Blast from the Past

For the first 23 years of my career I was a software developer which meant that I wrote code (mostly C and C++) and all of the things that go with this (write design documents, code, test, debug, fix bugs,..). The past couple years my job has changed and I now work in customer support which means that I help troubleshoot problems in our customer's network and help fix the problems that do not require software changes. Those that do require software changes go to our development groups where the fixes are generated and then delivered back to our customers.

With the change in job responsibilities I don't get close to the code very often but for different reasons I had a chance yesterday and today to look at some code while trying to understand some tests that had failed in our customer lab. The fun thing was that while doing this I found the problem (aka bug) and was able to tell our development group exactly what needed to be fixed. (Today a test of the patch confirmed that the fix was correct.) This was very enjoyable and brought back lots of memories of doing this type of work on a daily basis. I am very thankful for my present job but it is so much more fulfilling to be the person who solves the problems. Finding (and fixing) a software bug is often like solving a puzzle which is something else that I really like to do.