There and Back and There Again

So arrives the rentrée. I write to you from the appartment on the hill, thinking about dinner, which will probably be lentils and frozen spinach, if not pasta. The bells are tolling, and I am sweating, a bit. It is good to be back. I missed the public transit, the bread, the office discussions, and chess friendlies. I also missed the work — so much to be done. A whole application, inching towards Product Market Fit. In sum, after four months, I conclude that developing applications is deeply satisfying. The workflow, especially. In the spirit of recent TikTok trends, here is the day-in-the-life of an assuredly lucky application developer in Lyon:

7:30 AM

Breakfast of spelte and some variety of frozen berry. Of note: berries are more expensive in France. Supply issue, I suspect: Secondly of note: spelte is, so far, the best replacement for steel-cut oats I have been able to find in France. Many have been asking, what food do you miss the most? Read my lips, steel 👏 cut 👏 oats-s.

9:00AM

Descend Fourvière hill by cable car to the metro station; descend long escalator; descend steps to tunnel quai. Stand in awe as the great steel accomplishment trundles down the tracks, certain in its duty, punctual, and not afraid to hew-in-twane those who defy its beep-cries and closing doors. I then stand on the train, looking everywhere but in someone’s eyes, hopefully.

10:30AM

Arrival at the office. Greet my illustrious colleagues. Plug in computer to monitor. Plug in brain to the task board, that regular drum-beat of the modern developer, filled with tasks such as:

• replace this old dropdown menu with this new design (2/10).
• fix this member management panel, which curiously does not always remove members when you click the remove button, and is generally chaotic and hostile (5/10).
• implement this new design for an info panel (4/10)

I plink away at tasks such as these throughout the morning. Occasionally, a message from my fellow developers will arrive, requesting code review on a new code change. Each change to the Arcane Vat of Code, the application, goes through this peer review step. I love it. A healthy code review might entail a lively discussion, some knowledge sharing, remarks on trade-offs, or perhaps just a green check mark, if the change is simple.

12:00PM

Lunch involves either some tupperware-encased concoction from yesterday, or foodstuff from a local eatery. Sandwiches are a mainstay. Especially the chèvre-miel, a slice of goat cheese, honey, and some greens on a baguette. Goat cheese is inexpensive in France. Supply issue in the States, I can only imagine.

Lunch lasts some time, typically until ~1:30. Conversation or a chess match usually fills the time after munching but before working. It is tranquil. Occasionally, if my seat at the table falls within the radius of tarot (five people seated around the tarot deck), I usually find myself playing a hand of tarot. However, my participation is rare enough, and the game of French tarot is so arcane, that I tend to understand about 60% of the rules when I play.

This makes for a chaotic game, as the other players cannot rely on a rational adversary, or an ally, since the game can be collaborative, but I have only a faint idea how. I’ve decided to study the game a bit on my own. In short, French tarot relys on small probabilistic decisions. Do I summon the king of clubs to be my ally, hoping they can complement my club-heavy hand and help control the game? How do I ensure I win my high-value face cards, instead of losing them to a low-value trump to an adversary out of the suit?

Tarot, probabilistic and unknowable, requires decisions with the highest likelihood of earning points. Chess, fully knowable and explorable yet with innumerable, tangled branches, requires brave forays into the murk, grabbing at a bit of promise, returning to the surface and playing the move. Real life seems more like the card game, to me. However, even though the chess player’s theoretical knowledge of the game is always perfect, the choices are so complex that it renders the knowable mysterious, and probabilistic. Will I lose the game if I castle long, taking more risk but potentially gaining a stronger attack? Etcetera, etcetera…

3:00 PM

Break for conversation, maybe a game of tarot or chess.

5:30 PM

I head home, returning over the metro to my appartment on a hill, perhaps stopping by the grocery store. I catch up on various Youtube interests, tech news, global news, TTRPG news, the like. I have just subscribed to le Progrès, the big Lyon newspaper, and I look forward to studying Lyon news. Physical newspapers are a great blessing. No distractions from the internet, a curated flow, lots of articles I wouldn’t normally jump to from a web interface.

Update. I have since received Le Progrès. It’s a voluminous paper. Lots of soccer and rugby. More updates to come as I become familiar with the coverage. So far, seems like a newspaper of record, regional events and trends.

So concludes my epic review. Life is good. Until next time!