Dhh

Starting to feel more comfortable at Valley events. There aren’t that many of us out there in the web scene and you stumble on the same people over and over, which is great because it’s really starting to feel like a community. Strangers become familiar faces become acquaintances become friends.

I also like how fast being at the center of the web world becomes blase. Suddenly meeting the inventor of the mouse, Amazon’s creator, DHH, or the founders of those cool startups you love becomes just one more day. And it’s not that nonchalance by itself has any merit but that once you get pass the wide-eyed gawking you can actually start being part of that world. One hopes.

I may be besotted with infatuation right now, but I believe there’s true wisdom—hard, distilled, endlessly applicable wisdom (well, what is wisdom if not particularly broad and useful patterns?)—up there.

And as a sidenote, I propose a new dictum based on the quote’s last paragraph: Use before you reuse.

I’m a fan of DHH (that’s David Heinemeier Hansson, but since no one, not me for sure, can type his name correctly, he’s usually called DHH). He is the creator of Ruby on Rails, a very smart programmer, and an even smarter manager. How can you not like someone with this in his about page?

Anyway, out of a childish infatuation with his persona I’ve taken upon myself to read his blog, Loud Thinking, back to front, all 4 years of it. I’ve just read the first 24 posts from July 2001, and it has been a lot of fun.

For one thing, I feel like a scholar, tracing all the antecedents that lead to someone’s achievements, savoring the obscure details, going straight to the source, nosing around on the archives. It’s fascinating to see his development.

It also feels like if I were talking to his ghost of days gone by. Blogs are truly a new state of being (see the next post for more of that techno-boosterism). What’s surprising is how similar that ghost is to myself. How he also struggled with procrastination, also likes the same music that I like, also learned VIM, also loves to argue, also fears growing old, also has sleep disorders, also likes to pontificate once in a while.

Of course, there are also lots of differences. But I knew that already. What is amazing is how much you can have in common with someone apparently so different. One of the first bloggers I read—back in the day when reading a blog was something weird and shameful (”You read people’s diaries? What for?”)—put e.e.cummings’ Anyone lived in a pretty how town in her about page, and interpreted it as a love story between “anyone” and “noone” (here’s an interpretation in that vein). What she found tragic was how oblivious the townsfolk were to their love and grief:

So what she treasured in blogs (this is all from memory, I’ve never been able to find her blog again) was their ability to let you see behind “anyone” and “noone”. They put you in contact with people you’d probably never even meet, let alone talk to, and show you that, in the end, they’re not so different from yourself—they also struggle, love, fear, and fail, just like you do.

My favorite from those 24 first posts? Refusing to let an identity mask run my life, hands down.