Those blessed (or, indeed, cursed) by a streak of creativity often find their minds on other things, bigger things, untroubled by where one should live, or what day is bin day.
“After I graduated, my housemates and I had two months before we had to move to a new house, and they were saying, ‘Uh, we really need you to find a job…’,” Cranmore’s senior developer Damien Earle tells us.
But, of course, he wasn’t worried.
And when we speak to Damien for this edition of Source Code, this creative streak, a mind constantly on bigger things, is a running theme.
“I was interested in being an animator, but I can’t draw,” he says. “I just knew I wanted to do something creative.
“I actually had two things in mind – computers or marketing, which is mad when I think about it now. I think I must’ve been watching a lot of Mad Men.
“But in software, there is a lot of creative problem solving, so it is creative in a way.”
Damien is today one of Cranmore’s most experienced and skilled developers, even though “playing a few computer games” was the closest he’d come to programming before he embarked on his computer science degree at Queen’s.
“For the first four years after joining Cranmore, I was using .Net then moved over to the Node world, into TypeScript and JavaScript,” he says.
“And I like that. You have more freedom.”
Having AI at your side, when you think about it, it’s wild.
Damien Earle
This freedom to be creative, to approach problems differently, to always think bigger, that’s where he feels comfortable.
And the emergence of AI has brought with it, Damien observes, even more opportunities to be creatively free.
“Having AI at your side, when you think about it it’s wild,” he says. “When I was in uni I’d never thought we’d get to a place where you’re not necessarily writing every line of code.
“You’re now more of a code task master. But I still have the Soviet-style ‘trust but verify’ approach.”
Damien admits he was at first resistant but learnt to appreciate the time-saving freedom AI gave him.
“I was slow to take it up, but when I realised it could write effective code, I use it more and more,” he says.
“But it was worth going through the pain of learning how to code myself, and I worry young coders rely on it too much.
“In five years, software development could just be people prompting AI bots. Who knows, maybe that could be great.”
A finger-style guitarist, Damien admits he spends most of his time “noodling”, learning only parts of songs, mining them for the lessons they contain. Always thinking bigger.
“Because I’ve been at Cranmore for nine years, I’ve seen so much change, particularly the scale of the projects,” he says. “We used to have small groups working on a project and now we have groups within groups.
“Now there are more plates being spun, and we’re working with ever bigger clients including a growing number in England. “But when you get those days, when you have no meetings, when you’re free to sit and write code and be creative, for me that’s a good day.”
