Tag: justin wolfe

As someone who had Big Thoughts about writing and now still writes constantly but not that kind of writing that was exciting back then, and is now pursuing a new kind of writing used to tell a computer what to do, Justin Wolfe’s recent thank you note on the subject strikes some chords:

i’m thankful for how it’s ultimately, at least for the kind of writing i do, it’s not about equations and algorithms (even if you’re using them), it’s about how do you write in such a way that your lines best represent your intended meaning for multiple audiences (both to the robotic interpreter “reading” your code now in order to run it and to the humans reading your code now and later and much later to try to understand it and borrow from it and build on it) and how do you do that with clarity and efficiency (though that’s complicated, since what’s efficient might not be readable and vice versa) and how do you bridge between your individual stylistic choices and the different choices your teammates might make (i’m thankful for the engineers who are like formalist poets creating elegant (but sometimes opaque) structures of abstraction and i’m thankful for the people who write in a slightly shaggier but more immediately readable free verse and i’m thankful that i can find virtues in both and can stretch myself in either direction) and how do you manage the fact that these little parts you’re working on (because a person can only hold so many lines in their mind at one time) are part of ever-scaling networks of other parts, a tower projecting into the sky—how do you name things and organize things in such a way that those formal choices communicate the most meaning now and will continue to do so into the future.

(948)

I subscribe to a few different TinyLetter writers, but I must confess that I don’t always read their letters. I often leave them Unread, that disturbing state in which each letter gets added to the digit beside the Unread section of my email account. I had (948) Unread emails this morning. With great regret, it was time to declare email bankruptcy and mark them all as Read.

I clicked on a few letters as I went along.

On February 28th, 2018, Jean writes, “Yes, my day was ruined. Who knew I’d feel so keen to see my gastroenterologist?”

Pierce recalls his run-in with a dog walker on April 13th of the same year: “‘But sure what can you do? The only alternative is to put a roof over the country.’ And he strides off into the clouds, and we descend out of them.”

That summer, Justin is thankful: “i’m thankful to remind myself of the reason that i started these notes, which is to remember things i appreciated or appreciate things i remember.”

Kid Pretentious shares my pessimism about government amid his latest music recommendations shortly before Thanksgiving: “These people consider life in Congress to be something of a chess match rather than a process by which our collective lives are decided, which is as troubling as you are probably thinking right now.”

Anaïs presents a list of stuff to remember at the start of 2019: “that being soft in this world is so hard but even just the attempt will keep you open to more than you can imagine.”

I receive a timely word from Chelsea about the difficulty of writing, as she reveals over the summer, “In writing A Certain Hunger, whose elevator pitch is ’Eat, Pray, Love meets American Psycho,’ I got my inspiration in wanting to eviscerate all the fuckboys I’d ever loved before, and I got my discipline from the knowledge that someday I’d die.”

Joanne recommends Health Justice Now by Timothy Faust, explaining, “It is a good introduction to how much of a mess the current system is, how simple the solution is, and the tactics necessary to make the solution a reality.”

After attending a film festival, Laura

writes, “Lovecraft stories are notoriously difficult to film. How do you portray something that is written specifically to be uncanny, something indescribable, a terror that the human mind can’t comprehend?”

My recent retreats from the Internet are echoed in Angelica’s letter at the end of 2019, as she asks, “Lately, I want to curl into myself, retreat from the light when it comes to the internet. But that’s an impossibility when it comes to my career. So, what’s the answer?”

And Evie strikes a nerve when she opens the year 2020 with reflections and regrets about our relationships with elderly family members: “…

I want to implore child-me to talk to my grandparents.

To ask them anything that occurred to me about their lives, their experiences as young people, as parents. What it was like to grow old, how it felt.”

(948)

I subscribe to a few different TinyLetter writers, but I must confess that I don’t always read their letters. I often leave them Unread, that disturbing state in which each letter gets added to the digit beside the Unread section of my email account. I had (948) Unread emails this morning. With great regret, it was time to declare email bankruptcy and mark them all as Read.

I clicked on a few letters as I went along.

On February 28th, 2018, Jean writes, “Yes, my day was ruined. Who knew I’d feel so keen to see my gastroenterologist?”

Pierce recalls his run-in with a dog walker on April 13th of the same year: “‘But sure what can you do? The only alternative is to put a roof over the country.’ And he strides off into the clouds, and we descend out of them.”

That summer, Justin is thankful: “i’m thankful to remind myself of the reason that i started these notes, which is to remember things i appreciated or appreciate things i remember.”

Kid Pretentious shares my pessimism about government amid his latest music recommendations shortly before Thanksgiving: “These people consider life in Congress to be something of a chess match rather than a process by which our collective lives are decided, which is as troubling as you are probably thinking right now.”

Anaïs presents a list of stuff to remember at the start of 2019: “that being soft in this world is so hard but even just the attempt will keep you open to more than you can imagine.”

I receive a timely word from Chelsea about the difficulty of writing, as she reveals over the summer, “In writing A Certain Hunger, whose elevator pitch is ’Eat, Pray, Love meets American Psycho,’ I got my inspiration in wanting to eviscerate all the fuckboys I’d ever loved before, and I got my discipline from the knowledge that someday I’d die.”

Joanne recommends Health Justice Now by Timothy Faust, explaining, “It is a good introduction to how much of a mess the current system is, how simple the solution is, and the tactics necessary to make the solution a reality.”

After attending a film festival, Laura

writes, “Lovecraft stories are notoriously difficult to film. How do you portray something that is written specifically to be uncanny, something indescribable, a terror that the human mind can’t comprehend?”

My recent retreats from the Internet are echoed in Angelica’s letter at the end of 2019, as she asks, “Lately, I want to curl into myself, retreat from the light when it comes to the internet. But that’s an impossibility when it comes to my career. So, what’s the answer?”

And Evie strikes a nerve when she opens the year 2020 with reflections and regrets about our relationships with elderly family members: “…

I want to implore child-me to talk to my grandparents.

To ask them anything that occurred to me about their lives, their experiences as young people, as parents. What it was like to grow old, how it felt.”