If you had told me a few months ago that I'd be writing a blog post about my adventures as a cook at a Jamaican restaurant, I would have laughed harder than when someone suggests using PHP for a new project. Yet here we are, and I'm about to tell you how this programmer ended up mastering the art of egg roll making – with a few explosive failures along the way.
The Setup: A Kitchen Newbie's Tale
Growing up in a household with three sisters and a brother, I somehow managed to dodge kitchen duty entirely. While others were learning the difference between sautéing and simmering, I was probably debugging some code or explaining derivatives to my math students. The kitchen was as foreign to me as Assembly language is to a JavaScript developer.
But life has a funny way of throwing curveballs, and mine came in the form of a job at a Jamaican restaurant in Philadelphia. Suddenly, I wasn't just reading documentation – I was reading recipes. And let me tell you, the compilation errors in cooking are a lot more... explosive.
The Great Egg Roll Adventure
My first task? Making egg rolls. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, let me walk you through the process and my spectacular initial failure.
The Recipe: A Technical Specification
Like any good programming project, egg roll making starts with clear specifications. Here's our production pipeline:
-
Ingredient Preparation (Data Collection):
- Grilled chicken, meticulously deboned and diced (no skin or bones allowed – think input validation)
- Shredded carrots
- Shredded cabbage
- Shredded cheese
- Seasoning mix (paprika, garlic powder, and other proprietary spices)
-
The Assembly Process (Main Function):
- Break eggs into a bowl (our binding agent, like the glue that holds components together)
- Layout wrapper (our user interface)
- Apply egg wash (authentication layer)
- Add meat mixture and extra cheese (payload)
- Wrap in a specific pattern (error handling)
The First Deploy: A Production Incident
Remember your first production deployment? Well, my first batch of egg rolls was kind of like that – spectacular failure included. Picture this: I'm standing there, proud of my creation, watching as my loosely wrapped egg rolls hit the hot oil. Then... BOOM! The contents exploded like a poorly handled memory allocation.
The issue? Just as in programming, loose coupling isn't always good. Those egg rolls needed to be wrapped tighter than a secure authentication system.
The Debug Process
After the Great Explosion Incident of 2024, I learned the proper wrapping technique:
- Position the wrapper like a diamond (rhombus for my fellow math nerds)
- Apply the egg wash (our binding function)
- Place the filling near the bottom corner
- Roll from the bottom, tucking in the contents like you're encapsulating private variables
- Fold in the sides, preventing any data leaks
- Complete the roll with the precision of a well-executed algorithm
Expanding the Feature Set: Salmon Version
Once I mastered the chicken egg rolls, we moved on to the salmon variant. Same basic process, different data type – I mean, filling. The key difference is in the main ingredient, but the wrapping logic remains consistent. It's like implementing the same interface with different classes.
Lessons Learned
This unexpected journey into culinary arts taught me something fascinating: cooking isn't that different from programming. Both require:
- Precise execution
- Attention to detail
- Learning from failures
- Documentation (recipes)
- Version control (trying different variations)
Conclusion: The Unexpected Path
Sometimes the best learning experiences come from the most unexpected places. Whether it's discovering TypeScript after years of JavaScript skepticism (see my previous post) or learning to make the perfect egg roll after a lifetime of kitchen avoidance, life has a way of pushing us out of our comfort zones.
So here's to trying new things, whether they're new programming languages or new recipes. Just remember: wrap your egg rolls tightly, and always handle your hot oil exceptions with care.
Stay tuned for more adventures of this programmer-turned-part-time-chef. Next up: "How Writing Documentation is Like Writing a Recipe Book (But with Fewer Delicious Results)."