Spoilers for Orson Scott Card’s hit book Ender’s Game coming up ahead, although I don’t feel too bad since it was published in 1985

In the end of Ender’s Game, Ender (say that 3 times fast) has his final test before graduating—a simulation of a battle where he commands a human fleet against the book’s primary antagonists, alien invaders known as buggers.

The grand twist at the end of the book was that it wasn’t just a test, he was actually commanding a real fleet invading the bugger homeland. After the battle concludes, he finds this out and regrets his decisions—both for the sacrifices he wouldn’t have made if he had known it was real and for the fact he later finds out that buggers are intelligent and they could have come to a peaceful resolution had they been able to communicate beforehand.

Being an engineer often feels a lot like a game to me. I get the same mechanical feedback as I would playing a game when I’m coding in the flow state.

Recently, a lot of my work is focused around fixing various bugs and improving the quality of our product by setting up better processes.

A big part of this is taking in user feedback—something that is pretty hard sometimes. Filtering down good quality from bad quality reports, prioritizing the bugs, and just ingesting the sheer quantity is difficult.

I’ve seen many a report where I am called all sorts of horrible names for things I am responsible for in Windsurf.

The sheer quantity of feedback I receive often leads to me disassociating reports from people while I’m doing my work—an effect that influencers on the internet often mention.

But this mindset that is dangerous, especially to an engineer. It’s important to not be swayed too much by users, but it’s equally if not more important to remember that behind every message is a user experiencing something, and whether it’s frustration or delight is up to me.

Or perhaps I’ve made this loose connection between myself and Ender all to make a joke about literally and metaphorically killing bugs.