Truth, Computing and Fail

Warning: Long post

This year is almost at its end. It’s been quite an eventful one for me. I graduated in May and in the meanwhile got a chance to work on Planga in my last semester thanks to Swaroop. Anyway, I’ll put off the details of my experience in those 5 months for a later post. Back to the actual topic.

I got a job around July in Bangalore. Being passionate about martial arts, it was kind of a plan to be based in Bangalore so I could get a chance to train at Independent Shootfighters Inc. It has been 5 months since I joined the classes. I have been training quite regularly and there have been remarkable improvements in all the physiological aspects. I’m stronger, fitter and faster than ever before. But these are just the changes on the surface. I believe the bigger changes have come internally, which is what this post is about. I have been been able to reduce my ego by a huge extent. I can’t claim it to be gone completely. I’m not that good yet. With the diminishing ego, I gained the ability to reflect on the opinions, biases I held and how I interacted with different people. Earlier the same effort would be thwarted by the ego that grows like cancer unless kept in check. In plain words, I realized I have been an asshole to a lot of people just because of my ego; and those were just the incidents I could recall. I have no idea about the occasions I might have done so without even having a clue about it.

While in college, I was part of the LUG and with a close group of other guys there, formed a well knit group that’d occasionally geek out. Individually the only things I’d care about were: coding, working out and insane partying (not in any order). It’s the first one that was at the root of all problems. Unknowingly, it developed a false sense of superiority, an air of smugness about the less technically accomplished people and also those not conforming to the ideology of hardcore geekdom. The aim of this post is to publicly apologize to whomever it concerns regarding such retarded indiscretions of mine when it came to getting my point across. Some examples follow.

• I published a rant of epic proportions against the generic “tech blogs”. Whether they serve any purpose or not is a different question. It’s certainly none of my concern if they are useless. If that’s really the case, people will stop visiting them and they’ll die out. Regarding this incident, I’m sorry about the insane douchebaggery I unleashed upon them and the persons in charge.




• I used to be full of contempt towards those who didn’t have a clue about open source or were willfully ignorant about it. I’d pitch in with particularly caustic and scathing comments right on their face. Behind their back, I’d bitch and make fun of them. I now see it was misplaced. It’s certainly none of my business if they don’t care. People are free to choose what they want, believe what they believe is the truth. I’d like to apologize to all such persons who have come across such behavior from me. It’s totally uncalled for.




• ..and a lot more I don’t recall.

Apart from these specific instances, I’m genuinely sorry for all the hateful speech and contempt directed towards individuals and groups just because their line of thought didn’t align with mine. (This does not cover the posts against the university administration though. That was some serious nonsense going on there. I’m glad to have got out of it all.) I also plan to personally apologize to the people I can recall having done the same to. There’s nothing better to start the new year than to shed the bad blood.

PS: This is for all the geeks/hackers/whatever-you-want-to-call-yourself and not quite related to this post. You might be really good with computers and be able to make them bend at your will. But please don’t treat that as a license to treat others like shit or get your nose up in the air. Realize that you might be completely useless for something that the other person might be a wizard in. Having a strong analytic bent of mind that is capable of following logic and reason is an enviable trait but don’t give yourself too much credit for it. When you do that, you start to feed your ego. You start to believe you are eligible to comment on anything and everything just because you are a “hacker”. Case in point, Hacker News. It’s beyond doubt that a lot of the users who hang around there are awesome hackers who’d rock the socks off most of the novices like me. But when you look at the comments on the submissions completely unrelated to programming or technology, one thing becomes amply clear. There’s a lot of nonsense hidden in verbiage from people who think they are awesome in the concerned field and under the implicit assumption that since such stuff is of interest to them, it automatically makes them experts. “Field of interest” and “expertise” are two very different things. The only thing it leads to is even more verbiage in ensuing threads of conversations which go round and round without contributing anything of real value. Except for feeding the ego of said persons. The internet makes it convenient to have a debate stretch endlessly on nothing but semantic bullshittery without either party conceding anything. So, in the end nothing of value is created. I know this might touch a few raw nerves and I might get flamed too. Still, think about it. The mental energy and space you get to play with when you let go of the ego is immense .