why I'm not a developer

(Leia o post original aqui:[why I'm not a developer])

this may be an incomplete statement, so bear with me on this one.

as it can be seen in the frontpage for the rt2x00 wireless driver project, our driver has been added to the kernel back in January 2008, with the 2.6.24 release.

I've been part of the project since 2004, contributing with typo fixes, minor code corrections and mostly with administrativia.

don't get me wrong, I can code in several languages, Pascal being the one where I'm most proficient and VBScript / asp classic, by force of my day job.

C is kinda scary most of the time, specially when you must mess with the crappy Windows API's.

I can edit, copy & paste code, fixing stuff here and there, but I'm unable so far to create a large C project from scratch.

that being said, you must now be getting where the post title affirmation came from... moving on...

in the last 8 months or so, I've been doing mostly code, implementing some of the strangest solutions to problems that I could come up with. I even wrote a whole client-server API to help me cope with project needs.

but now I see that my idea of the need for an API wasn't so bad after all. it did help me a lot on understanding that using some degree of standardization with my transactions, it could be well extended to fit even other needs.

more, it was so well 'designed' that it now has it's own versioning scheme as well as provisions were made for preventing obsolete versions to continue work.

but enough of this, this is classified stuff and I already talked way too much about it.

this project has been fun to do for a variety of reasons: first, it was my design from scratch second, it was made for work, so others could benefit from it third, the end result (facilitate use) justifies the time spent fourth, it was made on company time, for the company's exclusive use

but alas, my heart is all about open source.

unfortunately, there are very little job opportunities for IT admins/developers, working with open source solutions here in Portugal. and the job market currently sucks, so actually it's not at all the time to go and be stupid.

so, for me at this point open source won't put money in my pockets for the next few years which is a big bummer.

all of my personal and private projects so far are incomplete, and that is valid even for stuff that doesn't include software.

it's all of the hardware, bicycle improvements, house repairs, tons of other stuff.

let's just say that for some crap, I've got the attention span of a 5 year old, and I'm almost 40 years after that :)

so, having read this, can you say I'm a developer?

EDIT

the whole point of this post was that, although I did write some software related things (which qualifies me as a developer), I rarely finish stuff.

therefore I'm half way through being a true developer, one that actually finishes stuff, thus getting the whole job done.

(Leia o post original aqui:[why I'm not a developer])