Are You Worthless?
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?
Absolutely No Machete Juggling is a blog about software, programming, computers, and me. I'm a programmer working in Colorado, mostly with Java and Ruby. 
angel.white:
hmm, i think you shouldnt die rod, too many people lack the ability to logically reason their way through things, they get caught up in emotions or sidetracked by irrelevant issues
i think your skill would be to keep people going in the right direction, keep people’s priorities straight
(i only watched the 1st 8 episodes of lost before i hated it, but if you had been there, maybe you could have gotten sayid to kill sawyer, then maybe i would have been able to hang on for a few more episodes)
anyway, i’d run away from the crew and live on bananas in another part of the island, occasionally popping in to add a random and unexpected variable to any given situation
4 June 2006, 6:17 amRod:
Yeah, but it’s always the logical guy that eats it early.
Someone: “I think there is an alien on the ship!”
4 June 2006, 2:36 pmRod: “That’s not possible! There is no way an alien could have survived the reverse polarizing beam! Stop being irrational!” *CHOMPED BY ALIEN*
David!!:
C’mon if Galaxy Quest tought me anything, you’re going to be the plucky comic relief.
Lost Character 1: We’re almost out of food, guys.
4 June 2006, 7:53 pmLost Character 2: Another cast member just died.
Lost Character 1: Things are looking pretty grim.
Rod: Hey guys! Want to hear a hilarious parody of Over the Hedge, where I make fun of overly cute furry CGI characters?
Lost Characters 1-2: Fuck yeah!
Maki:
Lost is such a phoney piece of trash. Ahh that felt good. Now to the important things.
Rod you wouldn’t be that guy who dies first, coz its always some annoying guy who tells bad jokes or main female chars fioncee or husband, then he dies so main male char can have sex with her. Well, it’s pretty much useless to compare any of us to the guys in those movies, coz 99 pct of such movies or TV shows suck @$$, nothing is shown how it really is. Besides, ppl who spend their time with computer as much as you did, will certanly have a ton of valuable knowledge picked up from various websites, video games and movies that make sense. With this im not only defending you, but all ppl who are spending more time in front of pc then in a local bar. The way I see it, we’ll send all the cops, weight lifters and construction builders to fight bears, chop wood, build boat…while we hang out in the back with the chics ^^
5 June 2006, 9:26 amPersonally, in such situation, I see myself as a guy who sits on a cliff and smokes weed(ya, my occupation), then he spots wierd light plummeting down on a camp my compadres are. By the time I get there, only the hottest chic has survived…Or if the director is a weight lifting, computer geek hating bastard, wierd light will drop on my head with huge explosion and everyone else in the camp will celebrate the fireworks.
V.O.R:
My occupation is that of a slacker; am I worthless? hell yeah
but if I was trapped on an island I wouldn’t let them know that. I’d probably lie and say I was the president or something, and people always respect the president.
6 June 2006, 7:18 pmYou’ve seen Survivor, unless you can fish, your civilian job has no use on a deserted island.
The secret to gaining power is not to become useful, but to know how to apply a group of people who are.
Noe:
Rod, you wouldn’t be the first to die because you could be the comic relief.
8 June 2006, 2:54 amRod:
Alright that’s fair. But if someone in the group is funnier than me, I’m going to kill him in his sleep.
8 June 2006, 12:27 pmRogerborg:
I’m a software engineer as well (although I use men’s languages rather than Java), but I can also make longbows, *just in case* I ever get stranded in a poorly conceived TV survival show. So I guess you can die first, and I’ll get to hunt down your killer and avenge you.
14 June 2006, 5:19 pmRod:
Roger,
I’m sure you’re a real pleasure to work with. ;)
15 June 2006, 12:11 amDan:
Just think of how many majors would be completely worthless in that situation though. The majority of people major in a business field or one of the social sciences (i.e. psychology). The people that don’t go to college, well half are ‘good’ at making fast food, and the other half is mixed up with those cops and firefighters along with an assortment of secretaries. The chances of getting a diverse bunch of ‘leanred’ people seem pretty slim, though everybody has secondary talents that come useful - especially hunting/fishing.
Me…well I’m a materials engineer. Guess I’m decent with physics/statics/math…but the rest of my ‘talents’ won’t be terribly useful. ‘Cept I might save a lotta people time by saying their stupid ideas won’t work…
Hell, I’m not even that funny.
Spose I could offer myself as dinner though if food became tough to find.
28 June 2006, 11:03 pmMichael:
Actually, I’d like to make a comment when it comes to the survival rates of natural scientists like Chemists or Physicists.
I’m a postgraduate chemist, hoping to come out with a PhD in the next few months. If stranded on an island with a bunch of people I could help make sea water drinkable. So yeah, slightly useful.
The problem is that almost everyone I’ve met would assume a great many things because I did chemistry. These include but aren’t limited to:
1) Making batteries out of nothing but sea-water, a bit of plane and some coconuts (ok I might be able to do this, but only to power a really small torch)
2) Whipping drugs out of my ass because I obviously know the chemical components of everything that survived the crash, how to extract them and how to perform a complex synthesis using nothing but a bit of plane and some coconuts.
And many others that have been suggested but aren’t workable. I can help you drink. Useful but no guarantee of success. (In fact it makes me more likely to die because the loss of this skill, if I haven’t passed on the knowledge, adds drama). All the other stuff tends to lie in classes that most graduates have long forgotten.
Only the really luck groups get the super chemist that remembers entire textbooks :)
5 July 2006, 12:06 pmMatt:
Coders are worthless?
What if the island was overrun with genetically engineered dinosaurs, and the castaways need someone to navigate “2 million lines of source code” to turn the security system back on?
[url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/]“This is unix. I know this!”[/url]
28 July 2006, 3:23 pmChristopher Thomas:
Now I’m thinking about this when I should be working.
My suggestion for power would be to find something (anything) with a motor and kitbash a hand-crank for it. This gets you a mechanical generator.
My suggestion for “electronics” would be to the biggest motor you can crank, and a spool of wire, and make a spark-gap transmitter to send “SOS” out noisily enough that there’s at least a small chance someone could hear it. Good luck cranking one to work even out to visual range, however.
For sending an improvised “help!” message, though, you can’t really beat starting a fire. A bit simpler than the spark gap, too.
The number one method of calling for help from an airplane wreck, though, is “find the damned transponder and switch it on”. Aircraft are required by law to have at least one emergency beacon, and I think it might have been two for things like jetliners. They’re designed to function despite crashing into an ocean or a mountain. The airline would probably also have noticed when their craft vanished from the skies (no telemetry, no call-ins, no nothing).
But hey, I’m trying to apply reality to movie plots. I’m sure everyone already knows how silly that is.
29 July 2006, 5:19 pmCelina:
Hey Rod,
I’ve often thought about this ever since I read the Hitchhikers books. This subject is brought up, and I have come to the conclusion that programmers have no natural usefulness. I am condeming myself here 2! Still dont think we’re as usless as lawers though!!
2 August 2006, 11:46 amRod:
Celina,
Good one. Lawyers too, only exist within the context of a system that must exist already in order for them to be valuable.
Lawyers, however, require a legal system to exist before they can use their talents. Programmers require a computer system.
One is technological, the other cultural.
In the island scenario then, after 40 or 50 years or so, the castaways might develop a civilization with laws, and the lawyers can be used. They probably wouldn’t make a computer though ;)
2 August 2006, 12:52 pm