Crunch time on work

oh my god, this has been a reaaaaalllllllllyyyeee loonnnnnnnnggggggg day. And that too, without too much of a progress in the work schedule. This doesnot in any way mean that I was just sitting idle doing nothing all day long. Never!! I had enuf of squeezing my lovely little brain just to fix one issue.

basically, I am a game developer for mobile phones using j2me. Gaming!!! that sounds fun right? but i ll tell you that may ALWAYS sound fun only when u r sitting in front of a game terminal. But if you are the person doing all the decision making stuff and painting stuff(if not doing, atleast programming ::), yes, thats what i do) from inside that terminal, I ll bet you might not always have good times. Game development is equally fun and exciting as it is for game players. But the things is, those people dont cooperate with each other well. While developing a certain game, We initially start off targetting certain handsets. And that fortunately or unfortunately is the best of the lot that is available in the market. with full features and the best platform available, you will not find it difficult to write a game for those phones. But later, when the game is successfuly developed for the target handsets(initial targets), there comes the real crunch. There are hell a lot of cell phones available in the world and not all of them are a boon for developers. some are really a curse for developers. They will just claim that they support this and that... but to the real extent they do support, but only to a minimal extent. like, the features are minimised and the resources are far too low, giving a programmer not much room to free his arms and legs,..... actually free his program...

but, due to the low cost and easy availability they would have penetrated the market very well. and we poor developers are asked to support those phones too. And you know what. it takes more time to port these games to certain handsets than it takes to design and develop a new one for a better handset.

huh, see how much pain i am having in my heart.. i can just go on like this spittin out everything in my mind. but, to hit the button, today, i was put into one such task. ahmmm not really today, but for the past week, and today has been the real crunch. The port was scheduled to be delivered yesterday and since there was an issue (which i very innocently thot would be a simple fix) and we had to take it up today even. I started off with huge confidence to get the work done by early afternoon. but as time passed by, I was trying many many many many many many many, sooo many fixes and workaround. but nothing was fruitful. The problem really is the same piece of code works fine on some devices and on some other devices it spells curse for me. The culprit of my day today is the Nokia 3650 phone. And the better phones( claimed better only for this reason) are nokia 6800 and nokia 7210.

Actually, the Nokia 7210 is another curse for developer with a very miniscule heap memory. that too, when porting ur game from a hefty phone will give u very less chances to be happy all day. But with all my days of experience I managed to track this issue down with quite a bit of ease. But the 3650 hit me right on my stomach in an unexpected time and u know, it really hurts. At the end of day, after trying several times ( I guess, King. Ghazni even would have given it up far earlier today), I had escalated this issue to my boss. She will have a look at it and get back to me pointing some really silly mistakes or with a valuable lesson to learn. Will wait till tomorrow for knowing which one, it would be.

But the real point i wanna say is, I just feel like all the hardwork i had put in today has gone useless, since i was not able to fix this silly(not so really, will have to wait to decide on this) issue. This has given me nothing less than a sheer mental torture. hmm, thats the way every developer out there is living their life. I have heard many sad stories about the EA sports employees. I, atleast get some time to go home (but only for sleeping). Those ppl are working like hell so that they don't even know abt their world when they have their work pressure.

Every work has a certain period where the worker will feel the pressure. But the job a software developer is very different. Think of any other employee. Comes in at 10 in the morning. looks at his files till 5 - 6. completes all his work. goes home happily to spend with kith and kin. But a s/w engr. comes in by 9 - 10 starts his work (may be the one that he left yesterday) , goes on and on and on and on and on and on... then by midnight or early next day morning, realises that he needs to get some sleep, goes home with the pondering about the pending work. slips thru the bed for some time but still pondering over it again n again.. Where is his time to be spent with family n frenzzzz. Come on God!!! you are really clever in creating this job... Is this a boon or a curse?

with heavy eyes
Joe