Thank you, James Hague, for your article You Can’t Sit on the Sidelines and Become a Philosopher. I got a lot out of reading it, because I identified myself in it. Specifically in this paragraph:
There’s another option, too: you could give up. You can stop making things and become a commentator, letting everyone know how messed-up software development is. You can become a philosopher and talk about abstract, big picture views of perfection without ever shipping a product based on those ideals. You can become an advocate for the good and a harsh critic of the bad. But though you might think you’re providing a beacon of sanity and hope, you’re slowly losing touch with concrete thought processes and skills you need to be a developer.
I recognise in myself a lot of the above, writing long, rambling, tedious histories; describing how others are doing it wrong; and identifying inconsistencies without attempting to resolve them. Here’s what I said in that last post:
I feel like I ought to do something about some of that. I haven’t, and perhaps that makes me the guy who comes up to a bunch of developers, says “I’ve got a great idea” and expects them to make it.
Yup, I’m definitely the person James was talking about. But he gave me a way out, and some other statements that I can hope to identify with:
You have to ignore some things, because while they’re driving you mad, not everyone sees them that way; you’ve built up a sensitivity. […] You can fix things, especially specific problems you have a solid understanding of, and probably not the world of technology as a whole.
The difficulty is one of choice paralysis. Yes, all of those broken things are (perhaps literally) driving me mad, but there’s always the knowledge that trying to fix any one of them means ignoring all of the others. Like the out of control trolley, it’s easier to do nothing and pretend I’m not part of the problem than to deliberately engage with choosing some apparently small part of it. It’s easier to read Alan Kay, to watch Bret Victor and Doug Engelbart and to imagine some utopia where they had greater influence. A sort of programmerpunk fictional universe.
As long as you eventually get going again you’ll be fine.
Hopefully.
