I recently re-screened that best of all Baseball movies, "Bull Durham", and was inspired by "Crash" Davis' famous monologue to write one of my own. So, with apologies to Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, and writer/director Shelton, here is What I Believe...
I believe in the Church of Code, that priesthood dedicated to the manifestation of perfection on earth in the form of great software. I believe in French roast coffee, light cream, and strawberry rhubarb pie. I believe in rebooting. I don’t believe in betting against Microsoft, although the end of the age of MS may be at hand. I don't believe in Other Peoples Money. I believe in tulips, bamboo and peonies.
I believe in hot hardware, fast processors, gigs of ram, and more pixels than there are stars in the sky. I believe in green programmers, and in glorious long thick wavy red hair. I believe that Web Services are the universal language of man; I believe in code complete. I believe in sell, bill, collect. I believe in the brotherhood of programmers, and our sweat and sacrament, the Code. I believe that the Code is transubstantiated into executable, and runs pristine for ever and ever, amen.
I believe that my code, and yours, and everybody's code has bugs. I believe in dry Beefeater martinis, up, with two drops of Pernod and too many olives. I believe in tailored suits, heels, and light perfume. I don’t believe in nepotism. I believe in comments, technical writers, and building every day. I believe in flipping deep down through the sea like a porpoise, and floating up, open armed, like an ascension into heaven.
I believe in small teams, open rooms and white boards. I believe in defined deliverables, due dates, and issues lists three pages long. I believe that dark chocolate is manna, and white chocolate is a sham, even with macadamia nuts. I believe in not reading your .ppt slides, in crediting the development team, and in crisp demos that leave them wanting more. I believe in Star schemas, and long, slow, value-adding ETLs that last for hours.