The ‘developer’.

Alex, wasn’t always a coding fanatic. At the beginning, he was studying law, contemplating life and what direction to take. I saw he was always trying to learn something with IT and had a few side projects running along side his degree.

After university, law went out the window and Alex got a job in I.T. He is now a self taught programmer, a web developer, dev and/or coder. None the less, the term computer programmer simply means a person who writes code for computer software.

Alex and I met whilst we were both in our last year at university and moved in together together after graduation.

I have seen a lot of articles on ‘why dating a web developer is good?’ or ‘Great qualities web developers have as boyfriends’. Funnily enough these are all written by the coders themselves. There are positives to these scripting maniacs but here is what its like on the other side, as a developers girlfriend and things I have learnt along the way.

Lessons learnt

Dev’s are wickedly smart, I have learnt this the hard way – I can’t keep up. What runs through his mind amazes me. I have found sitting, nodding and adding the occasional buzz word into a conversation works wonders.

I have gone through several emotions towards Alex but actually the more I think about it the more I realise these emotions have been towards the laptop. I have wanted to throw it out the window and been hugely jealous of the love Alex has for the machine.

None-the-less I moved to happiness, watching the laptop bring joy to him when something has been ‘debugged’ or ‘deployed’. I can’t deny there have been moments when I feel completely ignored and the lid of that laptop has been slammed down by my anger. So, learning that I’m not the only chick in this relationship has helped me – the laptop is the first love.

Once you are dating a dev you are dating the laptop…or sharing him with it – I haven’t yet decided.

I learnt that if you aren’t a busy person or have anything to do – you can’t date a programmer.

When we moved in together I suddenly found myself with a lot of free time. I look at that positively now, as without Alex being so busy I wouldn’t have done new things for myself – including starting my own business!

However, if you think you’ll have 100% of a dev’s attention, you are dreaming. He would spend hours on his laptop debugging code – so I wouldn’t bother asking if my outfit is fine, as he’s busy looking for the missing semicolon.

Dev’s tend to be very happy with their career choice and don’t they keep reminding you of it. I sit their thinking “surely I should be the source of his happiness?”. But anyway, you should never mock people loving their job or careers, it seems very rare to hear nowadays. Even so, it is a little difficult to be reminded of all this after a crappy day of working for someone else.

The t-shirt and the jeans. A programmers uniform. “Never trust a programmer in a suit” seems to be a common phrase I hear in the coding universe. Alex seems to like to tell me that he focuses creative energy into work and not outfits… but surely a new polo shirt wouldn’t harm brain power?

Alex is an alien

I find Alex’s mind is always on a different planet meaning patience is very important. It takes time for him to return to earth sometimes and process the things I’ve said.

I have learnt to cope with this and count a few seconds before he’s back in the room. I have come to terms that this isn’t ignorance he is genuinely deeply focused on the task in hand.

Reflection

Therefore, more than anything, dating a web dev requires patience, independence and understanding. Taking a second, to try and really understand why he just wants to sit on his laptop all day, saves many arguments. Being able to just go out on my own occasionally, and not take anything personally has been hugely beneficial.

At the end of the day they are doing something they love, earning money and improving themselves . And hey, programmers won’t cheat on you – they don’t have the time!