[phenomenological questions with today’s first mug of coffee]

then sitting and waiting for it to finish. If it fails…

I could not help but think that sounds like the old days of batch processing and even somewhat recent compilers.

¿Maybe waiting is an ordinary part of programming?

¿And maybe LLM’s fill a vacuum created by desktop systems with abundant memory and fast bulk storage?

¿Could it be that waiting is a fundamental dimension in our relationship to machines and when we change the mechanism to remove one cause of wait, another wait often whack-a-moles itself up? [1]

——

Anyway, my empathy on your job frustration. My advice is programming, no matter how much you love it, is still a day job when programming is your day job. What matters most are the things your day job allows you to do, e.g. Friday night pizza for your children, vintage rollerblades, or a trip to Guam.

And if your mental health is suffering, there’s nothing wrong about talking to a clinical therapist. In fact there can be a lot right about it.

Or not. Good luck.

[1]: We might do something else while we wait for the laundry to finish the dryer cycle or microwave popcorn to pop. Often this can be just filling time and the completion interrupts us with buzzers and beeps.

[2]: The nature of machines is that we tend to eat more popcorn and have cleaner clothes ^and^ spend more time cooking popcorn and washing clothes because it is less bother. Particularly when it comes to our day jobs…the machines of the call center increase the number of calls the call center handles per employee.