/manifesto

  • show, don’t tell: Less talk talk more walk walk!1
  • shit or get off the pot!2
  • I know that I know nothing3
  • be excellent to each other4
  • be bold. be brave. be amazing5
  • promises are easy to make: delivery is hard6
  • real programmers don’t eat quiche7
  • beware those who don’t suffer with imposter syndrome8
  • the only true wisdom consists in knowing (and admitting to others) that you know nothing9
  • be liberal in what you accept, and conservative in what you send10

$LastModified: 2024-11-20 14:18:24Z (Wed, 20 Nov 2024) $

  1. many people are very good about talking about things: what they have done, what they are currently doing, and what they are going to do. this is all very nice, but they don’t actually achieve anything, apart from generating a lot of talk. ↩︎

  2. do what needs to be done in a situation, or get out of the way. if you have been any of the movies in the viewaskeweverse, this should resonate with you (it is when Randall gives advice). ↩︎

  3. nobody knows everything; admitting that you yourself is a step towards (q.v.) wisdom ↩︎

  4. Bill & Ted were absolutly right: “Be the best person you can be, and if you can do that, then you can party on”. explainer ↩︎

  5. everybody does mediocrity and it is so boring: do more. Simon de Pury says expresses it so well when he was on Next Great Artist. ↩︎

  6. this is one degree above “show, don’t tell”: worse than always talking and never delivering is making promises and never delivering on those promises. don’t give people false hope, just get on and deliver the goods. q.v. “shit or get off the pot”. ↩︎

  7. back in the early days of programmers, programmers were real programmers. life was difficult. this was summed up on a tongue-in-cheek document, a version of which is Real Programmers Don’t Eat Quiche11 ↩︎

  8. these people are to be avoided because if they are not aware of your limits (q.v. “I know that I know nothing”), then they have this false-sense of knowledge. these are the kind of people who will cite a 12 year old article on slashdot as “proof”, completely oblivious that in the years that passed technology has moved on and what was true then is not true now. ↩︎

  9. extending on the “I know that I know nothing” theme, only the wisest will admit to others this known state instead of trying to bullshit. ↩︎

  10. this is known Postel’s Law (or the Robustness Principle12 if you are infected by systems thinking) ↩︎

  11. this is a version, but not necessarily the version, for many copies exist in the internet, and over the years bitrot has occured. the version here is not as i remember it: there are some things missing ↩︎

  12. be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept. ↩︎