Hello World!

I’m Shashen Mudaly a husband, dad, and dog owner all the time, a software developer most of the time, and a dev manager during my workday. I’ve been a software professional for over 20 years and have been writing code since I was about 15.

I consider myself incredibly fortunate (and grateful) to be in a career that feels like it chose me. After two decades, software development still excites me and it has taken me halfway across the world (more on that later).

It all started in high school, sitting in front of a clunky, outdated IBM 386 in my bedroom, staring at a monochrome CRT display, reading through my first Turbo Pascal programs. I spent hours hacking away at school projects, sometimes waking up in the early hours just to try out an idea or two. That first working (okay, let’s be real, just running) piece of code gave me a thrill that every developer knows all too well.

But it wasn’t always smooth sailing. In my first few months of Grade 10 Computer Studies, programming just didn’t click for me, and I was this close to switching to Biology instead. That was until a young student teacher, doing her practical training, took an hour to explain a few concepts I hadn’t grasped. That one hour changed everything.

A few years later, I faced my first bout of imposter syndrome while learning Java in university, struggling to make the leap from one programming language to another. And yet, here I am, two decades later, still loving the journey. I’ve had a front-row seat to some of the biggest waves in the software industry, none bigger than the AI revolution we’re witnessing today.

A New Journey: From Durban to the Prairies

Eight years ago, my wife, son, three dogs, and I embarked on a huge journey, leaving the perpetual sunshine and sandy beaches of Durban, South Africa, for the mostly winter landscape of the Manitoba prairies. We’re well settled in our home city of Brandon now, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss the Durban sunshine, especially on those -40°C winter days when I’m walking Axl, our Cocker Spaniel, or shoveling the driveway.

Headphone Coder—Where Music and Code Collide

This seems like a good segue into another kind of journey, Journey the band. Along with other legendary musicians, their music has been my constant companion through countless coding challenges. Maybe it’s because music and coding stem from that same primeval spark of creativity in our consciousness, or maybe certain songs are just universally inspiring.

Whatever the reason, when Steve Perry belts out those lines about the seemingly endless walk up and down the boulevard, searching the shadows in the night, I’m right there, immersed in my problem, driven to keep going until I find a solution. That’s why I chose Headphone Coder as the name for this blog. It represents that zone—that safe space where I put on my headphones, queue up a track or album, and chase that coding nirvana (pun intended).

Why This Blog?

Headphone Coder is my way of sharing what I’ve learned, reflecting on the ever-evolving tech landscape, and hopefully helping others the way I’ve been helped along the way. In a book I recently finished, Soft Skills for Software Developers, author John Sonmez describes how many of us already have so much to share—and sometimes, the best way to learn something is to teach it to others.

For the Developers, Parents, and Everyday Hustlers

This blog is also for those of you out there, like me, who navigate the daily joys and challenges of a career that is both rewarding and relentless. There’s probably no other industry that can make you feel like a master one day and a complete novice the next.

It’s for the software developers who are also parents, juggling career goals while tackling the seemingly endless laundry, shoveling snow, managing daycare drop-offs, or trying to squeeze in a Pluralsight course while watching your kid’s karate lesson on a Saturday morning (I do this every week).

And just when you think the ever-growing list of programming languages to learn has already stacked the odds against you, along comes Generative AI, making you question whether you even have a future in this industry.

The Answer? Keep Coding. Keep Believing.

Despite the odds, I choose to put on my headphones, channel that 15-year-old kid immersed in the monochrome glow of a CRT monitor, staring in wonderment as he brought his code to life, and remind myself:

I am where I’m supposed to be.

Don’t stop coding. Don’t stop believin’. 🎵

– Shashen