2024-12-02The Spice

Everyone keeps turning their noses up about developers having "hot takes" online but you know that article? Yeah, that one. You're all talking about that one because they cranked their opinions up to eleven.

I spent a few hours in November shitting on Turbo which felt like a good cathartic rant, but also kind of ungrateful. I definitely stand by what I wrote, but there's a fine line to be walked: people are out there working on libraries for our collective benefit, triaging GitHub issues and dealing with whiny knuckledraggers who think they're owed free labor and access to someone else's time, and all we ever do is tell maintainers which parts are buggy or need improvement. We gem or brew or npm install and act as if the code was just delivered by the stork, as if it wasn't downloaded off a server paid for by someone's tireless fundraising, as if it wasn't meticulously semversioned by a dude in Lithuania who spent an entire evening documenting API changes instead of playing board games with their son. It's easy to hurl insults from the peanut gallery, and since this blog is just a weird nerdy hobby, the easy stuff is what I tend to reach for. Sorry! We should all try to be excellent to one another, and nuance is often the first casualty when you're trying to make a point.

But here's the thing: in tech, the right kind of spicy can actually change things.

The spice extends life

I'm the definition of a Terminally Online person, and in my profession, I am Legion. There are literally millions of us in tech. I do all my work at the computer and whenever I'm waiting for a deployment, eating lunch, or winding down for the day, I'm reading stuff online. If you write something relevant to my interests and publish it on the Internet, I promise you I will find it and I will devour it. I don't watch a lot of video, I don't really do social media beyond the geekiest Mastodon feed you've ever seen, I routinely forget the names of my friends' children—but if you wrote a good blog post, I will remember it. I will turn it over in my head and quote it to colleagues and if it contains some concept or idea that sparks my interest, I will try it out. Then, if it's good, I will evangelize the everloving fuck out of it. This is how things spread in my corner of the world: you get recommended something by a person you trust, you think about what it might mean for your app to implement it, you test it out. In a bankshot way I think I'm personally responsible for like a dozen rollouts of View Component, Phlex, and Tailwind just by virtue of having obnoxiously sung the praise of them to people in my vicinity.

But here's the rub: for something to strike my imagination at the correct angle, it needs to be done with conviction. None of that Balance or Nonviolent Communication that everyone's always calling for! For something to actually make a dent, it has to be honed to a sharp edge and assertively argued. I do sort of resent that it works like that, but as the saying goes: don't hate the player, hate Malmö FF.

The spice expands consciousness

I've read a bunch of fantastic articles that tickled my brain in novel ways, sometimes by being clearly and visibly ahead of their time, and sometimes by being superbly written. They've changed how I approach my craft, and expanded my horizons. I also, however, love a fiery screed and a courageous attack on the status quo, even when I disagree. You need those. Two years ago, the general feeling was that React and GraphQL had won. Look! Facebook uses this combo! Do you have any idea how well-paid their developers are?! If you're having problems with that stack, that's on you and your team because, gestures wildly. Then all of a sudden someone like Alex Russell shows up with receipts and a nasty temper and suddenly everyone's team Server Side Rendering and Time To Interactive. The world shifts, first with small tremors and then with big earthquakes. You have to believe in what you stand for in order to make a difference, and you sometimes need to raise the volume a bit more than feels appropriate. You don't effect change by being overly polite. That post won't get shared.

The spice is vital to space travel

Change actually comes pretty easy to us in tech because everything is malleable, everything can be updated or thrown out and will be on a timescale of just a few short years. We're an interconnected bunch. Exploration is cheap and easy, ideas can be had in showers by just about anyone, and stuff is always moving under your feet anyway. With good arguments and the right kind of fervor, you can make things happen. I don't have any delusions that my tirade about Turbo will change anything. But it needed to be said, and maybe there's some tinder that my tiny spark can strike, someone whose shower thought turns out to be The Path Forward. I know it's unseemly to enjoy hot takes and tech drama, and we all feel the need to say we don't (even when we do!) but that's just how the world works. Instead of trying to get everyone to write calm posts and acknowledge this or that, we should aspire to be kind but fearless in our opinions. Don't be a dick, but there's nothing to be gained by playing tone police from the sidelines either: if you have something to say you should add your voice to the mix and see what happens. Maybe your spice is exactly what the dish needs.