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Optimistic
I like the phrase “I would rather live as an optimist then die a pessimist” because it just is a nice way don’t give up just make your little part better. Or at least that’s how I see it, it may mean something different to you.
I wanted to write this to share some positives in the world for me maybe kick that off for you. Everyone has such a crazy different experience of this world especially with how big and small the internet makes the world. For better or worse we are stuck with technology.
Friends & Family
I’m a pretty introverted person these days. But sharing food, a laugh or a smile with friends and family is an experience I cherish. People can do almost anything they want in this world and it’s always cool to hear about what people are doing outside of there jobs. I don’t really have social anymore so I miss out on a lot of updates but it’s kinda refreshing to force myself and others to explicitly talk about what has happened or happening when you see them.
Language Barriers
I just went to Italy for 10 days and with how cheap and easy an esim is to setup and offline translate apps even being a thing. My family could travel and explore Italy and make friends with the locals. I Don’t love talking to people through technology but like most technology it makes the first 20% so much easier and 10 years ago it would have been a phrase book and frustration today could have a full conversations.
It’s also easier then ever to learn a new language. You can download apps to learn a language chatting with Large language model in the language you are trying to learn and practice or video call someone across the world. The language barriers are lower then ever in our world.
Sharing
It’s also easier then ever to put your idea out into the world. It’s another story getting people to care about what you have to say or agree with your argument but you can put it out there and maybe it will stick.
It’s easier then ever to start a blog, share photos, videos and so many different experiences around the world. We seem to look at the negative parts around the world because we seem drawn to them but we can very easily share and seek out the happier parts of the world. You don’t need to share or give up your secret stash but I think it’s worth sharing the experience you took to find it and find your self.
Travel
100 or so years ago it would take months to travel across the ocean. Now you can do so in a small little section of a mental box gazing away at your magic box of marvel and entertainment. In under 24 hours you can be just about anywhere in the world and I think that’s pretty cool. We also have so many ways to cover land and sea at various speeds. I think because of this luxury of travel we often aren’t forced to enjoy the area around us and it’s beauty and that it is always changing. The moment you stand where you are will never be the same or experienced the same way and I think that’s pretty cool. If you don’t like where you are you can move somewhere else. This is a relatively new luxury, if you didn’t like where you lived it was so much harder to leave than it is now.
Magic Box
My sister calls her phone “magic box” and I kinda love that even though it’s not magic. We carry them around like life support and they are really incredible. Well I have a lot to say about them the positive side of them is you can talk to anyone, learn about anything and save things for later that you probably don’t need. This is really a gift of gods but it’s not a gift its highly engineered machine, but it brings us closer to being what people use to describe as gods. You can summon food and entertainment at any moment.
Homes
I don’t live in super nice place but it’s still home in that I feel safe and I have a lot of positions that spend most of there time here (you don’t own your stuff it owns you). You look at homes and old beds and wow have things really progressed in the last 100 years. Nothing is perfect but you can keep food cold for days keep the weather off your body well you rest. It’s also a place to share with friends and family, share meals, stories and experiences out of the elements. I enjoy going off the grid and camping for a 5 days or so every few years just to appreciate how nice it is to have the home that I do.
Sporting Equipment
It’s pretty incredible what you can do with human powered equipment. You can go faster, father and higher then ever, pushing our mole-rat like bodies harder then they have ever gone in the past. I do a fair amount of mountain biking, skiing and more recently paddle boarding. Paddle boarding being the least exciting but it’s still a pretty cool experience to push your self across a glossy smooth lake. Skiing its a luxury that I grew up with and i’m pretty good at it. There are thousands of people that are better but it’s a pretty cool experience to glide across the snow and ice and let gravity pull you down the mountain and surf the mountain as I say. Mountain biking is kinda the same but completely different experience.
Tools
Well I can’t speak for much of the tools we have in the physical world, but by a high level approximation it’s easier to build physical things then ever. You can even print out 3D objects out of thin air for fast prototyping. It’s always a joy to see people driven to build things especially in a world where you can just acquire anything.
For me though most of the tools I use are in the software space because I spend a lot of time on the computer building. The tools software engineers aren’t the same as what most people use at there desk jobs. If anything this might be way software is kinda buggy in so many places as the beaten path gets the most attention. I think software is kinda a modern form of blacksmithing as it’s one of the few professions you can build your own tools. For me my favorite tools that I use the most and bring me joy to use almost every day are Linux, Neovim (lazyvim) and Swift. There are a few others but these three are my favorite.
Linux because you can’t use a computer without an operating system. Linux doesn’t even have a user interface like what most people consider an operating system but if your software runs on Linux chances are it can run almost anywhere and for free. It’s also open and there is so much material out in the world to learn about how it works and how to use it. There are version with user interfaces if you want to try something different then Windows or MacOS though have low expectations because it made different assumptions about the world than Cupertino or Redmond made.
Neovim is the text editor I use to write this article, write software and edit configuration files on my computers. It’s very different than Word or Google Docs with an very steep learning curve and it’s not perfect but for a peace of software I love it and I can configure it almost anyway I see fit. I started with a project called Lazyvim, which adds a lot of nice improvements to the default experience. But it’s still a pretty lightweight editor that I can run on any computer I use which is really nice to learn one tool and know it can be on pretty much any computer you use going forward. I’m not gonna argue you learn or use it but it makes me smile especially when everything on a computer is a file.
Swift to me is more of paint brush. Well its a programming language, to me it’s language that makes sense to me. It’s not as pure as Math and as beautiful as some Natural language, but for me it’s my favorite way to build software. Maybe it’s not the best but its flexible enough and can express enough and keeps getting better each year for server and embedded software development. I think everyone should learn one general programming language. You just get so much more control over your computer having a little bit of programming experience.
Those are my most used tools and they bring me a lot of joy to learn about and use.
LLM’s
Large Language models are kinda a controversial joy as everyone’s experience and use for them is different. The Verge did a great video explaining why it’s hated by most. But for me it’s pretty liberating to build with outside of work in my opinion. If you haven’t watched 3 blue 1 browns video explaining how they work I highly recommend it. LLM’s aren’t Artificial intelligence in my opinion, they may look like it but the amount of computation being leverage behind those chat bots is kinda insane.
For me I mostly use LLM’s to build software and I think this is still the best use case for them. It’s easier then ever to learn how your “magic box” works and truly make it yours. It may be scary to have a LLM run free on your computer but I think it’s worth getting an older computer asking a LLM to explain how to install Linux on it via copying commands and sending photos of the errors to the ai to de-bug and walk your self through setting it up. You might fail a few dozen times but wow is it exciting when you first get it setup. After that install a free agent harness like opencode and you have a nice safe place to learn about how a computer works, or tinker with your home network and can even learn how to self host your own server to serve media files like movies for your house.
I went back to school for my computer science degree and I learned a lot but if you want to build your own software tool, a little micro controlled robot, save your self money from a streaming, or hosting service it’s easier then ever to get started and have something to ask any questions over and over to. The nice thing about computers is its kinda easy to verify something you asked it to do works and iterator on the artifact. That’s the real key with this tool, iteration over perfection. There are still a thousand ways it can lead you in a weird path but most of the training data is trying to help people on to a good path.
LLM’s aren’t perfect but people are reverse engineering firmware with them which for me is very exciting because there is so much half working software in the automotive/embedded space, Ai might be a win for right to repair in a very un-expected way.
The open weight models that you can run at home not connected to the internet if you don’t want are really good now and you can test them out with opencode to try them out. They are so good that businesses like Cursor rely on them with the really cost of Ai approaching. Running these models locally isn’t the easiest thing and pretty expensive but if you invest in the hardware you can run at home without a subscription, paying the minimal electrical bill and you can have them crank away endlessly for your building your own software you want or need around the house.
The reliance on large companies to solve your problems with highly scaled complex solutions isn’t a requirement anymore. Most of our digital needs are much similar to build when only you and maybe a few friends and family members are the only users. Most of the complexity and cost of software is in scaling to millions. Security is still hard but everything is learn-able so if your motived and excited about owning your digital experience like I am you can slowly chip away at your digital dependencies and reduce the amount of buggy Jira driven software in your life :).
Anyways just wanted to touch on a few things that make me simple about this world.
Thanks for reading.
Zane