Notices by 🇳🇴 Thor — backup account (thorthenorseman@octodon.social), page 43

@MightyBigCar I saw this stuff as quite glamorous, knew little about large scale data processing, and wouldn't have been interested in it if somebody had shown it to be, because that was "boring stuff for businesses".

I admit that, to a certain extent, I still feel this way deep down, but you don't make money by only doing fun things...

@MightyBigCar What I looked up to at the time was demoscene groups, and of course, if you were going to do multimedia programming in the 1990s, C or C++ was where it was at. I had zero interest in computing as a formal subject at the time. I just wanted to make my computer do audiovisually impressive stuff, and learn how to interface it with external circuits. One of the projects I did at the time was to read the button state on a NES controller by attaching it to a parallel port.

If you're a hacker who likes to stay close to the metal, you're obviously going to view C and Rust as great things, but if you're doing things that more closely resemble formal computer science, like processing structured data sets, you're obviously going to view Lisp or Haskell as the pinnacle of software development.

This can also be viewed as a schism between academic formalists and pragmatist hackers.

And I figured you'd start out with a high level language to simply grasp programming, and as you got more comfortable with bit banging and optimisations, you'd code exclusively in a low level language, and that would be the pinnacle of your programming career. However, I've gradually come to realise that many people don't attach any particular cred to C skills, and will in fact sometimes view it as one of the early languages that they since abandoned.

The schism is between people who maintain that low level languages like C are superior, and those who maintain that high level languages like Lisp and Pascal are superior. In my head, this wasn't a schism. I had the high level languages in the "easy for beginners" category and the low level ones in the "used by the pros" category.

I have recently become aware of a major cultural schism between programmers: Unlike most hackers I've met, Lisp developers don't perceive a transition from Pascal to C as a step up on the programming ladder. Every developer I talked to on IRCnet #coders back in the late 1990s was absolutely adamant that C was the shit and that I should drop Pascal. The other day, I was told, with equal conviction, by people on FreeNode #lisp, that Pascal is in fact the superior language.

Being vague about your gender seems to be a recurring theme on Mastodon. I'm just going to assume that everyone's an Apache attack helicopter and leave it at that.

This Norwegian couple, convicted of complicity to murder in the infamous Orderud case, since released from prison, are not trying to copy American Gothic. Not at all...

@CobaltVelvet One of the reasons why I love animals is that they don't conceal their intentions. Small children are also adorable, because they're so terribly bad at concealing their intentions, and their intentions are usually not very bad anyway.

@CobaltVelvet I would probably be able to do the same, however, neuroticism gets in the way of that (maintaining a lie is too stressful), and also, it makes me feel rotten, and I do not like feeling rotten. And yes, it's what's wrong with people.

I try to embrace the world for what it is to the best of my ability. Rejecting it broods too much hostility in me, and makes me depressed. So in a sense, there's a degree of acceptance that people behave in certain ways.

@CobaltVelvet Humans are storytellers at heart, and I tell stories that I believe in. Of course, many untrue stories are highly believable. I have believed in many untrue things because I told myself such a convincing story. The border between truth and falsehood becomes blurred, and I think this is true for most people if they are really honest with themselves. Storytelling is such an innate trait to us that we do it constantly without even noticing.

@CobaltVelvet I have this theory, and I don't know if it's right, because it's kind of self-serving, but...

Some people are skilled liars. I'm not, but I'm intelligent and my preferred mode of interaction is blunt honesty. However, as a human, I still need to convince people, so what I do is rationalise. I can say almost anything and it won't damage me, because I can always add further statements that put my previous ones in a better light.

@CobaltVelvet And if what you want to do is something I don't like, it's better to be upfront about it so we won't waste any time, because I'm not good at the "play along" game, etc.

@CobaltVelvet The reason I state differs from person to person, but the gist of it is that I'm already a cynic and very little will horrify me, so please just cut the bullshit.

@CobaltVelvet He has been frank with me in telling me that he's not actually interested in the tech that he wants his startup to develop and is mainly in it for the money. I have this thing I do where I tell people that I don't want to judge them, I just want to get them, because I'm here as a problem solver, not a player, and this seems to make at least some people let down their guard and be frank with me.

@CobaltVelvet I know a guy who works as a salesman. He always puts on this disarming smile and talks in a reassuring way, and I instantly mistrusted him. With time, I learned that he would do his best to keep his promises. He was aware of my distrust in him, and said "Yes, some salesmen are dishonest, but not the top guys, and I'm a top guy."
Of course, this is coming from the guy who wants me to trust him...

@CobaltVelvet Perhaps he only uses this ability to manipulate for good things, but the thing is that you basically just have to hope that they do that. They could just as easily be charlatans.