I'd also quibble minorly with intent being what the code should be clearly communicating - it's its place and function and meaning within the wider system, which isn't necessarily what the particular programmer wished. Free-form English is a good medium for intent - not so much for "what this thing actually does"

Maybe that's exactly what things like UBI point to: life as an adventure rather than a slave camp. The paranoid part of me then wants to find a bigger and more evil capital to criticise in the Marxian manner.

If the book churn is too low, any old rubbish makes it to the top.

It's a very different kettle of fish to rewrite from scratch strange code you've not properly explored and given a chance to - which is the usual situation.

The same goes for the tendency to mechanically pigeonhole others - it is what it is, a mania for rigidly organizing the (supposedly) rigidly organizing. It sees its own whimsical image in the mirror and explodes with delight.

But that's a pretty miserable attitude to approach it with. It's much better to keep an open mind to the possibilities of life - although its the hope that kills you. I mean - if you have to think about such things, it's most accurate to say that that's the definition of having been an introvert.

Anecdotally, inside every introvert is a squeaking, flamboyant self, desiring to be its opposite. If you desire it, you've got to (kind of) already be essentially interwoven with it.

Maybe our romantic adoration could be rediscovered if we admitted more things as being 'natural'? People, too, provide a kind of undergrowth, and their greater structures form some very fetching accretions.

What you want, instead of questions, are themes - and the willingness to make yourself ridiculous through positive speculations.

What difference there is works in software's favour: there's a frothy top layer of most projects where developers can indulge their whims/hone their abilities and approaches. But it's not the whole.

Plus, if you're situated in a historical process (like we all are) then arbitrary things become important. Accidental weaknesses such as being perched on the CLR and tethered to the hopes, dreams and capabilities of common-garden C# enterprise developers invert strangely into advantages - in the case of F#, it makes for a very friendly, welcoming ecosystem.

Maybe time's the same - too much stimulating newness or aggravating nagging, and you zone out.

I pose it as if I enjoyed it, but I didn't - it was a terrifying read. Makes you wonder, you know, what to do with your own life (which is to plug the gap with a platitude). Maybe Alan Clark would have been saved if he'd regularly procrastinated on Hacker News? Fingers crossed.