Imagine this. There is an issue that you are working on. You have given it your day, and one more day, and two more nights, and then it looks all set. It works according to you. Now is the time to test it, maybe against manual tests or automated tests like Dredd and Travis CI (if you are into open source).

You write a good pull request, an immaculate commit message, and you are happy with a fuck-the-whole-world-i-am-a-god smirk on your face because you gave the issue a part of your life and are filing a PR.

You file the PR. The hooks start to run. You wait for 15 minutes or so depending on how many REST API calls are to be tested. You wait and wait. You have to kill these 15 minutes to see the heavenly “All tests are passing” tick mark. Maybe you go to Reddit or HackerNews. Maybe a little bit of YouTube or maybe Medium or maybe any blog.

15 mins have passed and the build is still going on. You wait more, maybe a minute or so. Suddenly the tests are done running. You look back with excitement and dream about sipping a cup of coffee or tea or just relaxing for 5 minutes because you have solved a big issue.

You scroll down to look at the build and it has failed. Some tests are not passing. Your days have been lost like tears in a rain. Your hopes of a perfect relaxation time have been crumbled like a house of cards.

You get back to coding. You give it more time, but maybe this time way lesser because you know where it is failing. You make another commit and then squash it and then wait for the build to finish, this time hoping it does without failing. But it fails.

You give the issue one more day. You are frustrated, tired, sleep deprived, hungry, cursing yourself and every inconceivable thing in this whole universe. But you know you need to solve the issue because you want to solve it. Because that’s how the life you wanted to live is like. Because that’s the life that you love.

You make another commit and file the PR and this time the build has passed. You have done it! You look back at all those days and all the frustration that built up to this moment. You take a sip of tea or coffee or just close your eyes and relax for a moment. You did it! The immense feeling of jubilance. You feel like the king of the world. The time is yours and you deserve it. You again look back at all the anger, frustration and loathe that built up while solving the issue and see how you have evolved out of it. You think “Was it worth it” -

“Yes, it was bloody worth it!”