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  1. WIREDCraig Mod4/6/2110 min
    10 reads4 comments
    8.7
    WIRED
    10 reads
    8.7
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    • BillEnkey2 years ago

      I think I understood what he was getting at - and if I did, it's mostly because that's how I see relational theory. If I'm missing something in real life (work, relationships, whatever), I just read something from Codd and it usually does not take long for whatever my problem was to resolve itself in some relational term. This is a real gem!

    • deephdave
      Top reader this weekTop reader of all timeScoutScribe
      2 years ago

      Therein lies part of the attraction: Moving through that jumble—with all of its perverted poetics of grep and vi and git and apache and *.ini—*and doing so with a fingers-floating-across-the-keyboard balletic grace, is exhilarating. You feel like an alchemist. And you are. You type esoteric words— near gibberish—into a line-by-line text interface, and with a rush not unlike pulling Excalibur from the stone you've just scaffolded a simple application that can instantly be accessed by a vast number of humans worldwide.

      • thorgalle
        Top reader this weekScoutScribe
        2 years ago

        Nice find! Relatable on many levels.

    • thorgalle
      Top reader this weekScoutScribe
      2 years ago

      The real joy of this project wasn’t just in getting the search working but the refinement, the polish, the edge bits. Getting lost for hours in a world of my own construction. Even though I couldn’t control the looming pandemic, I could control this tiny cluster of bits.

      This work of line-by-line problem solving gets me out of bed some days. Do you know this feeling? The not-wanting-to-emerge-from-the-covers feeling? Every single morning of the last year may have been the most collectively experienced covers-craving in human history, where so many things in the world were off by a degree here or a degree there. But under those covers I begin to think—A ha! I know how to solve server problem x, or quirk y. I know how to fix that search code. And I'm able to emerge and become human, or part human, and enter into that line-by-line world, where there is very little judgement, just you and the mechanics of the systems, systems that become increasingly beautiful the more time you spend with them. For me, this stewardship is therapy.

      I’ve been there a more than a few times. Being in a coding flow can be very engrossing for me, almost addictive. Indeed, an experience to sometimes get out of bed for (and not just in a state of depression!). It's fun to also have those experiences while working.

      Come to think of it, I was obsessively working on a coding project in June 2020, while I should have been just writing my thesis. I remember spending almost equal time on both. Maybe it was a response to the “languishing” of the pandemic. I think it helped.