Coding and Relationships

It has always been said that coders are never good at relationships. The reasons given are that coders never see their profession as work but as hobby. They enjoy writing code – whether it’s commercial or open source, coders will definitely enjoy writing code. They will be on their laptops all day and all night.
Like sports fellows, they celebrate and jubilate when a certain given functionality that they have been working on works as expected and are stressed if it does not work out. They will spend their entire working hours coding and even do overtime - which to them is not overtime at all since most of them just love writing code.
They will normally have a real meal twice or once a week. Most times coders don’t want to leave their work stations so they settle for tea, water , biscuits, bread and lots of junk food like crisps and chapatti. Real meals are the last things in their plans. They code all day and do long hours of coding in the night till the wee hours of the morning when they get some little sleep.
They socialize by chatting as they code. They read and write blogs as am doing now and answer all questions posted in forums. They are normally in T-shirts and jeans – have no time to iron and stuff like cuff links make no sense to them.
Their lives are centered on coding, chatting, blogging and posting on forums. They have many friends whom they have never met but whom they communicate with on a daily basis via forums, blogs and chat.
So how do such coders manage relationships?? This is the question that I am trying to answer. We all know that girls and women in general love to be given time – that’s how they judge that one really loves them. Yet these coders have no free time – they just cannot afford to lose their minutes listening to women talk – you know that kind of talk, about weddings, fashion, TV soaps and all that crap. And when the coder opens his blackberry and starts chatting with fellow geeks, the girls get offended and complain that he does not love them – only if they knew that he has sacrificed a lot by listening to them that far.
Women should understand the kind of life coders live and never try to change it. All they need is to decide to love the package. I believe love changes all and coders are no exception. Though they may not give the women all their time as most other men do, they will show that they love their women. And this is where women fail to understand. If only women understood that coders just love writing code. That they write code as a hobby, that they are driven by passion to write the code; That they cannot compete with the passion that coders have for their code, maybe we would have many coders In great relationships – for truth is that many coders are poor at relationships (including myself).
All in all, coders need to balance between coding and their love relationships – and it’s a matter of choice. Nothing else. Both the coder and the other party need to make the choice. It’s not a singe person’s decision.
Till next time.

Innocent Kazooba