Gloom And Despair

Eight years ago, I was writing code like

public class PaymentProcessor {...}

A year and a half ago, I was writing code like

public class PaymentProcessor {....} (oh yeah, this time there was a class PaymentProcessorTest backing this up)

I was gloomily reflecting on those wasted years when I came across this snippet (from news.com)

"... Stanford University's Racing Team has accomplished a historic feat of robotics, finishing first in the DARPA Grand Challenge, a 131.6-mile driverless car race that no artificially intelligent machine has ever conquered before. ... Onlookers were wide-eyed watching the vehicles work their way through the extremely tricky course even though much of the race they could see only by wide-screen TVs in the spectator tent or by a real-time mapping tent.

For example, people in the spectator tent watched on with awe when Stanley drove over and down Beer Bottle Pass, which has 1,000-foot drops and hairpin turns. The packed crowd cheered when the car made it around the first switchback and then began chanting "Stanley, Stanley" as it drove down. .... "

Now that is real programming. While Providence was kind enough to set me back on track, I still can't get over how many years I wasted on "enterprise" code, essentially writing the same web->db->web routines over and over and over.

I am depressed.