Who knows what’s next? Certainly not Hacker News 1.
The only thing known is that we-who-are-reading-this-right-now are vaulted inexorably into a new year-long revolution. Because? Because orbital mechanics. Because gravity. Because whether we like it on not, we are still going to be welwalas in this second quarter of the 21st century. As surely as we are still going to be fist-bumping, and high-five-ing, and being ever so supportive on LinkedIn. 2025 is going to be our year. Hooah.
I have no idea where I’m going with this opening.
However I’m going, though…
I hope it is along the spiral of progress. I hope I get to overfly many of the waypoints of these Années folles of our lifetimes. But better, with style points for barrel rolls. Or different, at any rate.
Revolution is not just orbital, it seems to be happening to everything, everywhere, all at once. An alleged Summer of A.I. has befallen us (number three or more depending on how you count winters). Those who don’t get with The Program are going to be obsolete very soon. Allegedly.
Yet, why is it that I’ve been obsessing about the other, far more prosaic, 20th century concern; software application architecture, contextualised using ideas from the Clojure programming ecosystem (and incidentally, also the language itself). Why is it that I’ve been infinitely more obsessed with what I am learning, over what the machine is learning. The humble web application stack is done to death. Yet it is one’s current nerd-snipe / muse. Why?
Beats me. All I know is that my brAIn is loving it.
So. I wish us all the same… that we all get to obsess about something that animates us and spreads joy.
As well as makes us fabulously rich and insanely fit and stunningly good looking and famously successful and happily married with two Blue Ticks and… wait, I forgot we don’t do New Year’s resolutions at evalapply.org.
Because? Because all the action is in the ever-present-and-continuous intense Here and Now. Because though today and yesterday are “same-same but different”, the details vanish as soon as we zoom out a quarter century or two. Millennia melt into moments. Orbital mechanics remains orbital mechanics. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
So please, carry on happily obsessing as you were… and please send me long rambling emails about whatever that is; nerdy or not! As Bugs Bunny said “What’s cookin’ doc?”.
\\//_ Live Long and Prosper.