How You Know You're A Software Developer

You know you're a software developer when a client asks you what he thinks is a simple question and you have to control yourself from going into a conniption fit.  Because let's be honest, how simple can a question be if the answer is a 24-step process?

You receive the question via SMS at 10 o'clock at night: "HOW CAN I PUT A HMEPAGE LINK ON EVRY PAGE?"

First of all, you understand that he's trying to sound helpful because his message implies that if you tell him how to do it, he will do it.  You also know that he thinks putting a link on every page is easy regardless of whether it might or might not be because, after all, you've made it seem easy thus far.  But you know what he's really saying: "Hurry the fuck up.  This is taking you so damn long that I am willing to try programming myself." -- hence the conniption fit.

So after getting out of bed at 2:30 in the morning because you're tired of trying to fall asleep, you calmly think to yourself: Good fucking question. How can he?

Once you comes to grips with the risk of your client dabbling open source code--which would never happen--the response looks like this:

1. Clearly define what it is you're trying to do.  In this case, add a homepage link to every page (forget about the persistent link you already have attached to the logo)
   
2. Understand how the CMS works (CMS stands for content management system, but you already knew that). Hint: the pages are dynamically generated so you only have to write the code once.
3. Figure out where said code should live
4. Figure out which page to put it in
   
5. Log in
   
6. Go to "Design" >> "Templates" >> "Template Modules" >> "Page Design"
7. Read the code (good luck)
8. Realize your code doesn't belong there :)
   
   
9. Think again about which page to modify
10. (you should already be logged in)
11. Go to "Design" >> "Widget Sets" >> "3-Column Layout Primary Sidebar" >> "Edit" Page Listing
12. Read the code
    
13. Write the new code (revert to your n years of experience and write from memory): <li class="widget-list-item"><a href="./" title="Home">Home</a></li>
    
14. Copy and paste it into to the existing code
    
15. Save it
16. Publish it
17. Test it
18. No luck, the website was going haywire
    
19. Rethink your solution and reread the code
    
20. Move it one line up in the code
    
21. Resave it
    
22. Republish it
    
23. Test it
    
24. Presto! it works!  You have a link to the homepage on every page.
    

See, he was right, it wasn't so hard after all.

Disclaimer: No clients were hurt while writing this article.