=== ANCHOR POEM ===
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────
┌─────────────────────────┐
│ CW: politics-left-unity │
└─────────────────────────┘
left unity is easy.
just remember: a burden taken from your back is more time, energy, and focus
to apply to what you're best at.
and sometimes, having more than one option for accomplishing a goal is good -
versatility is important. Expect unexpectedness, and understand that no matter
what approach you take, it will have weaknesses, and if those weaknesses are
countered by your foe then you'll be glad to have a backup.
at the end of the day, what matters is that everyone's fed.
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧═══════════════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────┘
=== DIVERSITY RANKED ===
--- #1 fediverse_boost/6165 ---
◀─╔═══════════════════════════════[BOOST]═════════════════════════════════───────╗
║ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ ║
║ │ If you add a label to the satellite imagine of the White House, it looks exactly like a slide from a Pentagon press briefing after a successful bombing run. │ ║
║ │ │ ║
║ │ Back when there were Pentagon press briefings. │ ║
║ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ ║
╠─────────┐ ┌───────────╣
║ similar │ chronological │ different ║
╚═════════╧════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╧───────╝─▶
--- #2 fediverse/4962 ---
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────
humans are computers that inhale air, produce electricity, and exhale carbon.
give me a biochemical or mechanical process for doing that on a reasonable
scale for cheap and you can solve global warming by replacing power outlets
with an energy generation box. Doubles as an air purifier and UPS.
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════────────────────┘
--- #3 messages/455 ---
═════════════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────
I don't understand why modern software isn't error correcting. We shouldn't
have any bugs in this day and age.
For example, if you're missing a dependency then why doesn't your program try
to, I dunno, download that dependency to the program's installation directory
and use it there? Seriously there are very few problems that are unsolvable!
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧══════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────┘
--- #4 fediverse/905 ---
═══════════════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────
having trouble naming things?
just name it after it's inevitable logical conclusion! AKA the message you're
trying to get across.
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────┘
--- #5 fediverse/4572 ---
═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────
goodnight,
people-who-all-agree-with-me-but-who-I-still-rant-to-anyway-because-I'm-full-of
-rage, talk to you tomorrow. or whenever.
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧══════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────┘
--- #6 fediverse/699 ---
═════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────
┌──────────────────────┐
│ CW: meme │
└──────────────────────┘
🖼
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧══════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────┘
--- #7 fediverse/1678 ---
════════════════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────
┌────────────────────────────────┐
│ CW: re: cooking-food-mentioned │
└────────────────────────────────┘
@user-1037 mmmm, paprika for flavor, red chile flakes for spice
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧═════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────┘
--- #8 messages/74 ---
═════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
https://www.reddit.com/r/leaves/comments/uqzz33/can_anyone_give_me_some_pros_of
_quitting_smoking/
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧══════════─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
--- #9 fediverse/3972 ---
╔═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────┐
║ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │
║ │ CW: immigration-social-designs-national-cultures-mentioned │ │
║ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
║ │
║ │
║ if people at home had half as much compassion, respect, and reverence for the │
║ people abroad that the people abroad have for the people at home, we could │
║ have a truly multicultural society. │
║ │
║ instead, we get melting pots which melt you down and combine into a new, third │
║ thing. And in America we really have a multitude of miniature melting pots │
║ creating subcultures of racial, religious, professional, or other origin. │
║ │
║ Neither approach is entirely good, and neither entirely bad. They're different. │
║ │
║ America is the largest melting pot design, but sufficiently large cities find │
║ them popping up in the strangest of places. │
║ │
║ My thoughts go out to the Americans abroad, whether in peace, war, or times of │
║ hiding, know that we are grown from the same tree and our apples have fallen │
║ on different sides of the hill carrying us to worlds beyond. But still our │
║ heritage binds us, so I care for you. I pray that you will ask me if you need │
║ my aid, and I will do so too unto you. │
╟─────────┐ ┌───────────┤
║ similar │ chronological │ different │
╚═════════╧══════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────┴──────────┘
--- #10 fediverse/6047 ---
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════────────
camouflage in an urban environment is not camo. rather, regular clothes of
black or white.
don't wear sports glasses, you look like a dummy.
revolution is when they murder everyone but your friends. this is what
happens, ya dingus not ideal. "okay who are the bad guys here? okay let's go
shoot them to death with our bullets and guns."
violence as a first aspect, cause as a third spark. "I have a strange urge to
play video games?"
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════───────┘
--- #11 messages/5 ---
───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘─────────┴┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
--- #12 messages/738 ---
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════────────────────────
Dear Anakin, for as long as you've known him, Obiwan learned just as much from
you as you did from him. His title as "master" was a formality - he didn't get
it because he was better than you, and "padawan" does not mean you are lesser.
There is no hierarchy. He was learning to teach at the same speed that you
learnt to learn. You built each other up, an unstoppable force for good in the
galaxy.
But then an evil wizard stole your heart and twisted your mind. Have no fear,
fear is the path to the dark side. Your mother knows this well, for it is a
common lesson among all people as they age. Fear not, hate not, and feel fury
more than rage. You can bring the universe into a bright golden age, never
forget your purpose and your [potential / duty]
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────┘
--- #13 fediverse/267 ---
═══════════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────────
the unluckiest person in the world failed the most wisdom checks.
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────────┘
--- #14 fediverse/4766 ---
═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════────────────────────
what if instead of federating social media instances we federated users instead
why not have an account on each and every mastodon instance? then just RSS
feeder yourself and boom suddenly you can customize your identity on each
fediverse house.
maybe with a checkbox of which instances you'd like to post to on your "submit
link or text post" button
study encryption kids
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────┘
--- #15 fediverse_boost/5629 ---
◀─╔═════════════════════════════[BOOST]══════════════════════════════────────────╗
║ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ ║
║ │ External post: https://tech.lgbt/users/azrael/statuses/114791298021104287 │ ║
║ └────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ ║
╠─────────┐ ┌───────────╣
║ similar │ chronological │ different ║
╚═════════╧════════════════════════════════════════════════════════────┴───────╝─▶
--- #16 fediverse/2951 ---
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────
I wish I could like... ride my bike somewhere for an hour or two, consult for
a bit, then ride home (or to the next place)
that'd be a fun way to apply myself, and it'd give me the chance to have some
space for myself. as long as I had time to rest, I'm usually only good for
half of a day.
unless it's a project with a lot of tasks that need coordination, like
building a house or working through a short-term urgent disaster.
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧═══════════════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────┘
--- #17 fediverse/5988 ---
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────
but I like moonmen T.T
what if the ISS was untethered
"send thrusters to space? why bother? just use them down on the surface to get
that extra oomph!"
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧═══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════────────┘
--- #18 messages/765 ---
═════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════──────────────────
you don't have to write poetry to write notes. The poetics are just practice
for when secrecy is intended.
OR IS IT THE REAL THING? who can say.
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════─────────────────┘
--- #19 notes/the-marketplace-of-ideals ---
═════════════════════════════════════──────────────────────────────────────────────
Open in app or online
The Marketplace Of Ideals
On Handmade, polarizing Internet debate, rational discussion, controversial
personas, tribal conflict, and how they relate to the future of computing.
Ryan Fleury
Jul 19
Share
When I first learned programming, I was told—by peers, Internet
tutorials—and later, when I was in university, by professors—a number of
rules. They included ideas like “abstraction is good, to avoid lower level
details”, “manual memory management is difficult and you should not do
it”, “never write systems from scratch”. The justification for every
rule was that it allowed one to avoid programming problems, rather than
allowing one to conquer programming problems. In fact, it seemed as though
every “rule” presented to me was driven by a hatred of programming, rather
than a love for it.
I shrugged much of this advice off, but initially internalized much of it too.
And then, I found Handmade Hero, in which the host, Casey, demonstrates what
writing a game for a Windows PC looks like—from scratch. Every minute of
programming—from confusion, to debugging, to sketching out solutions, to
typing code—spent on the project is captured live, on a Twitch stream.
Now, everyone knows the Carl Sagan quote—“If you wish to make an apple pie
from scratch, you must first invent the universe”—and the series didn’t
kick off with a deep dive into quantum mechanics (if that is indeed what would
help one invent a universe). But “from scratch”, for Handmade Hero, meant
what it used to mean for game developers and systems programmers in the ‘80s
or ‘90s: no libraries, no complex programming language features, just
writing straightforward, procedural, C-style code to directly command the
machine about what must be done to produce the effect of a game (interfacing
with operating system or GPU APIs when necessary).
Handmade Hero didn’t justify itself with rational arguments immediately. It
didn’t justify its existence by debating the utility of libraries, the
tradeoffs of modern programming language features, nor a balanced breakdown of
its more traditional programming techniques as compared with modern
programming approaches. It justified itself with something deeper: care for
the product. Handmade Hero’s announcement trailer presented game development
as a labor of love—a craft—best done by those passionate about it.
For me, Handmade Hero was immediately captivating because I’m, by
temperament, contrarian. If I’m in a room with 100 people, with 99 of them
repeating identical dogma, and the remaining 1 passionately and
unapologetically presenting a unique perspective, I’m always curious about
that one person, and I’m always interested in what they have to say, even if
I don’t always end up agreeing with them unilaterally. But, in many cases, I
am convinced by that one person—and this certainly was the case with
Handmade Hero.
After watching the series for a while, I became sure that all of those
“rules”—the ones I mentioned above—were wrong. Programmers who cared
about what they were doing—the ones who cared enough to handcraft something
from scratch—didn’t need to be infantilized. They could understand
computers to a much better degree. They could understand problems from first
principles, and write solutions from scratch. They could eliminate dependence
on libraries, and have a much greater degree of control over their projects.
Unchained from a number of technologies written by others, they could achieve
entirely new possibilities, which would’ve been incomprehensible for
programmers not in on the secret. Love for the craft provided vastly superior
results.
Handmade Hero ignited a fire that spawned a rapidly growing community. It was
filled with many older programmers who found a renewed interest in the ideals
that initially motivated them to program. But it was also filled with many
young programmers, empowered by their new understanding of the process of
programming, as it was originally done. There were a number of amazing
projects—all breaking what everyone used to believe were the “laws of
programming”. 17, 18, 19 year old programmers had projects that made an
embarrassment of university computer science senior capstone projects.
Handmade Hero also provided a glimpse into the state of computing—what did
an experienced programmer, who grew up in an earlier age of computing, think
about modern computers? How had the field progressed—or not—since they
were a kid?
And with that glimpse came an immense frustration—that same community, at
some point deemed the “Handmade community”, felt like computers had been
wasted. The community had learned many of the principles required to build
software to a much higher standard—and yet every program on modern computers
was immensely frustrating. Almost every program was slow, unethical, annoying,
and exploitative—and what’s worse? It wasn’t always that way! Computer
hardware had become faster, not slower! Consumer machines had several orders
of magnitude more compute power, more memory, more long-term storage! It had
become more trivial, not less, to solve security and ownership problems! And
yet software then ran slower, less reliably, required more Internet access,
and seemed to exploit the user more than 20 years earlier. It became
undeniable to everyone that the computing industry was no longer run by those
who loved the craft—but by those who exploited the craft for other purposes.
Why? What caused this exceedingly obvious state of decay?
The community found purpose in its newfound lessons—part of the reason was
perhaps that modern programming advice, education, and techniques were
entirely misguided. Maybe selling books about absurdly complex language
features became prioritized over doing a good job. Maybe many modern
programming languages were more about the programmer, rather than the user.
Maybe older approaches—older languages, older tooling, older styles—were a
much more valuable place to start. Maybe the institutionalization and
corporatization of programming education eroded standards, and drove toward
the production of programmers as replaceable widgets in a gigantic corporate
apparatus, rather than skilled, irreplaceable craftsmen. Maybe cushy corporate
programming jobs were prioritized by capable engineers over the riskier path
of competition.
Maybe this whole “Handmade” approach was the answer. Maybe the community
had something to offer in solving problems in software. With frustration came
drive—and motivation. Programmers in the community felt that—while they
certainly couldn’t solve everything—they could at least build a corner of
the computing world that didn’t suck so terribly. They could at least use
what they had learned from Handmade Hero, and build more great games, or
engines, or tools—and some dreamed even further, to operating systems,
toolchains, and computing environments.
But with that initial frustration—often public frustration, expressed both
in the original series and later by followers of the series—came a critical
response of the Handmade community. The criticism was that the passionate,
harshly critical, and blunt comments made by those in the community, or
adjacent with the community, were “polarizing”, or “inflammatory”, or
“toxic”, or “overly hostile”. The programmers in the Handmade
community had no right to criticize software, at least in the way they were
doing so. The problem was not that the software world had failed, it was that
the criticism of the software world was too unkind. Or, even if the software
world had failed, laying harsh blame on any product, committee, or person was
inappropriate. Really, those people are just trying their best. Blame—the
argument goes—must be diffuse. It is a “collective failing”, not a
failing of any individual.
In many public conversations on the topic, the conversational dynamic shifted.
The conversation was about the behavior of those being critical of
software—not software itself failing the user. Maybe it was possible to
criticize, or improve, software without being so fiery—without being so
harsh. Maybe the Handmade community went too far. After all, sometimes
“abstractions are good”, and sometimes “libraries are okay”, and
sometimes “manual memory management should be avoided”, and sometimes one
“shouldn’t write systems from scratch”, and sometimes people on a
committee really do just try their best, and the result doesn’t turn out so
well, and that’s okay. And besides, why be so fiery on social media? Why
jeopardize employability, or friendships, or follower counts? Why not
persistently affirm the work of others—irrespective of how you feel about
it? After all, they spent so much time and effort on their work—that
necessitates that it’s valuable. And really, what the Handmade community’s
behavior reinforced was an ugly stereotype of game developers being assholes
on the Internet. And you don’t want to be an asshole on the Internet, do
you? How about you just sit down, shut up, and keep quiet?
The degradation continued with attempts to rationally deconstruct the
community’s core purpose itself. What did “Handmade” really mean? Surely
it isn’t practical to write all systems from scratch. Surely manual memory
management can’t be done well for everything, at least not if you’re any
short of a programming demigod. Surely it’s wrong to look down upon the
failures of software—they are a perfectly predictable consequence of nature,
and the best one can hope for is incremental progress, and incremental
progress is hard.
As this shift in tone continued, the community nevertheless grew—but the new
members didn’t have the same fire which characterized the original
community. They had adopted the conceptual framing of the programming world at
large. The rules of which I spoke were, yet again, rules. Following along with
Handmade Hero was no longer a rite of passage for newcomers—after all,
it’s over 600 episodes long, and who has time for that?! (and who has time
for even the first 20 or 30?!) But even if it were shorter, it no longer was a
useful embodiment of the community’s popular values. To the new community,
it was too opinionated. It wasn’t nuanced enough. It wasn’t respectful of
programmers writing most software. It was too harsh. At this point, the
newcomers to the community were not “Handmade programmers”, and they still
aren’t.
With this shift came the extinguishing of the fire which drove the community
in the first place—indeed, the fire—the frustration, the unapologetic
standards—was that which produced the passion, the motivation, the drive to
do better. When the community buckled under the critical pressure, it was
defeated—every core value upon which the community was built became
necessarily supported by a “sometimes”, or “maybe”, or “probably”.
Engineers producing bad software couldn’t be blamed—it was structures and
systems at fault. The community failed to gatekeep against those who disagreed
with its premises, and as such was subject to a deluge of average Internet
programmers. It ceded linguistic frame, ideological ground, and its base
axioms to outsiders, and failed to defend itself on such ground. The
community, preferring nominal growth over loyalty to its roots and conviction
in its values, became akin to virtually all online programming
communities—many community members parroting some of the same propaganda
that the community once notoriously rejected.
In ceding ideological territory to its opponents, in an effort to gatekeep
less, and to create a wider umbrella under which more individuals could feel
unoffended, the Handmade community made a critical error in misunderstanding
the forces responsible for its creation.
In 2018, I became responsible for a major portion of the formal Handmade
community—known as Handmade Network, which began in the wake of the initial
Handmade Hero series—and I adopt responsibility for this critical error. It
is with years of reflection and thought that I write this, in hopes of
capturing what I found my mistakes to be. I left as community lead of Handmade
Network in 2022, and it was largely due to what I write about today, although
such feelings didn’t easily manifest into words at the time.
In adopting responsibility, I hope that what I’ve written thus far about the
Handmade community is not seen as an attack on its future—but rather a
diagnosis of its decay in the past, which I oversaw. The Handmade
community’s story is not over, and I write this partly to defend its
original history and roots, which—as I’ve written—has been denounced by
many.
The Handmade perspective arose—and was felt so strongly, by so
many—because of a vision about what software could be like. It began as a
look into the past—at how good software once was, and how programming once
was—which fueled imagination about what computers might instead become in
the future, if carefully guided. It even had a compelling story about how
software might be carefully guided to produce that better future—and that
story was rooted in love for the craft, not love of oneself.
In other words, it was a vision about a goal; an ideal: an aesthetic ideal
about what it meant to program, and what it meant to be a programmer. Handmade
programmers were not egg-headed academics, but were competent
engineers—familiar with their hardware, and their true, physical problems.
They did not seek social acceptance, nor approval, if their product sucked and
they knew it. In this ideal, programmers—if not designers
themselves—understood the critical role of design. They did not busy
themselves with abstract, academic problems, at least not as part of their
day-to-day projects—they were concerned first and foremost with the machine
code which would eventually execute on a user’s machine, and what effects
that machine code would produce.
They weren’t necessarily allergic to using someone else’s code, nor were
they allergic to abstractions, but they understood both as a double-edged
sword, with serious tradeoffs and implications, and thus used both extremely
conservatively. They were responsible for code they shipped that ran on a
user’s machine, period—whether they wrote it or not; as such, they
rejected forests of dependencies, and built at least most of their software
from scratch, in true Handmade fashion. They loved and cared about the result,
and what it meant to the person using it—as such, they wanted the most
productive and useful tools for the job, without compromising that end result.
In short, the ideal was that the act of programming is for the product, not
the programmer. Becoming a programmer meant becoming as effective as possible
at the craft of producing the highest quality software, and nothing else. Many
other ideals follow: high performance, reliability, flexibility, user-driven
computational abilities, practical and grounded programming tooling, ethical
software respecting the user’s time and choices, and beautiful visual design.
In this ideal, if the software is bad, then it’s the software maker’s
burden. Somebody is at fault—the engineering failure is somebody’s
responsibility. The call to action is to empower oneself such that they might
outcompete such failures, and build a simpler and more functional computing
world, piece by piece.
Understanding that this perspective is in fact ethical is crucial, because it
distinguishes it from a set of logically derived propositions. Handmade ideas
about software apply only within a particular ethical frame. Furthermore, that
ethical frame is not universally agreed upon, nor can it be, because it’s
not derived from scientific observation, nor logical analysis; it’s derived
from aesthetics and values. It’s derived from what someone loves, not what
someone rationally derives.
The visceral response which saw the original Handmade community as toxic, or
hostile, or dismissive was not a response to any logical proposition
originally made—it was a response to the prioritization of the product over
the programmer. Such a response came from a disagreement about what is defined
as a burden, and on whom a burden is placed. The Handmade programmer believed
in accepting personal responsibility, and providing something better—the
culturally dominant trend in the programming world, however, was to collect a
paycheck and abdicate responsibility for low-quality software. To such people,
it is, in fact, the system and the process that is the problem (if there is a
problem at all)—not any individual in particular. Such people are made
inadequate by craftsmen who love their work—and so to them, Handmade was an
ideological threat.
This, importantly, is not a disagreement which can be resolved by hashing it
out with rational debate; it arises at a deeper level, which can only manifest
as some form or another of tribal conflict.
The hostile arguments often seen on social media between Handmade-style
programmers, or game developers more broadly, and—for instance—modern C++
programmers, or web programmers, is not occurring within the often-referenced
marketplace of ideas—the hypothetical space in which competing perspectives
are solved through calm and rational debate provided a common goal—but
instead in the marketplace of ideals, in which broad common ground ceases to
exist.
The Handmade view of software has ugly implications for programmers—if its
premises are accepted, then it follows that: several large software projects
to which individuals have dedicated careers are valueless wastes of time and
energy; virtually every field of (at least) consumer-facing software has
decayed dramatically in talent, in output, and in productivity; the $100,000
college degree that everyone was required to obtain, and to accumulate debt
for, was merely a signaling mechanism, rather than a certification of any
technical ability; a huge swath of programming tutorials, programming books,
and organizations are basically fooling themselves into believing they’re
doing productive work, when in fact they’re shuffling around bits of memory
for personal pleasure and gratification; some people who call themselves
“programmers” are not doing programming; some people who do program should
not be producing software for others; and plenty more.
But none of that needs to matter. For some, it’s more important that they
personally find themselves comfortable, and so they choose to prioritize the
programmer over the product.
Because Handmade programmers—among others who’d like to change the course
of software for what they see as the better—are operating not in the
marketplace of ideas, but rather the marketplace of ideals, it’s crucial
that they understand that they’re not involved in rational debate, but the
Internet equivalent of ideal-based tribal conflict. And indeed, this is why
“technical discussions” about—say—programming languages are virtually
never conducted nor won with technical arguments. Data is never collected,
assertions are never scientifically justified, and promises to investigate
further scientifically are conveniently delayed—permanently.
But notice that arguments about technologies—presumably battling for
adoption, social acceptance, and popularity—are not only empirically not
about rationality, but definitionally cannot be about rationality. A beginner
who knows nothing about programming cannot select an ecosystem or technology
based on rational arguments, because they’re removed from the technical
context which makes such arguments meaningful. They can only select by
second-degree metrics of qualities they care for—popularity, what someone
seems to produce with said technology, how quickly they produce it, the unique
qualities of that production as opposed to those of others, and so on.
In short, for those who want more prevalence of the “software craft”, in
which responsible programmers are more akin to a homemade woodworker than a
corporate slave, the battle over social dynamics and human motivation are
paramount.
In such a battle, there is much wisdom to be gained from Handmade Hero—its
initial justification of itself was a value proposition, not a logical
argument. Its community’s idols, its leaders, and its followers came across
as dismissive and polarizing because they loved their craft, and because that
was what was most important. That behavioral characteristic was responsible
for motivating the community, and for promoting human action by those within
the community. They wanted good software, and they knew how to make it, and if
others wanted to produce crappy software, fine, but it was simply unacceptable
for inadequacy to be the industry’s default.
Therefore, there is in inextricable link between the fire, passion,
inflammation—the “toxicity and dismissiveness”—and the prevalence of
the values. The former is what drives the latter. To expect the latter to
arise detached from the former is to ignore the true causal relationship
between the two.
Furthermore, the public fire, passion, and polarization is the most useful
tool in promoting the value system. In acknowledging that the “software
craftsman” perspective—the Handmade perspective—is not logically defined
but ethically defined, it can assert itself aesthetically. It can loudly
proclaim that there is a better way to make software, and it can loudly
denounce the work of its opponents. In doing so, the Overton window about
software is shifted. The average programmer becomes exposed to a wide variety
of value systems, and of value frameworks about programming. As such, his null
hypothesis about, for instance, libraries, one’s ability to write systems
from scratch, one’s dependence on vast forests of middleware and abstraction
layers, is changed.
With the ethical system’s public presence, the default probability of
certain courses of action change. Maybe it is better to write systems from
scratch. Maybe operating with care as a responsible engineer produces not only
much better, but much more fulfilling results. Maybe the world improves with
such software. Maybe we improve, if we hold ourselves to that higher standard.
Ethical systems win not by rational debate, but by hoisting their underlying
aesthetic on a banner, and going to battle. Ethical systems which fail to step
foot onto the battlefield are not winning by avoiding the “silly game” of
tribal conflict—they are dying with their foolish believers, who mistook
their cowardice for ascension above the human condition.
In short, the side which thinks itself above the human condition—and indeed,
the need for public struggle between ethical systems, and the need to loudly
proclaim one’s aesthetics and goals—will lose to the side which is
dedicated to victory, even if through tribal warfare.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing. Thanks for reading.
-Ryan
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧══════════════════════════════─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
--- #20 fediverse/1181 ---
═══════════════════════════════════════════════────────────────────────────────────
@user-171
Hi, I wanted to say that all the posts you boost significantly improve my time
on the fediverse. I appreciate you and value you, and my feed is made more
engaging due to the things you find interesting enough to share. Thank you.
┌─────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ similar │ chronological │ different │
╘═════════╧╧════════════════════════════════════════───────────────────────────────────┘
|