Name: Anonymous 2014-04-20 3:26
For many years I have followed the path of destiny set forth from birth to death for every /prog/lodyte. I have studied the holy texts of SICP and stolen PDFs of TAoCP, I have even perused the heretical tomes of HtDP and The Ruby Way. I have spent many a night lying awake pondering the meaning of Satori. But for all of my efforts, I have gained nothing. Or perhaps that is wrong. I have not gained nothing. But the Philosophy rejects the material in favor of enlightenment, and in this I have experienced profound personal growth and deeper understanding of the Art. While I do not mean to say that this is worthless, it is objectively valueless. The world does not crave another infinite stream Fibonacci number generator. The Philosophy will not be advanced by yet another metacircular evaluator implementation. These things have exhausted their novelty. No further progress will be made while such ivory tower pursuits are made towards resolving such archaic problems. In short, the world has moved on.
Some of you will object that they are not obsolete, but timeless. That may indeed be true. I do not begrudge the old guard among us for trying to sustain our culture -- rather, I deeply honor them. But I must ask them to review the blood that has been shed in this losing battle. Our formerly esteemed colleague, Abelson-san, was himself turned on to the empty shallowness of the FOIC crowd, whose leader himself found receiving a copy of SICP to be an insult. Whether his defection was by force or by choice, the fact still stands that our Philosophy was not able to withstand the attacks. How much longer must we withstand this war of attrition? How long must we go hungry while watching the fools beyond the tower grow fat and gluttonous? The high priests will say that our reward lies in Satori. But what evidence is there of Satori? It cannot be touched nor seen. They do not even provide a reason for why it should be pursued, other than for it's own sake. For a while now I have considered the hypocrisy in their insistence on empiricism in all matters other than the axioms of the Philosophy. To even question this is apostasy. The closest validation provided is that all /prog/lodytes were born only to bask in awe of the universes that we create. What arrogance. What decides a man's future, his fate or his own decisions?
I can simply no longer reconcile the heresy that I have long held with my allowance of this movement of perpetual students into my heart. Thus, it is with great sadness that I here announce that I am quiting /prog/ forever (or at least until tomorrow). I am crying as I type this, but there is no turning back. I know that, if I could, I would return to be amongst all of you, my friends, so I took drastic measures to prevent this. Beginning at 8:00:00UTC this morning I have removed all things related to LISP on my system. Even eMacs had to go. In their place, I have installed the tools of the proletariat:
I am still not sure if I am but a wayward spirit who was offered a chance of enlightenment but failed to grasp it, or a human being who has finally awoken from dreams of Elysian fields to carve his own path in the world. I know that you will hate me, but I beg of you to please modernize the dogma so that the spirit of us will live on, even in some form.
Finally, please, friends, and enemies, do not think that I hate you. I love each and every one of you. I have merely grown dissatisfied with the Philosophies. Know that where ever I go and whatever I do, I will always carry a small piece of you all with me in my heart.
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Signing off for the last time,
Some of you will object that they are not obsolete, but timeless. That may indeed be true. I do not begrudge the old guard among us for trying to sustain our culture -- rather, I deeply honor them. But I must ask them to review the blood that has been shed in this losing battle. Our formerly esteemed colleague, Abelson-san, was himself turned on to the empty shallowness of the FOIC crowd, whose leader himself found receiving a copy of SICP to be an insult. Whether his defection was by force or by choice, the fact still stands that our Philosophy was not able to withstand the attacks. How much longer must we withstand this war of attrition? How long must we go hungry while watching the fools beyond the tower grow fat and gluttonous? The high priests will say that our reward lies in Satori. But what evidence is there of Satori? It cannot be touched nor seen. They do not even provide a reason for why it should be pursued, other than for it's own sake. For a while now I have considered the hypocrisy in their insistence on empiricism in all matters other than the axioms of the Philosophy. To even question this is apostasy. The closest validation provided is that all /prog/lodytes were born only to bask in awe of the universes that we create. What arrogance. What decides a man's future, his fate or his own decisions?
I can simply no longer reconcile the heresy that I have long held with my allowance of this movement of perpetual students into my heart. Thus, it is with great sadness that I here announce that I am quiting /prog/ forever (or at least until tomorrow). I am crying as I type this, but there is no turning back. I know that, if I could, I would return to be amongst all of you, my friends, so I took drastic measures to prevent this. Beginning at 8:00:00UTC this morning I have removed all things related to LISP on my system. Even eMacs had to go. In their place, I have installed the tools of the proletariat:
PHP, SASS, Adobe Dreamweaver and, CoffeeScript. And to make this irreparable, I have burned my autographed copy of K&R C.I am still not sure if I am but a wayward spirit who was offered a chance of enlightenment but failed to grasp it, or a human being who has finally awoken from dreams of Elysian fields to carve his own path in the world. I know that you will hate me, but I beg of you to please modernize the dogma so that the spirit of us will live on, even in some form.
Finally, please, friends, and enemies, do not think that I hate you. I love each and every one of you. I have merely grown dissatisfied with the Philosophies. Know that where ever I go and whatever I do, I will always carry a small piece of you all with me in my heart.
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Signing off for the last time,
Anonymous