Transistorized

Raking Over Old Tweets From 2008 From Someone Who Doesn’t Even Exist Now

Last year, a Ruby programmer called why the lucky stiff disappeared. Not being part of the Ruby community, the whole story still fascinated me; see the posts Eulogy to _why and The Impermanence, Karma, and Bad Behavior of Why The Lucky Stiff for two opposing views on the subject.

The other day, I decided to see whether there had been any sign of him. Short answer: no. Long answer: no, there hasn’t. But in my travels, I noticed this tweet from him, which a lot of people seem to like:

“when you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow & exclude people. so create.”

It’s such a deliciously seductive idea. And yet it’s so fundamentally wrong.

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Happy New Year. HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Hey. I’m John. This is my new hangout, innit. If you know me from my writing on Ganymede & Titan or Noise to Signal, then hello. If you don’t, then you may be in for a nasty surprise.

Got a few plans for this place, but I’ll fill you in as we go along. Let’s get started, shall we?

Oh, and if anybody wants to complain about me using -ize instead of -ise, then I point you towards the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s definitely not because I rather pathetically think -ize looks cooler and more technological. No.