Have you noticed how too many hours spent writing code affects your vocabulary or thoughts? TITANS brings you a list of experiences that only people from the IT community will understand.
If your job fulfils you and you know how to use your superpowers from the IT world in everyday life, that’s great, but sometimes you need to think about whether you’re accidentally overdoing it with coding. At TITANS, we have compiled six categories of signs to help you determine whether you are suffering from déformation professionelle. Please note that this article is not meant to be critical, but rather to share the weird experiences that happen to all of us from time to time.
1. Your loved ones have to Google the meaning of your words
You use technical metaphors such as “I need to refactor my sleep schedule.”
You say “it worked on my computer” even outside of work.
You refer to other people as “users.”
You label items on your shopping list as “item_1“, “item_2”, or you might call your dog “dogObject.”
You don’t end sentences with periods, but with semicolons.
When you try something for the first time in everyday life and fail, you call it version 1.0.
You measure everything in milliseconds.
You start counting from 0, not 1.
The only hashtags you use are #include and #define.
2. 404: Social Life Not Found
You accidentally call a meeting with friends a “standup meeting.”
You check your Wi-Fi connection even during a romantic dinner.
Not everyone appreciates that you explain even simple tasks, such as preparing food, using algorithms.
You have more tabs open in your editor than in your browser.
You’ve had a serious argument with a rubber duck. Explaining code to an inanimate object is a legitimate debugging technique, but if you start expecting the duck to answer you, it starts to get unsettling.
On your way home, you say to yourself: “There’s no place like 127.0.0.1.”
Your keyboard makes more noise than your social life.
The Product Manager asks you how you are more than once a day.
You name variables after your favourite snacks or pets because all the good names are already taken.
3. You have more fauna in your lines of code than in a zoo
You stare at the bug for so long that you start to suspect that you are the bug.
In a 40-line code file, you see a compilation error on line 123.
You have a love-hate relationship with stack traces.
You’ve spent more time searching for error messages on Google than actually coding.
At some point, you stop seeing error messages as neutral feedback and start perceiving them as personal attacks. You could swear that the compiler has it in for you.
When your code finally compiles without errors, you’re so happy that you don’t even care if it actually works—that’s tomorrow’s problem.
You try to swat away the fly that landed on your screen with your cursor.
After reading the book Clean Code, you want to rewrite all the code around you.
You accidentally delete a database table because you entered DELETE without WHERE.
You go to bed thinking about the bug, and instead of peaceful dreams, you find yourself in a debugging session. But just as you’re about to solve it, your alarm clock rings.
You prefer dark mode because light attracts bugs.
4. The only detox you know is git clean.
You don’t know what day it is, but you know exactly how long your project build takes.
Sunlight feels like a new framework to you.
You have more commits than hours of sleep.
You cook ramen for lunch because it has the shortest compilation time.
You’ve optimised your daily routine to such an extent that you no longer need to drink coffee because you receive it through the IV drip. Your mantra is: “No coffee, no code.”
Your back hurts in every position except when you’re sitting at your desk, hunched over with your hands on the keyboard.
You open your laptop “just to check something”, and suddenly it’s 3 a.m.
You mentally count how many lines of code you’ve written today instead of counting the hours you’ve worked.
In your free time, you switch to your preferred language and technology to relax with some casual development.
5. You are glad that no one can read your mind
You evaluate the UX of everything, even your microwave.
In the morning, you recite your to-do list in front of the mirror as if you were at a sprint planning meeting.
You use the CTRL+S keyboard shortcut (to save code) even when writing a comment or status update on social media.
You measure time in “deployments,” not hours.
Your thought process sounds like a computer program: “If hungry, then eat; else, continue programming.”
You create templates for common situations, such as how to write an email or how to resolve conflicts, to make your responses more efficient.
If you embarrass yourself while telling a story, your first thought is git commit –amend.
You laugh at jokes about binary numbers, such as: “There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary numbers and those who don’t.”
Have you ever tried “Ctrl+Z” on a spilled drink or “Ctrl+F” to find your keys? If only keyboard shortcuts existed in real life.
6. You don’t trust code that works on the first try
When you encounter an unusual bug, you can fix it without AI or online searches because it gave you a severe migraine several years ago.
You’ve forgotten what “clean code” looks like because your motto has become “just make it work.”
Your commit messages are either “fix stuff” or epic novels.
You deploy a hotfix to production at 5:55 p.m. and leave work at 6:00 p.m.
Your commit messages have changed from descriptive to existential: “It works now, don’t ask how.”
Your password is 32 characters long and contains ASCII art.
When you open Excel, you feel like Neo decrypting the Matrix. Just a reminder that Excel is supposed to be about numbers, not existential crises about the nature of reality.
You know regex better than your social security number.
Besides the situations above, many IT specialists share another universal experience: a job interview with a recruiter who has no clue about your field. If you are tired of looking for meaningful projects and trying in vain to Ctrl+F your motivation, it’s about time you joined the freelancers at TITANS. Backed by a respected international brand, you will gain access to top-notch tailor-made projects, expert accounting advice, timely financial compensation, and reliable support, among other things.
