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0 pointspatcon1y ago0 comments

Very true. Thanks for noting that.

The codebase was democracy-related civic tech software. I was a bit biased against Clojure because I wished for the world to show up in the codebase, but it was written in an uncommon language that scared away most every coder who showed up with curiosity.

Probably just the wrong language for the culture I wished to exist around the software. Plus the maintainers used Rich's essays to emphasize their desired ethos of "singular vision" development, which I admittedly became resentful of.

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patconOP1y ago

I thought of an analogy later, which perhaps colors my experience -- writing democracy software in Clojure felt disappointing, loaded with a power dynamic kinda like the Catholic bible and service being conducted in Latin before the 1960s.

It was not a language "of the people". And not just in how uncommonly known it was, but even the philosophy in how the language governed itself. It felt harmful to me: the cross-pollination between the ethos of the Clojure project (via the well-intentioned developer who brought pieces of Clojure culture into conversations and discussions) and the democracy project.

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0 pointspatcon1y ago0 comments

Very true. Thanks for noting that.

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patconOP1y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse