The spiritual side of computing


A little while ago, in replying to a toot by SDFer Shufei, I

mentioned, a little reluctantly, that I felt like since I switched

from using NetBSD as my everyday operating system to some flavour of

Linux, "I feel like - for genuine want of a better term - the

spiritual side of my computing experience has suffered for it". I was

very happy when she replied "I am flatly unironical and enthusiastic

about the spiritual dimensions of computing. So I grok what you mean.

It’s like gopher to web". I still don't quite feel comfortable using

"spiritual" like this, but that's just a personal hang-up (just like

how in my recent tree-climbing post[1] I felt like I understood and

would have shared Charlie Cunningham's feelings about that adventure

but would never have described them that way). I've decided I am

ready to really embrace the concept, though.

Somewhere amongst all the things Grant Petersen has written which I've

read, he says something really, really wonderful about how when you

are choosing tools that you are going to use for work, the efficiency

of that tool is really important, but when you are choosing tools that

you are going to use for fun, efficiency is totally unimportant and

it's absolutely okay and actually vital to choose the tools that make

you happy. In my mind, this idea is expressed fantastically in

whatever Grant wrote. Tomasino wrote something (about spinning wool?

About playing the flute?) sometime in the last six months (I couldn't

find it just now and it makes me sad, although it's kind of fitting)

which made me really want to post the quote from Grant in response,

but when I went hunting I couldn't find that either. I found

something in "Just Ride" which was close, but didn't seem as good as I

remembered. I dunno if I've just failed to re-find the original

quote, or if I just remember it as being better than it was, but it

resonated with me and has also helped me to make this realisation.

Even though I really enjoying programming and sysadminning and have

spent a lot of time and energy in my life doing both, I have decided

that I am really lucky and really happy that I have never been a

professional sysadmin and have only very briefly been a professional

programmer.

We usually think of professionals as being more knowledgable and more

experienced than amateurs, in computing and any other field. And in a

lot of ways, that's true. But it's also true that professionals are

very rarely afforded the privilege of being able to experience, or to

openly admit to experiencing, anyway, the spiritual side of the their

work. At the very least, they have to "put those feelings aside" and

make Sensible Decisions at work all day. It's true many professionals

have personal projects they work on in their spare time because they

love what they do. But I think that "fun work" is inevitably and

sometimes significantly influenced by attitudes and opinions and

skill sets formed while operating in "work work" mode.

When you're a Serious Programmer, working in the Real World, you have

no choice but to care a lot about keeping up with trends (technical

trends and marketing trends) and worrying about scalabilty (often to

"inhuman scale") and constantly trying to drive down costs. All of

these factors absolutely have to matter more than silly things like

whether or not something is elegant, or traditional, or appealingly

minimalistic, or environmentally friendly, or has a cute logo or fun

release songs. You need to manage "cattle, not pets".

I'm so glad I've never once had to do these things!

Screw that whole scene, my computers are my pets, and I like it that

way and nobody can make me change.

I still don't really know what a kubernete is and I DON'T CARE!

I don't need to and I shouldn't feel bad about not keeping up with the

latest trends in the industry because I'm not in the industry so it

straight up doesn't matter to me. I can compute in whatever manner

makes me happiest and it doesn't matter one iota whether or not it's

inefficient or whether or not it scales. I can make decisions on

entirely ideological grounds, or even purely whimsical grounds and

it's okay.

It's amazingly cathartic to realise and fully embrace this.

[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space:70/0/~solderpunk/phlog/world-class-tree-climbing.txt

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