I never planned to be a poet.
I planned to be a developer. And that’s what happened — I build apps, write code, ship products. A lot of people use what I make. Most of them don’t know my name.
But there are things code cannot fix.
Code is a precise language. Poetry is an honest one.
When I write a function, I know what it wants. There’s an input, an output, logic in between. Everything is testable. If something’s wrong, there’s an error message.
Life doesn’t work like that.
There are days that feel heavy without reason. Losses that never got named. Questions that are more comfortable left unanswered than resolved.
Code can’t hold that. Poetry can.
Not because poetry has answers — quite the opposite. Poetry is the space where questions are allowed to stay questions. Where “I don’t know” isn’t an error, it’s part of the process.
Night is the only honest time
During the day, I’m busy. Features to ship, bugs to fix, notifications that don’t stop. All of it is real and needs to get done.
But the night — the night is mine.
That’s where I started writing. Not with a specific goal. Not with a word count target. Just sitting down and letting something come out.
Some nights only a few lines came. Some nights nothing at all. But there were nights when I wrote something and felt — this. This is the thing I couldn’t say any other way.
Two languages, one person
People often ask: how can you be a developer and write poetry?
The better question might be: how could you not?
Both are ways of making something from nothing. Both start from a question that doesn’t have an answer yet. Both require the patience to sit in uncertainty until something becomes clear.
The difference — code is done when it runs. Poetry is done when it feels right.
Then it became a book
After writing long enough in the nights, I had a collection of words that didn’t know where to go.
I arranged them. Read them again. Removed what wasn’t honest, kept what felt true.
That became Stillness That Walks — my first poetry book. Twenty-four poems in three parts: Roots, Growth, Sky. A journey that doesn’t offer conclusions, only company.
I didn’t write it as someone who has arrived. I wrote it as someone still walking.
Maybe you’ve been at that point too.
If you’re curious, the book is here: cahyanudien.site/stillness-that-walks
And if you’re also a developer quietly carrying something — maybe it’s time to let it out.
Cahyanudien Aziz Saputra is the founder of FlagoDNA, a self-taught app developer. He lives in quiet — writing code, assembling logic, arranging meaning. Many people use what he builds. No one knows how many nights he spent in silence. This book is one of the ways he finally spoke.
