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new jynpost jyn.dev/i-m-just-hav...

it's been a few hours and this post finally unearthed a relevant memory back when i was a child, programming _was_ a competition. i was heavily encouraged (effectively forced) to participate in programming olympiads. i hated it so much, my career afterwards might be shaped as a reaction to that

which is to say: use libraries; document my shit; share it with others; actively collaborate instead of competing; seek out designs optimized for long term rather than "just to win this one 2 hour engagement"; probably some other things I forget

yes!! "collaborate instead of competing" is exactly the vibe i was trying to get across. all the capitalists might be competing but hardly any of the programmers i know are. i see you doing all these things and it's quite remarkable, i appreciate your work a lot :) i'm glad this post resonated.

thank you for the kind words! a point that i keep making repeatedly (though usually not on social media) is that You Can Be Like Me (If You Want). i did this to myself and others can too!! this is both a good and a bad thing, but that's what agency is for! 1/2

for better or worse, i regularly run into people who idolize me. this grosses me the fuck out on a personal level. it also makes me feel like i've failed, if only in the small task of "make the field more accessible". i do not know how to cope with this. it's been very not good for me 2/2

yeah, i ... don't know what to do about this. it happens a lot for me too, someone reacted this way when i was shitposting about tech.lgbt/@jyn/1156874... in a chat. for a bunch of my friends as well.

to try and explain what troubles me the most: i think probably the most insidious form of it (i recall three distinct cases just this month) is people attributing projects to me that i've had either minute contributions to, or no relation whatsoever, just because they think the vibe is similar

i was so completely unprepared for this (obviously; i don't know who even would) and it feels pretty bad to be effectively taking attention away from people who've done excellent, world-class work just because i... exist? like what does one even do at this point

i don't go to conferences, i don't have a personal website or a blog, i barely do anything that counts as "self-promotion"; i feel it's quite unfair to be treated like this despite this all

people do not get that it's not a "passing interest topic" it's a "special interest topic"

like, it's no secret that the key to getting good at things is to do things a bunch, but it is a little less obvious that you gotta enjoy being bad at a thing if you wanna be good at it

this is exactly the trouble i have with piano 🥲