Clive Thompson

Taking note

April 14, 2023

As it happens, my journalism often requires I read a mountain of material. For any given Wired column, for example, I might read dozens of white papers, reports, and news articles. I’ll also do ten or twelve interviews and transcribe them. When I’m researching a longer feature for a magazine? This number quickly grows to scores of documents, and several dozen interviews. And with a book — like my last one, Coders — we’re talking about literally hundreds and hundreds of documents (books, papers, etc) and several hundred transcribed interviews.

~ Clive Thompson from, https://clivethompson.medium.com/how-i-take-notes-when-im-doing-research-65e6813febc2

I love when people take the time to explain some of the effort which goes into writing, then writing well, writing articles well, and writing books well. I’m still on level, “writing” and knowing what goes into writing well (let alone writing articles or books well) keeps me from developing any delusions of grandeur. I read Thompson’s article (which I hope you can read on Medium if you wish to click through) and I loved it. That’s enough to make the reading worth doing. Being able to quote, share, reflect and sometimes integrate what I’ve read? Priceless.

Also: Thank you for reading. I don’t take your attention for granted. :^)

ɕ

Frustration and…

December 16, 2022

Every once in a while, when someone finds out that I’m a writer who dabbles in programming, they’ll ask me: So, is programming hard? And I usually answer the same way. “‘Hard’ is the wrong word,” I’ll say. “It’s not so much that it’s hard. “It’s that it’s frustrating.”

~ Clive Thompson from, https://levelup.gitconnected.com/programming-isnt-hard-but-it-s-frustrating-6cb740085243

This article is sublime.

Because Thompson isn’t a professional programmer, there are two more parts to programming which he hasn’t discovered: First, that your mistakes inevitably come back to bite you in the ass. Second, you will forever face the engineering dilemma of having to wrestle with balancing good execution (does the bridge carry the weight over the river, or do people die) with project parameters (the budget is $5, it has to be shiny, and we need it next week.)

The soul–sucking frustration which Thompson rightly identifies is very real. Also real: Shit catching fire (literally and/or figuratively) in the wee hours of the morning requiring one to fix one’s own mistakes made, or shortcuts taken, years earlier. After a decade of that, one grows tired of explaining one’s reasons and process (not that anyone would listen.) And after a few decades of all that, one will understand why I sometimes say, as I approach losing my temper: Please do not meddle in the ways of wizards, for we are quick to anger and you are tasty with ketchup. It’s nothing you did; It’s nothing personal. It’s simply that Programming is terrible and it has broken me.

ɕ

This is not amusing

May 20, 2022

I grew up with maps showing how cities would be obliterated by a nuke. They’re back.

~ Clive Thompson from, https://clivethompson.medium.com/the-return-of-1980s-era-nuclear-strike-maps-a7aa292f7702

As did I. And, The Day After, for those who don’t know what that is, … well to be candid, I’m not sure how to describe it. Absolutely, scientifically and viscerally real. I know what it looks like when civilization collapses; and it’s not some kitschy zombie scenario. Disease disables, maims and kills. But nuclear war would return us to Medieval times. I would have been 12 or so when The Day After aired on TV, and I’m confident we watched it. I know I’ve also seen it several times on VHS, (and possibly on Beta as we had one of those for a while too.) There’s an interesting, unresolved question about why don’t we see signs of other intelligent beings… and one legit thought is that, quite possibly, all but vanishingly few races obliterate themselves in a sort of technology limiting event.

ɕ