Drumming…

When I was a 10-year-old in the 3rd grade, I started taking drum lessons. I know what you're thinking… kid sees GnR's "You Could Be Mine" drum solo on MTV and thinks he can do that. Very true, very true indeed, but unfortunately, it was nothing like that…

For the first few years, all they gave me was a well-used (translation: shitty) snare drum. One drum to practice paradiddles.

Not a great experience for a kid who just wanted to play drums. Drums – as in plural – not just a snare drum (also, my own emphasis on play, rather than learn). In hindsight, I was taught what I needed to be taught – fundamentals, which allowed me to use both my hands and legs independently to form various funky rhythms. But drum sessions were mundane and there wasn't much action going on. They were designed to ensure my sense of rhythm gets embedded with metronomic precision.

I'm surprised I stuck around for all those years, but I guess that "quitting was not an option" (Eastern Europe, 90s).

I'm still unsure if my afternoons were packed with various extracurricular activities (apart from already mentioned drums, I also played accordion, basketball and chess, and there were other courses like beekeeping and mountaineering, to name a few) because that's what I wanted, or whether my parents tricked me into that because they were busy and wanted me occupied. I'm grateful regardless.

Somehow, a 10-year-old me was motivated enough to save just enough that I was able to pay – and partially borrow – a drum kit from the orchestra. The drum kit must have been decades old and it was unusual in a way that it had small wheels on the bass drum and two cymbal stands that you attach to the bass. A snare and tom-toms had that Creedence Clearwater Revival sound… They don't make 'em like that no more. It wasn't a custom build, just unusual that I can't find any similar photos on Google. The closest I got is this:

Vintage 1930s Premier console traps drum kit — the closest example I could find.

Being a drummer in a band?

Throughout all those years of playing drums, I was in an orchestra (deal for free drum lessons) for a decade and in a few bands on and off. Three bands that I remember playing live on stage with, so the overall number is probably a bit higher. There weren't many drummers back then so I was in great demand. However, I never truly enjoyed playing in a band (or in the orchestra). I loved drums, and I still air-drum sometimes, but my preference was drumming in solitude, rather than in a band.

Not that I disliked playing in bands, but somewhere between scheduled rehearsals and agreeing on what music to play, I lost my freedom to express myself. I did, however, enjoy playing drums. A lot! But on my own. I wanted to become a good drummer, not necessarily make music or form a band. I was a drum nerd. Drum solos, fast hands and feet, hardware geekiness, long discussions on forums about which sticks to use, etc.
That, to me, was fulfilling.

Coding…

About the same time, or maybe a few years later, I stumbled upon programming. It was a piece of code written in a magazine called "Monitor" (which, surprisingly, still exists). Back then you could read Joker – a magazine about games –, or Monitor, which was more software/hardware oriented. Joker was my "go-to" magazine as I couldn't afford both, but I sometimes borrowed Monitor from my neighbor, who later became my programming mentor. My mind was blown away 🤯. I was barely getting familiar with English, but there it was… something mysterious in the sidebar of the magazine, printed in monospaced characters, somehow resembling English, but with a bunch of special characters, arrows, parentheses and semicolons. I thought only a super genius would even be able to write that. That was in the 90s. Yes, I thought all programmers were geniuses. Of course, that opinion changed when I became one.

All things are difficult before they are easy. – an old proverb by Thomas Fuller

Building software?

I didn't learn to code from the Monitor magazine, although I tried my best to untangle its meaning. It was just too difficult. My coding proficiency came a bit later when there were things I wanted to achieve and the only way to get it done was by writing code. It started with something simple like this:

alias rocketjump "
   impulse 7;
  +lookdown;
  +jump;
  +attack;
  wait;
  -attack;
  -jump;
  -lookdown
"
 
 // Bind key F for the rocket jump
bind F "rocketjump"

This is a code snippet for a Quake World config that lets you press the "F" key to jump with a rocket… I then gradually progressed towards making a website for a Quake clan.

I enjoyed drumming for the sake of drumming.
I enjoyed coding because of the results.

The craft or the result?

Now going back to the original question: how much are coding and music alike?

Creating music and software are simultaneously collaborative and individualistic undertakings. – Rob Birdwell

I find this thoughtfully beautiful. You can be the best [drummer/programmer] in the world, but if your collaboration skills are non-existent, you're not really gonna make it as a [musician/software developer].

Making music != playing drums.

In a band, there are tons of compromises. Your bandmates' musical tastes must align. You must agree on the name and image. Someone needs to take the lead and reach out to venues and festivals where you could play. Negotiate the pay. There are band practices to coordinate – which days, what time, and where.

You can be a world-class drummer and still make a terrible bandmate.

See where I'm going? It's not all that different at tech companies. Some people enjoy programming as a craft in itself, and they obsess over elegant code, abstractions, frameworks, languages, design patterns, and all that jazz. And that's great. We need nerds who can shave off milliseconds traversing a JSON file. They enjoy programming as a craft in the same way I enjoyed playing drums.

For most of my career, that distinction – whether you loved writing code or building products – didn't matter all that much, as both required you to write code.

But then, all of a sudden, AI enters the room… and code is no longer written by hand.

And that makes me wonder… does AI favour those who love writing code, or those who love building things with it?