Artist undercover

I spent days. Typing, writing, thinking. Drawing diagrams on a piece of paper. I wake up in the morning with new solutions. When brushing my teeth. Lie to my fiancée about what’s on my mind, because I am too tired to explain. I create entire worlds with deliberate strokes on my keyboard and hide them away under the covers of my compiler.

Sometimes I wonder about the construction workers in my neighbourhood. Spending all day outside with the noise of their drills and excavators. Nobody seems to know what they are exactly doing, until suddenly, the pile of sand is gone and there is a paved way to our front door.

All I hear during the day is the soft zooming of the air conditioning. People talking feverishly in front of a whiteboard. Drawing a picture of the world they want to conceive. Drinking coffee, brushing their teeth and lying to their spouse. Now and again we hit compile and the only evidence of our world is a symphony of fast moving switches on a circuit board. Hidden away somewhere in a discrete grayish building. Brought to life with buttons and icons. One to take a picture of a newly paved road. Another to send it to every living soul on the planet.

Underneath those buttons and icons exists the world we live in. Hidden art. Envisioned in diagrams and models, forged out of abstractions and patterns. To fully appreciate our work, you need to feel what we tell the compiler. The flow of the statements, falling from one line to the other. Scores for an indifferent instrument, performed without bias or sentiment.

Sometimes I get wistful about the work we do. When users prize our software, it’s usually because it looks pretty or works without getting in the way. But the beauty underneath is almost never seen or understood. Who can blame them? For all I know those construction workers need to carve in the Mona Lisa before dumping the final layer of asphalt. Do they feel like undercover artists as well?

We’d like to think we can make everyone’s life easier: No need to leave the couch to see the neighbours’ new driveway. Every now and then, our creations are no more useful than a painting on the wall. Feeling like a true artist at last.