You’ve done it… you finished your degree and landed your first big time job. You’re paired with a senior who’s sole purpose is to bring you up to speed with your duties. Of course, the first things you are likely to be introduced to are the awesome tech tools you will be using to make completing your daily tasks a breeze.

Your senior begins to share their knowledge — Oh This? This is an access database we use to query our backlog of samples…

You’re enamoured. What on this big green earth is an access database? You wonder to yourself. How is it creating such a beautiful — Your thoughts are interrupted by them sharing the next tool.

These right here? These are our excel macros, one push of a button and your instrument data is instantly transferred into the database.

Your brain literally explodes. YOU CAN PLACE BUTTONS IN EXCEL SPREADSHEETS?

Most people might be content with simply pressing the button, completing their task and getting on with their day, but not you. You need to know how it works. So you start furiously googling, “How to place a button in excel spreadsheet”. A humble beginning but a beginning none the less. You are determined and after what seems like a mountain of effort you perhaps create something of value and share it with your team. They are impressed. You are proud of your achievment.

However, that feeling fades quickly. You realize it wasn’t the feeling of sharing the tool that made it all worth it, it was the process of creating the tool. You want to go deeper into the wild wild world of Microsoft VBA Programming. You’re in deep. You’re scouring the web trying to find some kind of resource to guide you through some obscure task you’re trying to automate and you stumble across it.

It’s a reddit comment, “You should consider a real pogramming language like python.”

What’s a python? you think to yourself. You don’t realize it yet but from this point on you have just been set on a path. A path that you now seven years later are still continuing on. A path that led you to much more than python. A path that never ends and only leads through. A path that leads through writing a blog post in markdown on your second hand ThinkPad running linux and hyprland. How did you get here?

How did I get here? I think it was a combination of software and resources being more accessible than ever along with a natural interest. At one point I found myself really enjoying it and just never stopped enjoying it. To summarize, I’m just doing it for the love of it. Thats it.

After writing all this I find I ask myself, “Why?” What was the reason for sharing all this? There was no reason.

Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything at all.

– Richard Feynman