I'm not.

Second, the "magic" imagery seems to carry with it the implication that what I do "just happens" without any work—when in truth, every site I build takes a tremendous (and often exhausting) effort. I'm the kind of person who'll stay up late at night trying to figure out why a div I was fiddling with at work is a few pixels off. Is that passion, or obsessive-compulsiveness? I don't know.

I came up with an analogy the other day (and felt pretty good about it until Google told me that I wasn't the first person to think of it): I'm a CSS Ninja. I creep up on unsuspecting table-based layouts, disembowel their insides with a few well-practiced slashes, and fade into the shadows. What I leave behind is a site trimmed of excess fat—it loads faster, is easier to maintain, and looks no different (or better) to customers. That's me: stealthy, calculating, and fast. Exclusively for the forces of Good, of course.

Naturally, I like this analogy because ninjas "are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet." But it has its flaws: the extent of what I'm interested in (and capable of) goes beyond just CSS, and it doesn't get me very far with people who don't have a web development background.

So what do I do now? I don't know—or rather, I've all but given up trying to explain it. Not that I think others can't understand me, but I struggle with finding the right words. How can I make sense if I tell people that I like programming problems, but that I don't like programming? "techie" friends of mine often don't understand why I like something as bare-bones as HTML (before I correct them by saying all the cool people now call it XHTML) and "non-techie" friends wonder why I don't salivate at the thought of fast graphics cards and video games. It's frustrating because I believe that my passion for what I do like comes from idiosyncrasies in my personality: so when people have misunderstandings, it's as if they don't understand a part of who I am.

So how do I begin to rectify this? Well, first, here's a secret: I'm not that interested in computers. Really.

I'm way more interested in what people can accomplish with computers through human intellect, reason and creativity—qualities that reflect the great God in whose image we were created.

Second, if you really want to understand what I'm interested in—and, in a sense, understand a part of me—read this great article, which I found through an equally tongue-tied web developer. This quote sums it up nicely: "It's a hybrid position, you are someone that paints with code. Programmers don't accept your work as real code, and designers don't consider it design." Joy, something to look forward to.