I love software development. In terms of career moves, I pretty much hit the jackpot, because I love everything about my job, and the more I learn about it, the more I like it. I think, in this regard, I’m extremely lucky, because most people don’t find something they are so passionate about.

At the same time, however, I realize the inherent worthlessness of software development. What I mean is, being a good programmer is only useful with regard to something else, and not on its own.

To illustrate this, I often like to think about which guy I would be in the movie where a group of multiculturally diverse young people gets stranded somewhere. Like when the cruise ship gets turned upside-down and everyone has to fight their way to the top. Or when everyone gets stranded on an island and they must pull together to survive.

In these scenarios, there are careers that are inherently useful, and those professions are generally the ones that the characters have. Very few characters who get stranded somewhere in these movies are in advertising, for example.

So you will probably survive a lot of a movie if you’re a doctor (that’s number 1), a firefighter or cop (though you’ll probably have to sacrifice yourself), or any kind of natural scientist such as a chemist or physicist. Those skills all come in handy – you’ll help the team survive if you have one of these skills. Every something only semi-related can be useful (“Oh yeah, I sell sporting equipment, so I know all about hunting”).

Then there are the advertisers, the lawyers, and other professions that are not naturally useful, but depend instead on civilization already existing. An electronic engineer can still be handy in most scenarios, but a building engineer not so much (except that he knows physics quite well).

A programmer, obviously, falls into the latter category. If I were stranded on an island, I’d be utterly worthless. For me to use my talents, I need a computer and I need for it to be loaded up with things like an operating system. I need to be able to type code in and have it run, so if I have a blank hard disk there’s not a helluva lot I can do. There are a lot of conditions that must be met before I can use my skills to help the group.

That’s why I like Lost. They’re stranded on an island, but there’s actually a computer there. I know for a fact that I could have written a script to automate entering the numbers every 108 minutes. Pretty sure I could have probably figured out how to get root access to the box, too. Within two weeks of the crash, I’d be e-mailing Oceanic Air’s customer service folks and telling them I’m stuck on some damn island.

In any case, what I’ve decided is this: in the scenario where I’m a member of a diverse team of folks that must pull together to survive, I’m the guy that gets killed right away to let the rest of the team know how dire their situation is. I’m the guy that is used to establish, for the viewing audience, how high the stakes are, since I get mauled by a bear/killed by a robot/zapped by the aliens/whatever within the first 20 minutes of being stranded.

What do you do for a living? Are you worthless?