My buddie Joe has had a link to an article by Jeff Atwood on Coding Horror about how in programming, one is the loneliest number. I read the article a while back, but I started thinking about it again tonight when I was putting up a new version of Fright Catalog that contained a few bug fixes.

The frustration I was having was on several levels. One, I don’t have another set of eyes to help test the site and make sure my code is what it should be. I have to update the database myself (luckily I have some nice tools to help with this), but it starts to take longer to do the update. If there are issues with any code changes, there aren’t enough resources to debug the problem quickly.

What adds to the frustration is that that’s only when we’re launching new versions of our platform. Not only am I the application developer (writing C# code predominantly), I’m also the database guy, the IT guy, and help with some of the day to day business decisions. What worries me is that we depend so much on our web applications, if something goes wrong, we’ll lose money, money that could one day be used to help alleviate the situation.

I don’t like being the only developer. I’m a social guy by nature (not an introvert like some programmers are). I have a great group of colleagues that I can tap into (Kyle, Joe, Dan etc.) that I can bounce ideas off of. But that doesn’t compare to being able to turn around and have a discussion. So, you could say I flourish when there’s a great team of people around me that I can depend on and that can depend on me. The situation isn’t by choice either. Its really just a lack of resources. I hope that one day, we can have the resources again to bring back or rebuild the great team we once had.