yeah, I've come to terms that I mostly do programming-as-an-art and that includes how my code is structured, and I'm on exactly the same page.
In pragmatic business environments it's not worth the fuss but I never feel great about anything I make in those kinds of environments anyways, and I always appreciate being able to shine when there's no enforced code formatting.
I made a bunch of friends in the local rave & queer community, helped start organizations including founding a hackerspace, met the love of my life, and now am part of a very healthy community that has been helping me cope and get through this shitty tech sector hiring slump.
Taking breaks has been very good for my soul, and I've quieted the fear of instability with surrounding myself with people who I know will be there for me when things get rough.
It's surprising how cheaply you can survive when push comes to shove and you have to make concessions, live with roommates, live in small housing, going to the foodbank or getting on food stamps.
Although, runway is slowly dwindling and am unsure what's next for my future. I'm not too worried, though.
Sure, but the primary difference between what you're talking about is ecosystem lock-in vs file lockin.
both can be postured as a labor-saving measure, exposing user data to users is an additional burden on developers. Designing an extension system that is easy for other products to use is an additional burden on developers (& developer relations! And marketing! Other products won't just adopt your extension system willy-nilly)
But switching from obsidian to something else is so much easier on a file-level than say, google docs or whatever other super-proprietary system that's being used.
I'm very wary about adjusting my workflows to depend on flimsy or proprietary ecosystems. I don't really use vim with any plugins. I don't really use obsidian with any plugins, although I'm slowly trying to ease up to using a couple that would be big QOL improvements.
Striving for standard interfaces/workflows is a good thing, but I don't think emacs is that. vim isn't that. They've just cemented themselves as the de-facto.
I'm using vim bindings in obsidian, for what it's worth. I'm not re-learning a whole other set of keyboard shortcuts (although obsidian's is quite lacking)
As one of the founders of the hackerspace you've visited out in seattle & a fellow recurser that you might've heard about the space from, I can drop to you some of my notes & learnings from two years in of devhack.
the biggest piece of advice by far that I pulled from a bunch of european-style hackerspaces (& HacDC, my formative hackspace) has been: Just do it. Find a physical space, start doing meetups, promote it a bit and cool folks will find you.
We at devhack took a very word-of-mouth based approach to promotion and that has prevented what a lot of comments here are trying to mitigate in terms of attracting the wrong crowd too quickly -- although I think there's lots of value in creating a space which supports eccentric folks / ppl with diverse backgrounds.
Founding a hackspace is a very learn-as-you-go experience, has been very fulfilling and has had plenty of hiccups that we've had to react to as they come. The most important part is to have fun and create a fun space for you and your friends.
Also, put a roller rink in your space. very important and wish we had that
Omg so glad you saw the post! Thank you for responding and thank you for that amazing space it was such an inspiring visit! Didn't realize there were more Recursers in the mix over there but of course that makes sense.
I'm likely going to be switching into gear with the physical space towards the end of September but I'll try to find you on Zulip and say hello before then : )
I've had a lot of fun setting mixxx up for DJing on my steam deck, with fully scriptable (in javascript) USB hid bindings, I've been able to reverse engineer the steam deck's control schemes to be able to mix quite portably.
With mixed results, it kind of burned the spot by virtue of being talked about in too wide an audience but I think it's also important to make it known to the mainstream that this kind of stuff is happening.
All that's needed to make a rave happen is music & speakers, scale and quality is all configurable. Humans will always find spaces to congregate: whether it's their own houses, local parks, abandoned warehouses, industrial districts, or deep in the woods.
I hope we're not losing our drive to be around eachother and dance, it's been such a integral part of my life story (as a fairly young person!) and has let me find my people.
> Humans will always find spaces to congregate ... I hope we're not losing our drive to be around each other and dance, it's been such a integral part of my life story (as a fairly young person!) and has let me find my people.
I'm gonna dump a little bit with the blind hope that someone can explain what I'm feeling. Not meaning to disrespect you mjsir, but this thread just has the right context:
I'm in my 30s and I have never danced, I don't dance, I think of myself as not having the brain lobe for dancing. I've done choreographed dancing like tap dancing and pole dancing, but I don't dance dance. I don't want to dance, but people keep saying it's essential to the human experience. So I would prefer either dancing or knowing for sure that I don't need it, over my current state of anxious uncertainty.
I don't find places to congregate, I don't know if I've found my people at all, and I feel like my life story is incomplete when I come to these threads on the nerd computer-touching website and see people say that raves are so important. I'm a nerd's nerd, one of my fondest memories is staying up all night alone in my room playing with threads and sockets in Java as a teen. I've had 3 romantic partners, 1 asked me out, 2 I met on a dating site. I do not approach people in real life. I barely live in real life.
This feeling that I'm missing out on something and unsure if I want it, peaked earlier this year when I dated a girl who was just a hundred times cooler than me. A chill go-with-the-flow hippie literal surfer type. When I think about her I have to wonder what the fuck is wrong with me. She did not stick around, and I've been left with the sense that I'm living my entire life wrong.
Yes, but I'll just speak to the part about dancing: it is true that (a) many people find it fun and rewarding and (b) many people don't find it easy and/or natural a priori. However, given the right style, music, AND a few (or possibly many) months of deliberate practice to make it "click" in your brain, many people could move from category (b) to (a). Searching through this parameter space requires time and effort. This is a thread about EDM, and I spent some time trying to like EDM because it was cool, until I realized that it's not for me, and I have zero inclination to dance to it unless I'm on MDMA. On the other hand, swing, salsa, bachata ended up being absolutely my jam -- after months of deliberate practice, as none of these musical styles were super familiar to me at the outset.
For a lot folks, partnered dance forms are nothing short of life changing, and they tend to appeal to analytical introverts; if you haven't tried already, go sign up for your local lindy hop lessons, and keep your expectations low. There's no downside, at the very least you'll get some exercise.
There’s nothing wrong with you if you’re not into dancing. It’s 100% okay to be introverted and happy. Many people are. The only thing I would say is it might be worth the effort to try to get out and find some of your people, whoever they are. Feeling uncomfortable doing things like that is also totally normal, and imo sometimes feeling uncomfortable is an essential part of the human experience. I’m fairly extroverted and still feel awkward, anxious, or uncomfortable pretty regularly.
I would highly recommend talking this through with a therapist! I don't think anyone on the internet has the time/understanding/or context to tell you either way in any satisfying manner that would settle your confusion. It is never too late to introspect and learn about who you are as a person, and a therapist is a great sounding board at the very minimum.
Tons of people just go and imbibe in various things and just sway to the music or the beat. It really is a blank slate to make it what you want, and i think that's why its popular - many types of people all go to them for many different reasons.
I can relate with everything you have said and my life experience seems to be similar to yours. When I was younger in the 90s I forced myself to go clubbing a few times. I hated everything about it, frankly. Even so, I can't help but feel like I'm missing out on important life experiences when I read comments here.
But I think it's important to keep in mind that threads like these suffer from selection bias because, objectively speaking, most people in real life do not go clubbing or raving in their adulthood...
pydoc has saved me many times! And doesn't require me dropping down into a shell too. help() is still invaluable, especially in debug shells when tab completion isn't helping me as much as I'de hoped.
The culmination of my commmunity college's CS103 class was learning the ins and outs of an ISA called MARIE. only 8 instructions & an editor+simulator written as a java app.
I had a lot of fun spending most of my time in that class writing an entire development stack for that architecture: assembler, simulator, debugger, and eventually a very barebones forth!
In pragmatic business environments it's not worth the fuss but I never feel great about anything I make in those kinds of environments anyways, and I always appreciate being able to shine when there's no enforced code formatting.