Sept 15th: Midnight's Programmers

1999... it was third year in college and AJ and myself were burning winter's midnight oil, conjuring a solution to a problem, for an intercollegiate programming competition scheduled a bit after the forseeable dawn. We felt we had a good enough solution, but at the eleventh hour, a unanimous decision came to us, 'Lets not just tell them our innovative solution, we need to show it to them', which got us excited, raising our spirits as we fought through the night, learning the intricacies of graphics programming. Our hard work paid off and we felt good about the whole thing, as we experienced the fruits of our labour, firsthand.

I'm sure we have all been Midnight's programmers at some point, magical realism pushing us to do what it takes to get that great idea out, problems slowly revealing themselves, as we manage to bravely overcome them and decipher magic from realism. But if you think about it, its not just programmers, the same applies to all professions, even mothers and fathers. And deep down inside each one of us wants to tell the world about our stints as Midnight's Programmers, Midnight's Children. Well let me try not to idealise the night of it :-) And as Natalie Goldberg says in her book 'Writing down the bones; Freeing the writer within', "Don't just tell them the story, show it to them" and they will appreciate it, and they do.

The past few days we were Midnight's programmers, working on something beyond the realm of our assigned projects, and we had reached a state of tremendous enthusiasm. But what happens when your efforts don't meet your expectations, do you tell them the story, do you show it to them. Do you gain from those experiences, do you learn.



Sept 16th: Without Limits