2 times 410, is that 820?
First thing this morning I learn we’ve lost Steve Jobs. This got me unexpectedly bummed out today. Unexpectedly, I am pretty far from being an Apple fanboy, and never consciously cared much about Apple. I had to do some soul searching to figure out if I was just jumping on the emotional slide created by the absolutely massive internet hype, or if it had genuinely moved me. I think it must be a bit of both.
Apple is a big contributor to open source and has clearly inspired a lot of things in the open source world, so it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that I have daily exposure through my work. With my view from the code trenches I’ve seen the entire tech world being paced forward by Steve’s unwaivering focus. I’ve always been highly skeptical of Apple’s way to do business, but I guess I’ve grown a subconscious acknowledgement how important Steve has been to the computing world. Knowing that he was fighting cancer I think this promoted respect to inspiration. Adding in the massive online emotional hype this must explain why I got so bummed out.
My sadness turned into grumpiness later today when I learned about Mark Pilgrim’s recent departure from the online world (on 4/10 to be exact – HTTP code 410, GONE). I have all respect for him wanting to leave the digital world, but the way he did it is just not cool. Thousands of people looked to him as a role model (including me) or relied on his abundant and generous online materials to do their jobs.
Deliberately pulling the plug without warning is just unfair. You can go out like a gentleman or you can go out like an asshole.
When I wake up tomorrow I am gonna wake up to a new world, without Jobs, without Pilgrim. Meh.
October 6th, 2011 at 23:02
Hmm, no offense, but a few things you say here come off pretty assholeish.
October 6th, 2011 at 23:21
@Ryan: Now I am gonna delete all my open source code repositories from the web because you said that!