Programming for fun and profit

I am a computer programmer. I program for a living and my degree is in Computer Science. One day I was sitting around reflecting on jobs and I thought, how often do most people use their job in their everyday life.

I have a friend who is an electrician. Whenever he has problems with the electrical stuff in his house he can bust out his tools (which he has an impressive array of) and get to work.

I know plenty of people who are handy around the house. When they need a tool to perform a job they can go make it using their assortment of other tool-making tools. Working on construction has given them a strong bent towards the practical.

So, I applied this to myself. What am I good at doing and how can I take advantage of that in my own life.

Computer programs, at their best, help us make life easier.

I write code to help people fill out paperwork so they can get money faster. Fill in all the fields in the process of normal work and I'll use it to populate your paperwork so you don't have to pay someone else to do it. It removes simple, repetitive, tedious work.

How often do I have things in my life that are tedious, simple, and repetitive?

There are a lot of different ways to look at that. I can write something to automate a lot of stuff. My biggest problem is forgetting things, so some kind of automated reminder system would help. That's just one example.

For now I'm going to concentrate on simple tools. The first project (it's very small) is to make a tool that does word counting.

Let me be clear - this is a solved problem.

I'm not breaking new ground. I'm not innovating. I'm not shooting for the moon.

What I am doing is building a code base and a tool set, so that later in life when I need something more complicated I have a nice set to pull already functioning tools from.

It also has an immediate use, in helping me to keep up with whether or not I'm meeting my weekly goals of blogging 1000 words.

So, if you have a profession let me encourage you to ask yourself how you can use it in your everyday life. It is something you're already good at. Use it for yourself, not just your employer.