Code Viking?

Thanks to a former co-worker and overall awesome guy who is well read and educated, with a great sense of humor, who appreciated my embracing of my Finnish/Swedish heritage, coined the term “Code Viking”.

It stuck; I liked it.

I appreciated the various nuances - one day I might be ruthlessly slaying bugs, another swinging a metaphorical axe through logs of previous commits to figure out a problem, other times confronting those in power with the truth where others fear to engage.

Sisu - bravery, stubbornness, stoicism, loyalty, honor, resilience … it means all of those things and more to me. It’s the ideals I was raised on, the things passed on to me by my parents and grandparents, and hopefully I pass along to my son. Taking on a tank with a tree branch, for example - foolhardy, high risk, but if said tank is about to raze your village, and you don’t happen to have any high tech anti-tank weaponry…then you do what needs to be done.

Which I’m all about - protecting those who can’t, helping those who can, doing what’s right - even if that means putting myself in harms way (usually figuratively) to protect my people. Whether that’s throwing myself into the nastiest tangle of code or dealing with an overly micro managing pointy-hair, I’m all in.

And once I’ve given my word, it is kept. There isn’t any other way to move through this life, in my opinion. Be open, be honest, be loyal, help each other, and honor the oaths you give.

So when I call myself “Code Viking”, this is what I mean: openness, humility, honesty, integrity, loyalty, determination.