Fighting against Entropy
Ugh. Some days you just fight against entropy, hoping to keep your head above water. Some days it wins.
Security patches for dependencies. Unexpected input from usually reliable data sources. Intermittent network errors. Unhandled edge cases. TravisCI not picking up builds all of a sudden.
There are times when you get stuck in a spin cycle, desperately parrying back an incoming onslaught of random errors and issues, making no progress on product building. When a project grows large (read: complex) enough, the rate of entropy reaches some level where entire teams are needed to maintain order and prevent the project from moving backward.
After a long enough day of stemming the tide there’s a sense that your job has reduced to one of a middle reliever in a blow-out game: eat innings and don’t waste your good arms on a throwaway game. What I mean is that when there days where entropy reigns, I’m never productive even if I manage to steal a few hours. My creative juices have dried up, and my desire to do well just isn’t there. The only thing I can do is call the day a wash and pick it back up the next.
