What do I owe you as a writer?
Published on 2024-09-11
It's kind of wild to think that this used to be a place where I would churn out an article every day with minimal proof reading. I went a single day without having found the time and energy to publish something and thus started an inevitable and seemingly irreversible decline until everything I write needed to be another "Resurrect an ancient pagan weather god with TensorFlow in 10 easy steps" lest it get put on the chopping block.
Anyway, I've been working on an article called "The Michelin three-star restaurant of computer coding" about the Linux kernel, the way we talk about it and its consequences. I have a really hard time writing negatively about people… when I do, I take it super seriously. And in the case of the Linux kernel, it is indeed very hard to not be critical of a lot of the stuff that comes out of that community. So, it would have needed to be another "Resurrect an ancient pagan weather god" out of necessity or it would have been a complete miss.
"Resurrect an ancient pagan weather god" got written entirely in one sitting. "The Michelin three-star restaurant of computer coding" wasn't. Well, I finished it in one sitting, but when I did I decided it needed a lot more work. That was a week ago, and now I feel like it's wayyyy too far over the cost-benefit curve to be worthwhile, so it's probably going to sit in my drafts for all of eternity. Somewhere on the shelf next to "JavaScript, The Web, and Undiagnosed Derealization-Depersonalization Disorder" and "Copilot is the peak oil of high technology".
I guess it's not all that surprising "Resurrect an ancient pagan weather god" was written in one sitting; basically everything I've published here was written in one sitting. In fact, if I don't finish an article in one sitting there's like a 98% chance it's never getting published. Taking more than one day to write an article almost immediately puts it too far over the cost-benefit curve. And this is fine, I think; I enjoy writing a lot more when it's long form, but not too long form as to take more than an hour or two to write.
Not that I ever hold myself accountable to answer the questions posed in my article titles, but if I had to answer the question "what do I owe you as a writer," the answer almost needs to be "little to nothing" or else I'll go a few more years without updating my gemlog and website.
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