CHAPTER 17

"Apologies to Richard Feynman"

p. 376

JavaScript creator Brendan Eich: New York Times, December 2020.

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Imposter Syndrome is a thing in code. Even top-shelf coders claim it. Nicholas did once. Christ.: This is what Nicholas wrote me after reading this passage:

still does. ;-). Honestly, 'when they find out I'm actually an out-of-practice tuba player...' is always at the back of my mind. It's not that impostor syndrome ever goes away, but you get used to it, and develop a broader and deeper perspective because of it. I wonder if this has anything to do with left/right brain ways to pay attention to the world...? For example, I know many coders who appear to lack impostor syndrome, and coincidentally lack empathy, compassion and social skills.

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Most coders will tell you GitHub is a little like JavaScript: Or as the Australian developer and JavaScript artist Dmitry Baranovskiy has it, "JavaScript's global scope is like a public toilet. You can't avoid going in there but try to limit your contact with surfaces when you do."

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I decommissioned the venerable Bash command line language in favor of a newer rival called Zsh: Two excellent online guides held my hand through the process. These were courtesy of Carlos Roso and Tom Nelson. Thanks, guys: you made my world a better place for a few days. Another I've since found useful is by Remo Hoeppli and can be found here.

like the blockchain, Git is a supple assemblage of established cryptographic ideas: Here, for the first time, I am struck by the extent to which our computer operating systems mimic the form of paper. Everything on a hard drive is contained within metaphoric "files" that might contain reams of instruction for the machine or a single line of code redirecting to another file. Which could seem a trivial observation but is not. If we're having a problem with our software, it likely exists within a file somewhere. And of course there is nothing even remotely resembling a file inside a computer: this is all part of a grand metaphor aimed at nothing more than giving us a way to think about a machine that would otherwise be completely inscrutable to us.

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forming and reforming like a murmuration of starlings: Starlings are very broadly distributed around the world and for anyone who's never experienced the wonder of seeing a murmuration of them, it's one of the most extraordinary and beautiful sights nature has to offer. There are lots of videos on YouTube and they're well worth a look. Here are some I like.