"I fixie wixied the JSON-api fucksy wucksie!"
Also, first chapter of my book!
Hey friends! I’ve been taking a break from Left Align so that I could finally finish the first draft of my book. Now that that’s done, I’ll probably get back into making regular posts here. My goal is to be able to post a draft chapter of my book each week, so we’ll see how that goes. The first chapter is down below, so feel free to scroll to the end if that’s all you wanted to see.
I fixie wixied the JSON-api fucksy wucksie!!
Unfortunately, this screenshot is fake. But the same user opened a different issue that I think is just as good.
The lads at Hacker News are having some normal ideas again
Link.
On the surface, this looks like a terrible idea. Developers would get paid more precariously, coworkers would be fighting each other to survive, and there’d be negative incentive to keep systems maintainable. But once you look deeper, the ingenuity of this idea becomes clear.
Imagine a future where developers form syndicates with the express purpose of making more work for each other. You could skill up as an anti-developer, and get paid by other members of the syndicate to make intentionally horrible PRs. Finally, people like me would become valuable members of the dev community.
I welcome our glorious ancap future.
Speaking of cyberpunk dystopias…
If you’re reading this newsletter, then you probably have a complicated relationship with technology. On one hand, computers are pretty cool. On the other hand, they’re used to do some really evil shit. Like putting ads in the sky.
As someone who lives in the city, I haven’t seen stars in a really long time. The last time I went camping was a few years ago, and even then there was so much light pollution that I couldn’t get a clear look at the night sky. I don’t really know where I’m going with this, but I guess the idea of seeing more Verizon drones in the sky than stars makes me kinda sad. It’s not the kind of technological progress that I dreamed of when I first started my comp eng degree.
Recently through my organizing work, I’ve come across a younger developer who’s still in uni and searching for his first internship. He’s really excited, and keeps sending me snippets of code that he thinks are cool and shares with me whenever he’s learned a fun new thing about computers.
It kinda annoys me. He’s not doing anything wrong, obviously, and I’m happy for him. But it’s kinda like there’s this puppy bouncing and yapping around, being really happy just being a puppy, and you don’t know how to tell it that someone’s about to throw it into a meat grinder. You can’t, because the puppy doesn’t actually understand the concept of the meat grinder, it’s having too much fun being a puppy.
And lately he’s started posting about how badly his tech interviews are going and how he’s starting to feel disheartened, and I tell him to keep going and that it gets better eventually. I think it does, for a lot of people, and I hope that it will for him.
Me, personally? I’d like to be alone in a cabin miles from civilization coding whatever the hell I want without any workplace hierarchies or Jira tickets. Maybe even see some stars.
Some good news:
“Substack's UI and 1Password just cost me $2,023”
You really have to read the entire post.
The gist of this is that 1Password found a hidden price input in Substack’s subscription page, and filled it in with Timmy’s credit card expiry date. So he ended up paying $2,023 for a newsletter subscription. The blog post is pretty funny, and shows a good example of how you shouldn’t do UI.
The book chapter!
Okay, so, down below is a link to a draft of the first chapter + intro of my book. If you haven’t heard about the book yet, it’s essentially a 100 page shitpost. Just my usual tech jokes but expanded into book format.
I’m actually really terrified of doing this, because I’ve been working on this book for a while now and it’s my first time properly sharing any of it. It’s also my first ever book. Negative feedback will probably crush me, but don’t worry, send it anyway!
This chapter satirizes the “learning to code” process. Other chapters will do different stuff, but this one intends to set the book up. I still need to fix the sentence structure and refine some of the jokes, but it’d be great to get eyes on it anyway.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UABkFeUdKMOjiU_Eob_dVnn9hfVCGlJ0/view
Let me know if it’s dorky, or trying too hard, or just not funny. Or, you know, if you like it you can tell me that too. No pressure. You can dm me on Twitter or write to contact@cainmaddox.com. If you give me feedback then when I release the book on a “pay what you want” scale you get to enter $0 without feeling guilty. Thanks!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/ctrlshifti
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Massive thank you to Somebody, Ian, Harrison and two anonymous supporters for tipping in the past few weeks. You’re the best!
Any typos in the above post are caused by bit flips and are not my fault.
Have shared this with fellow coders in the office, and we all want to know when we can pre-order the book.
Can't wait for the book to be finished. I actually laughed out loud reading this preview chapter.