Pragmatism Memes

The idealism vs reality gap strikes again. Senior dev up there talking about "building apps, teamwork, and discovering new things" while the rest of us are just thinking "will this job pay my AWS bill?" Ten years in and I've learned there are two types of developers: those who genuinely believe in the craft and those who realized a CS degree was their ticket to affording groceries without checking prices. The duality of our industry in one perfect frame.

When your startup's on fire, who's your real MVP? The junior dev frantically patching leaks while the "senior" pontificates about architecture patterns! The brutal reality check here is just *chef's kiss*. The junior's out there saving runway, stopping user bleed, and proving their worth with every PR. Meanwhile, the "senior" is rebuilding auth systems nobody asked for and blocking launches because the code isn't pretty enough. That final line is pure gold: "You don't need more code. You need oxygen." Translation: stop obsessing over technical perfection when your business is literally suffocating. Startup survival requires pragmatism, not purity. Ship now, refactor later (if you survive)!

Oh. My. GOD. The eternal developer personality disorder on full display! One minute you're slapping together code like a toddler with Play-Doh—"it works, ship it!"—and the next you're possessed by some optimization demon, spending 17 hours shaving microseconds off a function nobody will ever notice. The duality is SENDING ME. One day you're writing spaghetti code that would make your CS professor weep, and the next you're crafting a masterpiece that could run on a calculator from 1997. There is NO in-between. We're either lazy geniuses or obsessive maniacs, and I'm exhausted just thinking about which one I'll be tomorrow morning.