TITLE: "I Love The Stuff You Never See"
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: December 19, 2011  4:49 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
I occasionally read and hear people give advice about
how to find a career, vocation, or avocation that
someone will enjoy and succeed in.  There is a lot of
talk about passion, which is understandable.  Surely,
we will enjoy things we are passionate about, and
perhaps then we want to put in the hours required to
succeed.  Still, "finding your passion" seems a little
abstract, especially for someone who is struggling to
find one.

This weekend, I read
<A HREF="http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/news/2008/nov/20/man-ball-hoop-bench-and-alleged-thread-teller/">
   A Man, A Ball, A Hoop, A Bench (and an Alleged Thread)...
   Teller!</A>.
It's a story about the magician Teller, one half
of the wonderful team
<A HREF="http://www.pennandteller.com/">
   Penn &amp; Teller</A>,
and his years-long pursuit of a particular illusion.
While discussing his work habits, Teller said something
deceptively simple:

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
I love the stuff you never see.
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

I knew immediately just what he meant.

I can say this about teaching.  I love the hours spent
creating examples, writing sample code, improving it,
writing and rewriting lecture notes, and creating and
solving homework assignments.  When a course doesn't go
as I had planned, I like figuring out why and trying to
fix it.  Students see the finished product, not the hours
spent creating it.  I enjoy both.

I don't necessarily enjoy all of the behind-the-scenes
work.  I don't really enjoy grading.  But my enjoyment of
the preparation and my enjoyment of the class itself --
the teaching equivalent of "the performance" -- carries
me through.

I can also say the same thing about programming.  I love
to fiddle with source code, organizing and rewriting it
until it's all just so.  I love to factor out repetition
and discover abstractions.  I enjoy tweaking interfaces,
both the interfaces inside my code and the interfaces my
code's users see.  I love that sudden moment of pleasure
when a program runs for the first time.  Users see the
finished product, not the hours spent creating it.  I
enjoy both.

Again, I don't necessarily enjoy everything that I have
to do the behind the scenes.  I don't enjoy twiddling
with configuration files, especially at the interface to
the OS.  Unlike many of my friends, I don't always enjoy
installing and uninstalling, all the libraries I need to
make everything work in the current version of the OS and
interpreter.  But that time seems small compared the time
I spend living inside the code, and that carries me through.

In many ways, I think that Teller's simple declaration is
a much better predictor of what you will enjoy in a career
or avocation than other, fancier advice you'll receive.
If you love the stuff other folks never see, you are
probably doing the right thing for you.
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