He was a farrier in Mandres-en-Barrois, the small village in rural France where I grew up. Shoeing horses, repairing farmers’ carts. Then he saw a car drive through the next town over, or read an article about it in the paper. I can’t tell what exactly happened in his mind at that moment, but soon after, he became a mechanic, like every man in the family after him.
In the end, and maybe after a long stretch of grief at trading his horses for engine grease, he kept his purpose: helping people get around. He just changed the technology, going from horses to engines.
I think about this a lot these days, surrounded as I am by so many developers who wake up every day wondering what’s going to become of them. I must say there is some comfort in knowing that someone in my family had the same doubts before me.
