People have said, golf is like life. As I completed a round this weekend, it came to me that golf is actually a lot like web development.

• There are highs and lows You can feel at the top of your game and then minutes later be dragging yourself out of a depressing hole. Or is often the case for me a sand trap that my ball seemed to want to take up permanent residence in. Golf and web development are tests of your emotional control, as you hack away (hey that term works for both) at the challenge before you, sometimes winning sometimes not but still continuing.
• The devil is in the details The smallest change in how the club head hits the ball can mean the difference between smacking it straight down the fairway and going due right into the water. Any developer who has missed one little semi-colon that wreaks havoc on your page knows how it feels to go due right into the water. The details are so small but so important.
• It takes practice And when I say it takes practice, I mean “Please sir may I have another” status. You’d be lucky to even hit the ball the first time you swing a golf club, heck many rounds in you can still manage to whiff them. It is just about as likely you could write so much as a “Hello World” with no instruction. These are not ventures for those that just want to jump in and be good. They take time and effort.
• It requires multiple talents You’re not going to be able to play a round of golf with one club and one swing (okay ignore that Tiger Woods did with a putter once) just like you can’t create a web page with one language (at least one worth looking at). To play a round of golf you need to be able to hit a variety of different clubs, using different swings. To create a web page, you need to use multiple languages and they all require different syntax and formatting. I would argue that golfers and coders are the true renaissance men and women.
• Other people probably won’t understand When you start waxing on about that great round you just had or that piece of code that you spent hours on and dang it looks awesome, you can watch peoples’ eye’s glaze over as they bob their head. But do you really care, nope probably not, because you really enjoy what you are doing. And therein lies the final connection for me. I truly enjoy both golf and web development. It’s highs, it’s lows, it’s successes and failures and I plan on doing both for many years to come.