Farewell to Github
After having spent nearly two years as a refugee from Unix development, working in the web like most folks are consigned to do, I have come to believe that a few of my assumptions were wrong.
Table of Contents
1 Ruby Ain't So Bad
Having dabbled in Ruby here and there, I've grown to like what it is. Sure, it's easy to criticize any language for the things that it's not (a thing I've learned to not do anymore since embarking on my adventure with funky) but for the things that Ruby is, I find it to be a rather admirable entry into the interpreted scripting language competition. There are many things about Ruby that I wish Python did.
The problem with Ruby is the world of gems and Rails.
2 GUI's Ain't So Bad
I've always held that the GUI has its place and that it's overly valued. I still believe that's true. But I also believe that while I was saying that, I grossly under-valued GUI development as a potentially rewarding experience.
I've had some fun building GUI's now. GUI's that I'm still convinced didn't need to exist but it was rather fun putting the engineering mind to use in so squishy and artistic a domain of problems.
I've even come to appreciate some GUI's that I may've had knee-jerk contempt for.
3 Github is horrible
Firstly, the GUI of github is obstructive, cumbersome, and an enemy to good source code management. It offers nothing that you can't also get for free from a linux VM on AWS and offers none of the good build tools you could make for miniscule effort on the same free thing.
Socendly, github is a social network. It is to good software as Twitter is to good literature. It's a culture that favors the generation of code for the sake of generating code. This makes jokes like FizzBuzz Enterprise Edition perfectly at home there.
I've removed all my repositories from github. It's now just a means for me to cooperate with other peoples' projects. It's not a home for my own. As time goes on, I believe I'll eek out some tools that I wish github had and I'll be happy to be without the artifacts of its weirdness in my work-flow.
4 E-mail is Worse
In my day, I've leveled a lot of scorn at the web. It's insecure and makes me want to cut myself when I think about it but as far as protocols go, SMTP is way worse. Every time I turn around, I find myself aching to get rid of e-mail.
People don't really use it for communication much anymore but for some reason, we're all completely entrenched in this as a bloaty password resetting utility.
This is one of those pet projects that always creeps into my mind. Like the way some people fetishize over isomorphic rendering as a legitimate way to engineer web pages. It's a concept that haunts me and makes my solution glands enflame and secret their spurious, uncontrolled geysers of thought.
5 Ishy's Brain's now NIH-tastic
After having suffered a great deal of gem install abuse from other developers, I've got this incoherent disdain for the vast majority of other software. I'm back in the mind-set that drove me to create this little blog system made of bailing wire, chewing gum and shell scripts.
Your features offend me. Your magic pains me. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to be a little bit of a software hermit.