Saying a lot to say nothing really gets a bad rap. Talking in circles
for a while is great even when, ultimately, it's only to prove that
there's not much to say in the first place. Because, really, there's
not all that much to say, anyway. And, the most interesting thing about
all this nothing is the only way to come to terms with it is the futile
act of attempting to symbolize it. If we don't do that. If we fail to
go through the motions of attempting and failing to symbolize the
something that is actually nothing, we might mistake it for something.
We risk pooling meaning behind shaky, fragile signifiers that we never
explore, never peel back the lid to see the emptiness inside. The idea that we always have to convey some datum, some rational and utilitarian fact with our speech seems noble on the surface, but that's the only place it can ever exist. It perpetuates shared delusion. It allows us to put too much faith into the fantasy that we have all this under control. What if the only real way to cast light on this lack is to dance around it? From this standpoint, saying a lot to say nothing is one of the most important things we can do.
I'm starting to think that programmers who dip into the homebrew, demoscene and retro communities and come out talking about the beauty of programming with constraints are getting it slightly wrong. You want constraints? If you're in a programming or engineering profession, you already have them. Heck, if you're in any profession. But, I know programming/engineering professions best because I've been in them for like 20 years. Your constraints are: Horrible bosses, bad management decisions, a pathological Capitalistic enterprise, idiotic schedules, badly written existing code bases and technical debt, people at higher levels with political control that know a lot less than you, lack of creative or design control, etc. You want constraints? Probably also throw in: Non-existing or ineffective build and test automation, annoying auto-formatters, syntax requirements, unhelpful code reviews and nagging code review requests with people circumventing the tests to get past ...
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