List, Known, Stats

(Via Weekend Wordsmith: https://twitter.com/WkendWordsmith/status/1455444 574227374082)

I made a list.
Several, in fact,
and a spreadsheet.

I calculated and compared
amortized and weighed all of the
numbers and stats,
looking for the right answer.

Is this the right thing?
Is there a right thing?

Turns out
life doesn’t consist
in what is known,
but rather in what is guessed.
One unknown carefully balanced
against another,
we pretend we can tell
which one would fall.

I’m reading “the queen of air and darkness” by Poul Anderson, and I’m struck, certainly not for the first time, by how often science fiction authors choose not to question sexism in human society.

The job of the science fiction author, after all, is to question everything. From relativity, to the presence of non-human species, to the notion capitalism or government or whatever. But more often than not, science fiction hold on to the notion that men run Society, and women are the followers.

I just read the phrase “she’s one of the three women ever admitted to the Club” – a phrase that I expect in Dickens or Isak Dinesen or Somerset maugham, but not in futuristic science fiction.

I recognize, of course, that it’s a function of its time. Poul Anderson was writing in a time when these things seemed unquestionable. But he questioned light speed travel, and assumed that we would eventually have colonies on other planets.

It’s just fascinating to me what the human mind is capable of questioning and what it assumes as immutable fact.

This is also one of the reasons that I enjoy Tad Williams and NK Jemesin and other contemporary Sci Fi writers who do throw out all of these preconceived notions.

I wonder, though, what a reader Thirty or forty years from now will say about the writers of today, and the things that they seemed unable to challenge.

A few days ago I ordered “The Big Book of Small Python Projects” because of several reviews I’ve seen. I want to become more proficient in Python, and I know that it is pretty much impossible for me to learn any programming language unless I have an actual project to work on.

I’ve written a handful of small scripts with Python – stuff that automates aspects of my day job – but I haven’t had an opportunity to advance much beyond the basics. I need something that uses more complex data structures, since, to me, that’s the interesting part of a language, and what made Perl so useful and fun.

I’m only 3 or 4 chapters in, so I don’t have much to say yet, but here’s a few observations.

1. The biggest detriment to using this book is, unfortunately, my eyes. I stopped buying paper books a few years ago, even though I love books, because the fonts are just too small. This is particularly problematic when I’m sitting at my computer, because that’s when I wear my computer glasses, which are optimized for a screen 18 to 24 inches away from my eyes – which, in turn, makes it that much harder to read tiny font on paper.

One of the selling points of this book is that you type in the code, rather than copy-pasting it, and that this implants it in your brain much more firmly. As someone who grew up typing in programs from Atari Magazine, I can definitely attest to the efficacy of this approach.

But I cannot read the code. In particular, I cannot distinguish ” from ‘ and ; from : and . from , which all make typing in code fraught with errors.

And so I downloaded the code from the website, and I expect that this will greatly reduce the efficacy of having the book in the first place. I should have bought it on Kindle instead. And I probably knew that going in.

2. The projects are fun, interesting, and … kinda useless. I cannot imagine myself adapting any of them to other purposes. And it’s the adapting that helps me learn. But I’m still *very* early in the book, so I am almost certain that this will improve.

But I still, always, need a project that directly benefits me, in order to really learn to be a “native speaker” in a new language.

3. I am still a native Perl speaker. I think of things in Perl idioms. I miss some of the Perl syntax – especially regular expressions, and the multi-dimensional data structures. It’s going to take me a long, long time to be as adept at Python as at Perl, if that ever happens.

So, that’s it. I will say more later, once I’m further into the book.

Today I got kicked off of Freenode for trying to help someone.

Every part of that sentence has backstory. It’s… complicated.

I started using freenode probably in 1998 or 1999. It was the place to go when you wanted to discuss free software. That’s 23 years ago. Freenode has become synonymous with free software support.

I expect most of you are aware that a few weeks ago someone took over the freenode network for no readily discernible reason. And things have gone downhill since then.

Meanwhile, I’ve kept trying to do my job. Part of which is supporting the Centos user community and ensuring they get the answers that they need when they need them.

Most of us moved over to Libera chat pretty quickly after the Takeover occurred. But like I said, freenode is synonymous with open software. And so the general user population, who haven’t read all of the assorted news, still go to freenode when they want answers. Aye, there’s the rub. Because when they get there, they are met with a toxic, juvenile group of people who have no interest in helping them, and are really just there to stoke their own egos.

Imagine, if you will, that you have been hanging out in the same Cafe for 20 years. You know everybody there. They’re all kind, with their own weird idiosyncrasies. But you know that it’s a comfortable, safe place.

Then, one day, the entire management has changed. There’s a few familiar faces in the customers. But for the most part they’re all new. And they’re screaming at each other. Swearing, making Nazi jokes, or just generally being vulgar.

That’s how the freenode thing has been for me. I have been on freenode almost every day for more than 20 years. Now all of a sudden the people running the show are juvenile strangers who seemed to delight in cruelty.

So, while my banishment today was not unexpected, it was a sad, pathetic end to a long era. Somehow, we have allowed this community resource to be taking over by a narcissistic millionaire who just considers it his plaything, or a way to get petty revenge. Tragic and pathetic.

Today, someone asked a question, they waited a reasonable time for an answer, and I told them maybe they should look over on Libera.chat for their answer. That was deemed worthy of booting me off of the network where I have spent thousands of hours helping hundreds of people solve their software problems. For 20 years.