Passionate vs. Career Developers

A few years ago when I had this blog powered by Wordpress, I wrote an entry on passionate vs. career developers. Since I lost my old post I’m going to rewrite it now in 2012 that I’m a little older and wiser.

So first off, why drive this comparison? In my mind there are two different kinds of developers in the world or at least in the work place: passionate, and career. They are two opposing forces, typically at odds with one another and cause potential ripples through the ecosystem. Let’s start with what I define as a career developer.

A career developer is someone who chose the career path of being a developer. They chose it because it paid well. Or because it’s the popular thing to do a few years ago. Or because someone they knew switched careers. It basically means they learned most of what they know through text books. Books are great, don’t get me wrong but within this industry it’s all about the desire to want to always learn and be hands on.

Passionate. Those guys are up until 3AM tinkering with a linux distro. Or installing the latest version of MongoDB on an AWS instance. Or hacking at NodeJS scripts for fun. They do it because they love to do it. Not because it’s a wise career choice. Development of software in general, is such a different industry that it thrives off of the passionate folks in the world. The Mark Zuckerberg’s if you will. To be a truely great developer you have to have that passion and that sparkle. You need to want to wake up every day exciting about what you’re going to build that day and what problems you are going to solve.

I’ve always considered myself passionate, hence the purpose of this post. But instead of thinking negatively about the people who are more on the career side, I prefer to mentor and evolve their interest in development into a real passion. That’s what it’s all about. Why do we love to write code if we don’t want to spread that love among others? You’d be lying to yourself if you didn’t feel that way.

I want everyone to be passionate about technology. To look at it more than a career. To look at it a a challenge in life. Facing and overcoming challenges is part of our DNA as humans.