* On Computers

 If you've met me in the past decade, you probably know that I am

 extremely passionate about computers. Let me first explain why.

 On the most basic level computers are little (or big) machines that

 can be programmed to do things, or /compute/ if we're being

 technical.[fn:1]

 They host and provide access to the Internet, which is a pretty big

 thing, but they do little things too like unlock your car door and

 tell your microwave to beep at you. They solve problems. Big or small.

 They're also /everywhere/ - which can be scary to think about, but

 ultimately helps propel us into the future.

 There's something pretty cool about that - when you look at the

 essence of computation. There are endless quantities of these machines

 which follow the same basic rules and can be used to solve /real/

 problems.

 ** The Programmer

 Now, let us consider the /programmer/. They have power. /real/

 power. They understand the language of computers, can whisper to them

 in various dialects. It can be intimidating to witness until you

 realize how often the programmer says the wrong thing - a bug.

 In reality, the programmer has a symbiotic relationship with

 computers. Good programmers understand this relationship well.

 #+begin_annecdote

 One day after I got my first job at a software company, I remember

 being on an all-hands meeting due to a client service outage. We had

 some management, our lead devs, product team, and one curious looking

 man who happened to be our lead IT consultant who had just joined. He

 was sitting up on a hotel bed, shirtless, vaping an e-cig, typing

 away in what I can only imagine was a shell prompt.

 After several minutes he took a swig from a bottle of Coke and said

 "Node 6 is sick." then a few seconds later our services were

 restored. For the next hour on the call he explained what happened and

 why, but that particular phrase always stuck with me. He didn't say

 Node 6 was down, or had an expired cert - his diagnosis was that /it/

 was /sick/. 

 #+end_annecdote

 The more you work closely with computers, the more you start to think

 of them this way. You don't start screaming when the computer does the

 wrong thing, you figure out what's wrong and learn from it. With

 experience, you start to understand the different behaviors of the

 machines you work with. I like to call this /Machine Empathy/.

 ** Programs

 I already mentioned bugs - I write plenty of those, but usually I try

 to write /programs/. Programs to me are like poetry. I like to think

 they are for the computer too.

 Just like computers, /computer programs/ come in different shapes and

 sizes but in basic terms they are sets of instructions used to control

 a computer.

 You can write programs to do anything - when I first started, my

 programs made music. The program was a means to an end. Over time, I

 started to see the program as something much more. I saw it as the

 music itself.

 [fn:1] ... perform computations

 * On Infra

 Something that is missing from many organizations big or large, is an

 effective way to store and access information, even about their own

 org.

 It can be difficult problem to solve - usually there's the official

 one, say Microsoft Sharepoint and then the list of unofficial sources

 which becomes tribal corporate hacker knowledge. Maybe the unofficial

 ones are more current, or are annotated nicely, but their very

 existence breaks the system. There's no longer a single source of

 truth.

 My priority in this department is writing services which process and

 store information from a variety of sources in a distributed knowledge

 graph. The graph can later be queried to access information on-demand.

 My idea of infrastructure is in fact to build my own Cloud. Needless

 to say I don't have an O365 subscription, and wherever possible I'll

 be relying on hardware I have physical access to. I'm not opposed to

 cloud services at large but based on principle I like to think we

 shouldn't be built on them.