My summer job is winding to a close, and I haven’t talked about it on here yet. I’m doing software engineering this summer, living 1,800 miles away from home in Wilmington, Delaware. More precisely, the suburbs of Wilmington, but more on that later. I’m working for a fairly large company, and there are quite a few other interns here, most in other areas of engineering and science.

So, software engineering. I would like to say more about my job, but don’t think it’s particularly prudent to do so. As such, I’m just going to say that software engineering has its ups and its downs. The code can, at times, suck me in and lose me in its beauty and intrigue. At times, programming is incredibly frustrating and tedious. It’s a mixed bag, like every other career I suppose.

Now Delaware. Let’s just say that Delaware as a state has made some extremely poor decisions in urban planning, taxation, and just about everything else. Wilmington, Delaware, is a town of 80,000 people. By the looks of it, however, one might think it’s around 300,000 people. It’s skyline is rather impressive for a town of 80,000 and it has a large downtown business district. Looks great, until you start to dig beneath the details. Wilmington has a large downtown business district, but that’s all the downtown is. No one lives downtown and there’s almost no retail downtown. And if you walk five minutes in any direction from downtown, you’ll end up in slums. Most of Wilmington is rather run down and crappy to tell the truth, except for the impressive big business buildings downtown.

So what’s the deal? How does Wilmington manage to be home to eight of the ten major banks in the U.S. but be composed of mostly run down neighborhoods? Also, Wilmington has the highest crime rate in the nation for a city its size. The answer, of course, is suburban sprawl. Everyone who can afford it has moved out of Wilmington to the suburbs. Traffic around Wilmington is horrendous, especially when considering it’s only got 80,000 people. Makes sense though, since everyone has to drive in 10, 20, even 50 miles every work day. It’s sad, because Wilmington has potential. It has job, just not housing for the upper middle class. Perhaps they’ll improve someday, but I doubt anytime soon.

Of course, the crime has its upsides. While driving through Wilmington late the other night, a woman asked me if I wanted rock. I suppose if I was interested, it would have been convenient.