Recently in coding for christ Category

As I was standing outside the Apple store on Regents Street waiting for my friend to finish his shift there, I couldn't help but notice the looks of reverence and awe on the faces of those who passed by. There seemed to be a widespread recognition by all who gazed across the threshold that this was hallowed ground - one of the sacred sites of the Western world which rivals any ancient temple. Us sophisticated modern people look down our noses at the naivety of the ancient world who trembled before their pantheon of gods - we're far too educated for such superstition! And yet it began to dawn on me that maybe we're not so different after all. They look rather different and we call them by different names - could it be that our Mount Olympus is occupied by the imposing brand names of large corporations? The gods and goddesses Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Nike, Pixar, Google? Just as the gods of old dominated every aspect of life for those who worshipped them, from agriculture to childbearing, so too the modern brand name deities exert their influence over all walks of life, from what we buy to where we work. Below are three big similarities that I thought of - perhaps you can think of more!

Image by strangeaeons

1. They give us a sense of belonging

When talking about his new book "Tribes", marketing guru Seth Godin said this:

"Harley Davidson and Apple are titanic brands for the very same reason. They sell a chance to join a group that matters"

If you go to a web community conference like BarCamp or the Google Developer Day, you can't help but notice that 90% of the people there seem to have a MacBook on their laps. The message is loud and clear: "if you were really a part of our club, you'd have one too." It's the same thing that causes school kids everywhere to spend such large proportions of their income on brand name clothes - worshipping the right branding gods shows that you're a member of the tribe.

2. They cast a large shadow

Brands are held in awe - consumers flock to them, competitors fear them, employees find security under their wings; brands stand immovable and unshakeable, at least they like to think they do. I've long known my own idolatrous heart has been drawn to big brand companies when looking for work because of the prestige that working for one seems to convey. Buying your DVD player from Sony somehow feels safer than buying some unknown brand - you feel confident in the quality of your purchase, whether or not that's well-founded. As the saying goes, "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."

3. They own their part of the world

Just like the idols of the ancient world were restricted in their field of influence, so it is with modern brand names. Where Demeter was in control of your crops succeeding or failing, so Microsoft dominates your office productivity; where Poseidon ruled the seas, so Google rules the world of the internet. To guarantee success across the board, the ancient pagans were forced to offer sacrifices to as many different gods as possible to make sure they covered their bases. After all, what if the one god you missed out ended up being the very one you ended up needing a favour from? Equally, it is not sufficient for the modern man to wear the right clothes if he does not not also own the right television or have the right job with a sufficiently well-recognised City firm.

The pressures of idolatry facing us today really aren't that different from those faced by the Israelites back in the Old Testament. They were eager to avoid standing out from the nations around them, for example when they begged Samuel to appoint for them a king, "that we also may be like all the nations"; they feared that limiting their worship to just one God, the Lord, might incur the disfavour of another to their detriment; they often sought to make alliances with other, more powerful nations by worshipping their gods.

The antidote: worship the all-powerful Creator

The Bible's antidote to their idolatry was to show how ridiculous it was in the face of God's amazing bigness:

"Hear the word that the Lord speaks to you...: Their idols are like scarecrows in a cucumber field, and they cannot speak; they have to be carried, for their cannot walk. Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, neither is it in them to do good... they are all the work of skilled men. But the Lord is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King. At his wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot endure his indignation... It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens. When he utters his voice, there is a tumult of waters in the heavens, and he makes the mist rise from the ends of the earth. He makes lightning for the rain, and he brings forth the wind from his storehouses."

Whereas their false gods were limited in their sphere of influence, the Lord made the whole world and has ultimate power and authority over every inch of it. At the end of the day, our modern brands are but the creation of human hands, who were themselves made by the one, true God. Our fear is often really just the fear of men - how foolish it looks when confronted with the almighty God?

So let us not fear the false gods of this age, but respond like the Thessalonians: who "turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God" - the one who made the earth by his power.

I've had one of those rare weekends of having pretty much nothing to do whatsoever - praise the Lord for a very welcome break! It gave me a chance to do a bit of coding just for fun, and after discovering a brilliant website called Wordle I decided to make a mashup with Bible Gateway. The result: The Wordle of God. Whilst it's basically just a lot of fun, I think it also has potential as a really useful tool for getting an overall feel for a Bible passage and what the dominant themes are.

What I learnt about myself from my time at Trinity Mirror

On 4th September 2005, in God’s great sovereign plan, I started work as a software engineer in the Digital IT department of the Trinity Mirror newspaper group, working on their online titles. It was a surprising move, in some ways: my passion has always been for computer graphics and games development, and it’s fair to say that web development had only ever been a sideline for me up until that point. My priority at the time, however, was to get a reasonable job that would enable me to still have a life outside of work so that I could get involved in a church where I’d be built up and equipped to serve Jesus in the long term, and Trinity Mirror seemed like it would offer that. In the event, it exceeded my expectations in every way, and any doubts I may have had quickly vanished. As a green young developer with little experience of the realities of programming in a real-world team it was a privilege to work with the very talented group of developers they had working for them, and I shall be forever grateful for the masses I learnt there about how to make great software, working on sites like Adzooks.co.uk and the rebranded Liverpool Echo and similar regional newspaper sites. They taught me the joys of agile methodologies like Extreme Programming and Scrum; they taught me the importance of actually talking to your customers and not just assuming that you know that they want or even that they know what they want; they taught me how (and how not) to write maintainable code (or at least why it matters!); they certainly taught me the utterly incomprehensible choice of a language that is Coldfusion; but above all they instilled in me a deep routed desire to avoid the cheap and easy hacks and implement the right solution in the right way.

So what changed?

For various reasons I’ve been getting increasingly itchy feet for some months now, wanting to move on from Trinity Mirror. Whilst it’s not appropriate to go into the details here of exactly why, I’d like to share with you the following lessons that I’ve learnt about myself through the perspective of my growing discontent:

1. I’m a sinner. My colleagues will have had no problems identifying my many flaws, although I suspect they might think nothing of that which I consider most serious: my lack of thankfulness to God. It’s a testament to the depths of human depravity that when there were so many absolutely awesome things about this job I still managed to grumble my way through my last few months.
2. Building something people want is way more interesting than exposing them to more advertising. Paul Graham is always going on about the fact that the best way to make wealth is to build something people want, but I’ve discovered through experience that it’s also the most satisfying kind of work I’ve ever done. I’ve only really just worked out why it was that working on Adzooks.co.uk was consistently the most interesting and enjoyable aspect of my job, and it’s this: when working on Adzooks, we were focussed on giving end users a more useful and more satisfying experience, often without any clear means of monetising it. The less satisfying projects were the exact reverse. There are some incredibly boring ways to make money out there, and also some awesome products with no strategy for making money whatsoever – but they’ll find a way some day. If I didn’t already, I certainly know now which of those I’d rather do for a living.
3. I work best when my productivity levels are easily seen (for better or for worse). This is really a corollary of number 1 – I’m a sinner, who is both lazy and proud, and my behaviour in the face of changing circumstances has revealed that ugly truth. The loss of a great manager who was always aware of what I was up to and gave frequent feedback; a growing team where the contributions of individuals is harder to spot; a form of Scrum where the perception is that as long as you deliver what you committed to at the start of a fortnight there’ll be no questions asked – all of these things slowly began to sever the connection between how hard I worked and my standing within the team. The standard set for me is to “obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord” (Colossians 3:22), and yet instead people-pleasing seems to so often be the driving motivation, with sincerity of heart barely getting a look in. It’s easy to work hard when people will praise you for it; it’s far, far harder to keep pressing on when the hope of the Lord Jesus’ commendation is the only motivation on offer. On judgement day I shall have no defence but to plead the blood of Jesus who died to defeat such sin – and praise God for such a hope! For one day, by his grace, this sinful nature of mine will be overcome, and I shall be free to serve him perfectly as I long to do. In the mean time, give me small teams! Give me feedback! Give me high visibility of my productivity.

Finally, do I have any parting words for my co-workers?

1. A huge “thank you” for everything. You’ve been great. It’s been marvellous fun. We’ve drunk a lot of tea.
2. Be the change you want to see in the codebase. Don’t just grumble about the state of legacy code, get on and refactor it. Live the dream! Make things just a little bit better every day, placing your mark on the world. Be a garlic programmer.
3. Never be content with mediocrity. You’re all smart, talented people. Yes, even you. Don’t settle for things the way they are – always be looking for ways to make things better. Read everything and anything you can get your hands on – you’ve got some great books on that shelf of yours! Question everything – why did that break? What could I have done differently to prevent it? What am I going to do differently to prevent it happening again? How will this change I’m about to make affect how hard this code is for other people to maintain?
4. Make plans for eternity. Jesus may seem like a humorous joke to you at the moment, but one day you will die, and on that day you will meet him as your judge. “Of this God has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:31) I know it seems unlikely, but if it’s true then it’s so profound that it changes everything – isn’t that worth spending a few hours of your life to at least look into it?

Farewell, Trinity Mirror!