Commitment

Note: I'm going to commit to at least weekly posts, to keep myself writing, because I like myself better when I do.

There's been a lot of buzz lately about React, the Facebook-developed JS framework view layer. People are very excited about how fast it is, and are abandoning ship from Angular or whatever was hot last year, and I think it's kind of misguided.

React does this virtual DOM stuff where it can modify the document without triggering all the repaints and reflows and stuff that modifying the actual DOM does, and then merges the changes in, in a minimal diff way, so that it's very fast. This is a great approach, and everyone is stealing it. e.g. Angular 2.0, Ember's Glimmer engine.

Every new thing of significance is going to be better in some way than the older things, because that's the nature of tech progress. It's also the nature of tech progress that speed isn't a particularly important factor, because hardware and compilers improve, and ideas that can be stolen that improve it on the software side are stolen.

When I was getting started programming, people used to piss all over Java because it was so slow, and these days, people choose it specifically for speed. I've largely avoided it throughout, because I just don't like the language, because it historically hasn't supported first class functions, and I don't trust its owners. I was also traumatized because it forced me to string together typecasts to use its generic containers (I understand this is no longer an issue).

If you like React because you prefer the architecture (or lack of?), I think that's a sensible reason to switch to it. But understand that it's a view layer, and that you can merge it or its ideas into something that offers broader level structure, like Angular, or Ember, and that its speed isn't a good justification by itself to rewrite your apps, or change how you write your apps going forward.

I listen to a bunch of podcasts, generally while I do chores. One of them is the Tim Ferriss Show. The premise of it is that he interviews people who are top performers and tries to find commonalities in their habits and whatnot, so that his listeners can take the lessons and apply them to their own lives, and become top performers, too, or something.

I think the idea is good, but I have concerns about the execution. He asks them about their typical day, like what they eat, and how their morning looks. There are a lot of people on the show who talk about how they consult with experts and work out with personal trainers, and they meditate, and eat a certain way, or go for long runs in the morning, etc.

I get the sense that a lot of this is just stuff that rich people do, but it's not the reason they're rich, and they weren't the habits they had when they were starting out. This is to say nothing of how many successful people are successful because of the advantages of nepotism and straight access to family capital.

A poor person can't apply the habits of a rich person, because they can't afford them, and I wonder if Tim realizes this. He makes points about targeting people who are price insensitive for business, so he probably does. So maybe the show is intended to be a circle-jerk? I don't know.

When I hear stories of people who scrape their way up, they basically never involve the typical things I hear on the show, but rather a lot of eating shitty convenience food, and not getting any sleep, or exercise, and sacrificing personal relationships. Taking loans out on your well being so that you can sleep a lot, and meditate, and have time for long runs and a good diet in the future.

Telling people to just work their asses off and sacrifice the things they love to acquire money probably makes for lousy radio.