Process

Seeing as my blog gets practically no real attention. It is a place where I get to air thoughts as I wish. To the deep deep space, through numerous protocols and packets of “words” flow. Into bits… a tiny tiny voice. When I wish, days in a row or months apart. About lovers or technical details. It doesn’t matter. What matters is the thought must be put to words sent into the world, into a place that never forgets. This really is a place for my thoughts to live. I write because it keeps me sane. It helps me to articulate my thoughts and work through what I’m thinking about.

I wonder then reading about the “old ones” the ones before. The men and women who practiced this dark arcane art called programming. I’ve spent the last few hours pouring over the Jargon File. It’s odd. Uncanny. Strange. The personality of your typical hacker seems to be something lovely to my imagination. I see myself in that. The things I think, the way I behave. Short of perhaps one key quality of a hacker “intelligence” not quite sure if I’m smart enough to do this.

Another thing that worries me? Do I like programming? Or is it just a way to make money in my spare time?

I have been enrolled in this tutelage for 8 months now. I’ve picked up self declared wizardry of two languages, two sorta languages, countless workflow tools and practices and my baby steps into my first framework. I’ve become familiar with technical terms. I’ve gotten accustomed to the unreasonable binge learning of things. Why?

I have tried to learn to program before.

Back when I got my first laptop. Back in my late teens. I quit.

It was interesting and “cool” to learn. I picked up a little js got bored, switched to python, somewhere down the line it got painfully hard to juggle learning so much so I just lost interest. I didn’t learn because I could make money. I didn’t know I could back then. It just seemed like something to try and I got bored. It got hard very quickly.

Which isn’t wrong? Is it? Programming isn’t for everyone. It’s okay to lose interest in things. My odd affection with philosophy and learning generally has nothing to do with any sort of benefit or reward system. Or strictly speaking it isn’t extrinsic or its value isn’t material. I read philosophy because it is interesting. I read all sorts of books because I cherish knowledge and hold it in high esteem. I haven’t read philosophy in long while. Doesn’t mean I don’t love it. I like to read.

Intelectual stimulation can be fickle and at times obsessive at the same time?

Take my interest in the humble game of chess. I really deep down within me think chess is fun to play. I enjoy it. I can get lost in it given the right opponent.

See the activity in itself is the reward of partaking in it.

Can I say the same of the code I write?

Yes and no.

I have had such a troubled young life.

Is it not the greatest sin then? To be one who holds and values intellectualism above all else be told I have no worth?

This is the tragedy. This was the engine that secretly drove the countless hours in front of this screen. I got “bad grades”. The singular point that held my personality together was and in larger part still is my ability to excel at an intellectual activity. I didn’t know what to think. I still don’t. I don’t know if it’s me or the education system. However, I had a point to prove. I wasn’t completely worthless and inept.

I simply needed a medium to convey this.

Somehow in the middle of all of this? I was recovering from a negative feedback loop that sent me down a troubling spiral downward. Somehow, I changed. Odd isn’t it. Then again this was a conscious change. I wanted to be so I became. I just couldn’t control all the aspects of who I became and the choices I had to pick from. I didn’t like the feeling. See my early teens are vastly different from my late teens.

At 16 or 17 and at 18-20. ALOT happened. A lot I’ve forgotten. The little I do remember seems like… a lot. Do all kids have such experiences? I don’t know. I met a lot of people, forgot a lot of people. Met girls, did stuff, got high, partied. It’s not as fun as it may come across… yet there were rare moments. Moments that if you blinked too quickly you’d miss. Transient beautiful moments that you remember but never quite accurately and always differently each time you remember it.

Then again is the night life really so great?

Wondering what you’re doing with your life half the time? Battling depression, faking smiles and pretending extremely “plain” conversations with certain types of people interest you? Girls sure… until they get bored. Petty gossip, some quiet decision testing your values, hurting someone somehow and ultimately? Boredom.

Don’t get me wrong. People. All people are complex and have depth. All kinds of people. This point I think deserves clarification. While people can bore you this is by no fault of theirs or their intellect. If you listen closely, you observe, pay enough attention to details. You notice contradictions. Like their playing a sort of social script unable to access the individual within because they’re scared to go looking. So they often bury it. Conformity erodes at the soul of an individual.

Popularity demands simplicity.

Complexity is not for the social arena. So it seems at the surface, but there is always intricate complexity. The multiplication of people abstract the concept of an individual so much that you become 2-Dimensional. Then again, when we first meet with someone aren’t we always stereotyping them? Making quick judgement calls and trying to make an impression or give off one? Before the individual forms in the mind, isn’t there a classification of this individual? Student, working man, boy, girl.

It’s hard to be popular no? Because by definition the more people know you, the less of “you” people know you.

It’s hard to have a rich intimate conversation with 1,000 people no?

This is what happens when you interact with people en masse. Especially in person. Online interactions simplify the complexity a bit. So much so that it can be managed. There’s less information to process and the possible actions while many are remarkably less.

The more people you interact with, the more you see “patterns” of behaviour and personality. Whether this is the result of the social environment or some innate characteristic who knows? who cares? is the pattern factual? who knows. The mind has many amazing tricks. People become two dimensional. You become two dimensional or at least you try and appear so. You play the social game. Believe me when I say it’s a game. With make believe rules and unlike chess but more like game theory in which the possible actions are much more complex and not bounded to formal definition. You win enough times, you loose enough times. Ride enough highs, enough lows that you achieve a sense of balance.

Experience is a strange teacher.

A mystical and beautiful teacher. It can’t unfortunately teach you everything. That’s why you’ve got analytical thinking. So you don’t have to experience it all. If you could however, that would probably be the most effective? Maybe it’s effective because it can’t be used that way.

I don’t know.

Do I enjoy the process of software development?

Enough to keep writing code?

Not for profit? but…

intellectual reward?

Blasphemy. Intellectual reward won’t feed me.

I’m in my final year. If not for a deadly pandemic and a national strike I would be in school by now. Probably cramming some meaningless formula that would lose all relevance once I left the confines of that horridly repressive institution that upholds the most twisted values I have ever witnessed and experienced. I do not recommend you attend such an institution. It will rob you of your youth.

I need a job.

I need money.

I need to buy bread.

I need to eat.

I have internet costs.

Caffeine is expensive.

Electricity apparently isn’t free either.

Money is a practical matter. Not an ideological one.

I need code to pay for this.

I don’t know how.

If not code? Then what?

Then… I’ll know I’m well and truly fucked.