Increasingly convinced houses only exist in two states: brand new and invisibly needing repair, lived in and visibly needing multiple repairs. This adage may apply to societies too.
We don't have to agree about code style
Will we ever come to agree on writing code?
Ruby folks like short methods. One-liners even; maybe for their concision, maybe to show off their language and code golfing skill.
JavaScript folk like often like a bit more heft in their functions. No matter how good a function name is, logic is easier to understand if it's all in one place.
Despite the mechanical similarities of this sample size of two languages, programming communities have chosen very different styles. This has been happening for decades, since the beginning. It will probably always happen.
As sure as Keith Richards sounds different than George Harrison or Pete Townsend, developers will disagree on the structure and little details of code. Like music, like code.
Luckily, now we have pretty printers and code formatters like prettier, gofmt, rustfmt, or RuboCop. This is a welcome advance from even ten years ago, when some code reviews could bog down in "there's an extra whitespace here" or "this function seems too short, can we merge it with its callers?"
We don't have to agree, we just have to act like professionals when it comes to the little things.
It's 2019 and I'm signing my jokes like its 2019
A stranger walks into an elevator. I say “how about this weather?!” They smirk, or let out a small laugh. It’s easy to think, “I am funny guy!” But: that’s not a joke, it’s not funny. It’s just small talk and politeness in action. I am not, actually, the funny guy in this scenario.
When I was fourteen, I was really into standup comedy. I managed to find a club above a bowling alley that let me do a 2 minute set. The only constraint was that I couldn’t work blue. So I wrote two minutes of jokes, performed it a couple times, got a few laughs, and that was that. I figured out that I could get in front of people and tell some jokes, and I didn’t need to rely on slapstick cursing to do it.
Also, I was fourteen and surrounded by teenagers. Teenagers make a lot of jokes at each other’s expense, because they’re cruel, don’t know better, and aren’t practiced humorists. I had experienced my share of being the subject of those jokes and decided I didn’t want to be that kind of funny. Eventually, I came to the formulation that the best jokes aren’t at someone else’s expense.
As random things in one’s youth go, these two were pretty formative. I decided that if you can’t get a laugh without cursing or making a joke at someone’s expense by punching down, you weren’t actually funny.
Turns out these principles are pretty handy for the world we live in (and have always lived in, but some the future is not evenly distributed, etc.)
You can work blue, you can demean other people, you can say what’s really on your mind, and you can punch down. You may get laughs, but they’re because people are sympathetic to your anger or cruelty. Or, maybe you’ve been bombing so long they’re just relieved you said something almost decent and the laugh to diffuse the situation. But, that’s not funny.
When a joke misses, when a standup flops, it doesn’t mean we’ve become a humorless or prduce society. None of this means the end of humor or satire. It means we’re going to separate the really excellent humorists from those who are merely humor-adjacent.
Who has two thumbs and is pretty excited for Enumerable#to_h and the proc composition/chaining stuff in Ruby 2.6! 👍👍
Which came first: the theory of productivity or the Singularly Great Work?
Point: GTD and XP are both based on what worked Really Well for One Singularly Productrive person. Counterpoint: we all need our own theory of what might work for us personally before we get started.
In honor of Ms. Jackson’s imminent induction into the Rock Hall of Fame: is Rhythm Nation 1814 a concept album? 🤔 ✋🖐️✋
Fortnite Creative looks like a combination of private servers and exposing most of the map building tools through a clever game item. Seeing as how nothing in Fortnite should work, on paper, I’m excited to see what folks do with it!
In lieu of coffee, I took a five minute walk yesterday when I hit the mid-afternoon groginess. This was at least as effective, if not more than a coffee. 100% success rate, would recommend! 😉
I like how the module systems in ES6 and Clojure solve the “where the heck did this function come from?" problem. I’m optimistic that adding some kind of module system to Ruby can make working with Rails and large apps even more pleasant!
The New Yorker’s “Touchstones” essays on classic albums are quite good. The inline samples of Missy Elliott’s musical references and supercuts of other artists borrowing Janet Jackson’s chair dance are a great evolution of online music writing. (There’s also one on Nirvana 🤷♂️)
Wherein a mind is kept clear(er)
A couple things making me feel more productive lately:
Jot down a theme for the day: at the beginning or end of the day, I make up some kind of near-platitude to help me focus and get stuff done. Recently: “Hack like a writer”, “Finish like a shipper”, “Focus on code”. They’re a bit hustle-y, nearly cringe-y, and function only to get me back on track should I field a bunch of curveballs.
“Sync" written notes to a daily page: usually after lunch and before I wrap up work for the day, I transcribe any notes/sketches/todos/etc. I wrote down, on pen and paper, to a note (in Bear). This seems to help me keep a clear head and not get overwhelmed on hectic days.
A couple things that feel right but haven’t “stuck” as habits yet:
Set out clothes for tomorrow before I go to bed: check the weather, set out what I’ll wear tomorrow. I often forget, but when I don’t I thank myself the next day.
One big thing, a dozen or so little things: I don’t think I’ll go so far as eschewing a productivity/todo app, but using One Thing as a guideline when organizing my tasks often helps me reduce implausible lists to tractable plans.
Bobs: What would you say it is you do around here?
Me: I curate and repost cute animal memes from various Slacks into our company Slack’s pets channel.
Bobs: This guy’s a straight shooter with upper management written all over him.
Currently enjoying: What Now from Sylvan Esso. Love the edge on the lyrics and the shape of the synth sounds.
Ruby library designs based on plugins and/or extensive module composition make me worried I’m going to spend a lot of time understanding the flow of control between modules (e.g. CarrierWave, AuthLogic).
I’d rather something that’s already integrated with “common” problems of coupling. I have a lot more experience troubleshooting those and don’t have to “play computer” so much. 🤷♂️
Its never a bad time to educate the kids about their rock and roll heritage
Speaking of rowdy Springsteen: found this anachronistic and slightly surprising performance of “Ramrod" from the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards.
Presumably he was out promoting The Rising, a sincere collection of 9/11 songs. Nonetheless, I guess he decided it was a good time to educate the kids about their rock and roll heritage.
"Maximum theoretical sincerity"
Pitchfork: Talking Head: Remain in Light
By 1980, the conflict in music between what was thought and what was felt was in full cry. As disco continued to monopolize music you could dance to, rock reached a point of maximum theoretical sincerity. Pink Floyd’s The Wall, possibly the least ironic recording of all time, was the No. 1 album in America for 15 weeks. It was finally unseated by Bob Seger’s Against the Wind, which was knocked out of the top spot by Billy Joel’s Glass Houses. Ostensibly, these were works of deep sentiment. To a generation of punks, though, they were rock at its most bloodless and calculating. … The central insight of Talking Heads—what made them not just weird but exciting and relevant—was that their art-house affectation felt more sincere than a lot of American culture.
Completely unrelated but somewhat adjacent: the unseen magic trick Bruce Springsteen pulls off, for me, is to thread the needle between sincere storytelling, grandiose maximalism, and bar band raucousness.
Without Afrobeat, though, there is no Remain in Light. The central role of West-African polyrhythms in the album’s sound draws attention to a curious aspect of its longevity. Could a group of white musicians playing Afrobeat be taken sincerely in 2018? Virtually every genre of American music, including punk and especially rock, is taken from black forms. Afrobeat is not African-American, though; it’s straight-up African. The 21st-century sensibility finds something problematic in a band of white art-school types playing West African music. Earlier this year, the Beninese musician Angelique Kidjo released her own version of Remain in Light, which NPR described as “an authentic Afrobeat record” compared to the original. Given how closely Kidjo followed the Talking Heads’ arrangements, this description raises questions about what we mean when we say “authentic.”
This is a great review and a pretty good read.
Elvis Costello is a jewel unstuck in time, simultaneously timeless and of his time. His most recent album, no exception. pitchfork.com/reviews/a…
Wherein writing the dang memo is the easy part
Seth Godin, Get your memo read:
The unanticipated but important memo has a difficult road. It will likely be ignored.
I find this is one of the unexpected challenges of taking on engineering leadership responsibilities. First off, you have to do all the writing things right: use a clear and concise subject, say all the important things up front (probably in bullets!), and develop the important details in thoughtful prose. Even if you nail it there, some people just won’t read, retain, and/or care about the information you have conveyed to them.
Hence: Always Be Repeating Yourself. Always.