Stormshit Trooper

Have you seen the Paul Verhoeven movie Starship Trooper?  In the movie the heroes fight bug aliens that attack in waves of chitinous clicking and mandible drooling mayhem.  If the movie wasn't so silly it would be horrifying.

We are in the end game of my project at work and the thought struck me that at this stage in the development cycle my reality has a lot in common with the soldiers in that movie.  I'm a bug hunter.  The bugs come at me and I kill them; but no matter how many I kill it seems there is always another one behind it.   As in the movie, most are easy to kill,  but every so often there's a boss bug that's a little harder to get your blaster zeroed in on.  In the end it's a loud and messy affair with blood and guts spraying everywhere.

This isn't to say I think our project is buggy.  I think we've done a great job but the reality is that everyone on the greater team is now looking for the flaws.  It's a time of focused negativity.   People are pointing out things that they don't think are optimal and we have to look into them whether it's really a flaw in the implementation or a tweak to the design.  Is there really any other profession that goes through a stage of a project like this?   I can't think of one.

This is hardly my first bug rodeo but in my experience it doesn't get any easier with repetition.  Perhaps though, If I think of myself as Johny Rico, mobile infantry, it all wont suck so much.

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