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	The Joy of Simple
	March 28th, 2020
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	I think the difficult part of staying a software developer is that
	things change just as they get comfortable. When I first tried
	programming as a profession, C was my weapon of choice. I could
	keep the C language pretty much in my head along with a few
	common library calls like read, write, close, and so on.

	Then along came C++ and I had to have a book with me to reference
	standard library calls. The STL meant I had to use an IDE or at
	least carry a decent sized reference around. How do I set an
	IOStream to output base-16 instead of decimal numbers? Even so,
	some parts of the STL stick in your head so I could keep most
	of the language and most of the more useful parts of STL in
	my head (mostly). The compiler would tell me if I got it wrong.

	Then came Java. Without an IDE, Stack Overflow, and lots of
	online Java and JEE/Spring documentation, you are largely lost.
	There's probably something that does what you want to do with
	a few lines of configuration but you have 1) find it, 2)
	figure out what the configuration settings might be, and 3) dig
	through Stack Overflow if your use case isn't that common or
	4) dig through the source code to figure it out.

	Now there isn't just a Java program. Now, the configuration
	and infrastructure are configured at the same time. You
	specify how to deploy your code and how it interacts with other
	containers. Just a few more things to think about....

	Frankly, it stresses me out. I need to kick back with something
	that brings me joy for my effort. I need to get back to plain
	old C and the good old Unix APIs. People have done incredible
	things with those tools. Armed with little more than C and
	emacs, most of the web infrastructure was built. The cloud is
	built on higher level languages like Go, Java or C#, but the
	bones are in C.

	Not everything is perfect. If I had to write a web-based
	order management system, C would not be my first choice. It
	would take me much more code to accomplish what I can do in
	a few lines of Node. But on my own time, and focused on my
	own projects, it's my mental Xanax.

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