The Challenge

There is a 2 part challenge present for any man who is attempting to do anything:

*The challenge of understanding what FUTURE he is fighting to become. 

*The challenge of understanding exactly what PRESENT he is struggling against.

But, if what a man is, is "his fight to become something," 

then that is the very PRESENT circumstance he must struggle against.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ever notice how email discussion lists (particularly, nowadays, on Facebook and Yahoo groups) having to do with troubleshooting mechanical things, such as software, are by far the most active, as well as useful? If a bit of code is posted to a list, it can be tested by all the participants. If a certain participant cannot get a bit of code to function properly, he either reports the code as buggy somehow, for the benefit of the code's author, or he recognizes that he doesn't understand how to get the bit of code to "work right." In said latter case, the rest of the list may throw pointers his way so he may be able to finally coax desired functionality from the object.

Such a list is so tremendously active, literally with 100's of posts per day, because there is no room for opinion. Everything posted can be verified as a testable reality; everyone works with the same hard code. There are no "feelings" or "reputations" at stake. All work for the sole common focus of further developing the versatility of the very functionality of the software itself.

Email lists which allow at all for the admission of "personal values-cum-philosophical approaches," stand still in comparison to the former sort of list, because somehow everybody believes they are personally right in opposition to others who have not "seen the light." This in fact represents a bit of software development which never makes it to fresher, more complex versions, because of the fact that every line of code involved literally fears for it's life.

The only way to improve or expand the functionality/versatility of software is to continually consider what the application is useful for, what it is not useful for, and therefore how it may be given the active life-of-expansion, the life that all potentially useful software deserves. Lines of code however, the very bones of the application, must be continually killed and re-written. The software itself is an endlessly and absolutely plastic functionality.

Funny, when a line of code written, 

believes itself to be a cable, or a keyboard, or a plug.

The destiny of code is to be written, and re-written, 

endlessly expanding and living.

The destiny of a scsi cable is the garbage can. 

(from a collection of unpublished papers circa 1998 but still relevant today)