© Drfloob.com 2008 
My words are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.
My name is AJ, and I'm a web developer and software engineer out of Southern California.
Written two months ago
Some days I had believed I'd seen the worst atrocities that have ever existed in code. Other days I'd be proven wrong, when something much worse showed up. I found both joy and nausea in the same moment.
if (obj.equals(null)) { ... }
If you don't understand why this is horrible, ask yourself what you can determine about obj if obj.equals(null) evaluated to true.
An entire generation of developers have no idea what "pointer dereferencing" means. What's worse, I found this many months ago at my last gig in a JSP Scriptlet, copied a few dozen times across the codebase,. I killed them all quickly and humanely, but It's been in the back of my mind ever since.
I don't have the kind of knowledge, skill, or academic history to work at places like google, facebook, or amazon. Not as a developer, anyway; I'm not sure what the janitor positions' requirements are. But I digress.
Barring a miraculous act of the flying spaghetti monster, if I were to continue developing software for pay, I'd be relegated to the kind of uninspired janitorial work that I've done over the past few years. My beliefs had no sway in the direction of development, my work was unappreciated, and everybody thought they could do my job better than me (especially the sales people). Intelligent thought was barred. Panic and stress were the driving forces behind development. The keg was not refilled in a timely manner. The gripes go on.
I give. I only want to write code if it's inspired, purposeful code. Code that must be done well, instead of at any cost. Software, Hardware, Logic, Mathematics, Physics: these are the foundations of our human attempt at organizing, understanding, and manipulating reality. The more I learn, the less likely I am to stunt my growth for a price. Corporate development: you've lost me.