 Right on yeah Ladies and gentlemen be angered So we had two bags of grass 75 pellets of mescaline five sheets of high-powered blotter acid salt-sugar full of cocaine a whole galaxy of multi colors uppers downers screamers laughers and As Jerry packed the first bowl and he handed to me. I Sparked it up and I inhaled a deliciously large Plume of marijuana smoke and as I blew it back into his smiling face. I said let's ship some fucking software I'm Leon. I'm single dad. I do a lot of coding I work for a company called new contacts used to be called edge case and I also ship mobile software on the side under I know spoon if any of that is of any interest to you then holler at your boy So just a little level setting here at the front is that a lot of what I'm going to talk about Is stuff that not a lot of people want to measure. So it's a lot of conjecture in here So if you want to argue about it, you that's totally fine and very appropriate So and this is a true and utterly infallible statistic. You heard so When I start talking about this this this particular talk is You know, it's a much longer form so much jam it into 20 minutes, but what's interesting is the context. So what I'm interested in is is how you take common idioms that have been that become what we consider to be the natural way the definitive path the dominant culture that which we accept as a culture and What we can glean from learn and pull from subcultures French cultures and of course countercultures now French is Way way out there and usually it's so batshit crazy that it's very hard to assimilate anything from there But it's fun to go visit right so make sure you go check that out Subcultures tend to be microcultures that actually live and coexist with the dominant culture Maybe there are a few bits there and there that they they still like about the dominant culture They can kind of react to they can interop with But they kind of have a different take on what is perceived as normal and there seems to be a nice symbiosis between The subculture and the dominant culture now the difference between the subculture and the counterculture is pretty much attitude right, so it also co-exists but it exists in a different way almost as a combative way or as a Counterversion of the dominant culture So I pretty definitive. Oh, yes, and I must also mention Thank You brother Frank Is that we all wear a uniform so no matter how different you think you are of course you were going to fall into some subset of a group somewhere and that's okay, right, so yes celebrate your individuality and Know when you're enjoying your unique flower that is you But also remember that we do all in fact wear a uniform So I'll talk about this particular idiom in the context of process So for a very long time waterfall was the dominant culture Way the enterprise large enterprise and even as smaller ones would come on they say all right It's got to go through this design phase trickle on down here to the dead phase Trickle on down to the legal team trickle on down to this other team. Oh, we fucked it up Send it all the way back to the top and do it all over again, right is all common knowledge Yes, a lot so all right, so bunch of hippies got together and decided man Let's take all that apart and we're gonna distill it down to the coolest stuff man And we're gonna talk about four concepts It's gonna be a total philosophy and people will be free to do whatever they like and it'll be a beautiful world And we'll all communicate and it'll be amazing And then the dominant culture eventually goes and consumes that counterculture Because that counterculture is successful Right, and they say wow they must be on to something But I don't think we could get away with letting people do whatever they want So we are going to start stamping out some uniformity to it And we're seeing this in agile now so everybody know who's on the left Gary Olden, right? So we got Sid Nancy over here, and then of course punk is dead and we got what we call punk today, right? So it may not be dead. You just have to search for it But what we would assume and what some people will come into as Identifying as a particular thing that actually had some roots in some historical context that made sense at the time is washed away and then what they experience as A particular philosophy or idiom is completely different than why it came to be The dominant culture because of need that created the subculture Came back to the subculture of the counterculture and took it back, but turned it into something else Knowledge without application is worthless If you just take the knowledge and you don't get the wisdom You leave a lot out of the equation. Yes Or you do this right familiar with cargo Goldie. Yeah, I'm sure that plane flies really well, doesn't it? So we look at what I see in a lot of enterprises and a lot of small groups today Or we're relying on what we call agile or what my friend Baker likes to call agile with a little a or what I heard today from From the Walker, Wisconsin Ranger over here Scrum butt we do scrum butt something else Or scrummer fall I've heard and there's an overemphasis on Certifications on a dictated path on a well-worn and tried methodology for success we increase our standardizations we increase our process we communicate less and we cover our own asses There is more and more noise and less and less signal You'll still call it agile, but the manifestos for principles simply get obfuscated and lost This is a danger when the dominant culture takes over the idioms They gape the motions of the subculture, but takes none of the wisdom along for the ride And when you see this it's up to you how you want to respond to it Some folks that tell me Leon, but that's reality. That's the way it is and I say really That's your reality What are you gonna do about it? The simulacrum is never that which conceals truth is the truth that conceals. There's none The simulacrum is true You can defy any reality that is put forth before you that you do not agree with it doesn't make sense This is how we got some of the best things we did out of this community This is one of the things that drew me to Ruby is one of the things that drew me to all the other crazy Languages and platforms and communities that I like to go play with Is the fact that we've got a lot of people in a dominant culture saying that this is what is right This is what is correct and if I don't agree with it I can either stay and fight I can stay and work against how I feel about it Or I could simply go find a different uniform and go play with a different subset of cats But it is up to you to go and do it So reality in its entirety is how you perceive it I hope there's no light-sensitive people that we were hearing about earlier that might make you fall down Sorry about that Look away. I'll change it in just a second So if if it is how you perceive it and you think of your world and you are told constantly and especially here in the West Right in America, you know, you're always told in a great Alan Watts Put it put in a different way where you would say you would imagine going to school and you go to kindergarten and say you do Well in kindergarten you're gonna go to first grade you go do well in first grade You're gonna go to second and the third and then fourth and you keep that up You're gonna go to high school and when you're done with high school You're gonna go to college and then you go to college You're gonna go maybe get your master's or your doctorate or you're gonna enter the workforce And then once you get to the workforce, you're gonna get a raise and then you're gonna get another job Then you're gonna be a manager then you're gonna be a vice president Then you're gonna be a director and then you're gonna be a CEO and then you're gonna die with all the money in the world the end Life lived happily ever after, right? Exactly. Amen. We know that not to be true, and yet a lot of us continue to fall into that same pattern. That same choice. So there are different ways of looking at the world. You do not have to learn the same way that everyone else does. You may not learn the same as everyone else does. This leaves people feeling impotent, feeling powerless. I love this quote from Brave New World, a feeling that I've got something important to say and all the power to say it. Only I don't know what it is, and I can't make use of any of that power. That is terrible. Instead, I'd rather have this kid's attitude. Take over the world. It is mine. And I like to remember that there really is only one rule, that there are no rules. There is only your perception. There is only that which you perceive to be true to you at any given moment, and that can change at all times. So, someone might tell you the way to figure out large complex computing problems is to read a bunch of books. I'm going to suggest an alternative. So this here is Dennis Weir, and he wrote a great little article called the use of LSD 25 for computer programming. In 1975, couldn't figure out this crazy thing. He was writing an assembly and went and took a little bit of LSD, all partied all night, wrote a lot of stuff down, did a bunch of diagramming, woke up in the morning and went, wow, half of this is bullshit. But this is perfect. And there was nothing that anyone could have told him any other way. He had tried every other idiom, every practice, every technique that had came before him and didn't work. So he went off the deep end and tried something completely different, and that system was in use for 20 years. So well done. The subjective reality of others did not have to be his. Boread has a great quote, we live in a world where there is more and more information and less and less meaning. So you can keep compiling information until you're blue in the face. You could continue to pick up ones and zeros and ones and zeros after ones and zeros, but if you don't understand why you're playing with them, then it's going to feel more and more empty. You will feel more and more like the jack of all trades and the master of none, yes? So, you know, in fact, a side note, somebody said Heshish was going to be gone before my talk and I got really excited, and then I met him. It wasn't exactly what I was hoping for, but he's beautiful and he gives wonderful hugs. So, but having to meet this person, having to meet all of you and having the wonderful opportunity to go out and see the world through other people's perspectives allows me the wonderful opportunity to derive more and more meaning in what I do by being able to hear and see and reconcile that against the voices that are in the same field, to see it with and tandem and parallel and in complete opposite orthogonal paths and to understand that there is no universal way to do anything. For a long time I would listen to some of my brothers and sisters who said, Leon, if you're not doing TDD 100% of the time with 100% code coverage, you're not a real developer. Leon, if you're not doing X, Y, and Z, you're not a real developer. That's fine. You may not perceive me as one. That does not make it true. That does not make it real. So it's incumbent upon me to share my vision as well. But perception there is reality. So if you do not feel that it's working out, it is incumbent upon you to move it forward. So one person inspired me, probably inspired a lot of you guys and left us all in the dark. It was why. And I remember reading technical book after technical book after technical book and going, this is the driest thing on the planet. I got too much ADHD. I can't get past chapter two. This isn't working. And then this guy had crazy foxes yelling at the author telling me I'm supposed to get an onion with the book. Like, I'm in, baby. Let's do this. And I haven't seen a book like it since. Now I saw a good version, right? A good new second there, learn you a Haskell for a greater good, right? Did I get that right? You know, yeah, there's my Haskell friends. And then somebody turned that over to the Erlang side and that was pretty sexy too. But I could count three alternative points of view in books in learning a language. And the thing that we do in a sea of people who are completely different. In a sea of people who every time I talk to them remind me how unique and special and individual each one of us says, you cannot paint us into boxes. You cannot put us into these little things. You cannot say that we are pocket protective and wearing, you know, a bandage on the glasses kind of thing. That thing is old. It's dead. It's outdated. It doesn't exist. Now, there are some of you who may subscribe to that and live that and honor it. And I bless you as well. That's wonderful. But that's not everyone. And it's up to us to remind the world that that's the case. That we are a wonderfully diverse subset of experts and individuals. And they may not look like the expert that you perceive them to be. Right? Look at that. I can't even... I want to know how to do a grand chateau from that kid, man. That guy knows what he's doing. And I'm sure there's a lot of people that tell me he couldn't do it. A lot of people tell me he needs to go live his life a completely different way to do the thing that he's passionate about. God, I hope that's not Photoshop. It's like this one. You can find it anywhere, but you have to look. And sometimes it's going to be in the most crazy place. You might have to go to somewhere that you didn't think that you'd ever go to find it. But it is out there to be had. If you feel trapped in your job, if you were waiting for permission from a boss or an employer or a community or your family, you are waiting too long. You've already made the choice that you want to improve that you want to see the world from a different point of view. You just have to understand it and go chase it and stop listening to other people telling you who you are. A common excuse I get is time of which I'm running short on. And they'll say, Leon, I want to really learn Ruby, but I don't have time to do it, and I say you're absolutely right. Leon, I want to learn how to program in airline, but I don't have time. Yes, you are absolutely right. You have all the time in the world to do whatever you want. It's up to you whether or not you decide to take it. You must find the way to get past the micro measurement of time. At this moment in our life, we live in a time where we can measure it down beneath the nanosecond, right? We can go crazy with it. But for most of human existence, time was a completely relative construct. It was something like, I'll get you in a fortnight. It'll happen in the next season. I'll see you at dawn. I'll see you at dusk at high noon when the sun is in this sky, when this constellation is above us. And it wasn't until a couple hundred years ago where it got a little more specific. And then another hundred got even more specific. And in the last 20, it's gotten ridiculously specific. To the point where I'll hear somebody say, if you don't show up to work on time every day at 8.30, you can't be a productive member of society. Really? What if you work really well at night? What if you're like me and you like to be up from midnight to five? What if that's your most productive time? It doesn't exist. It's a notion, right? Hell, it was an hour earlier, like just the other day when I was traveling across states to get here. It doesn't exist. If you want something, you can get it. You will find the time, you have the time. If you're still drawing breath, you got all the time in the world. I love this quote from Dalai Lama, says, man, because he sacrifices his health in order to make money, then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he's so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present. The result being that he does not live in the present or the future. He lives as if he's never going to die, and then he dies having never really lived. Bless you. I find this to be incredibly sad. I have seen many people, I've met many wonderful people over the years, and they all have taught me something unique. They have all allowed me to see the world in a completely different way. Even a five-minute conversation is enough to take your entire view and just move it a slight bit. Take the time that you want to be the person that you're going to be. Morality is temporary. The way that we judge things is temporary. Wisdom is permanent. Thank you, Thompson. The lessons that you learn, the lessons that you share, the lessons that you give back, those are permanent. Those don't go away. You take those everywhere. And to bring it back to code, I will leave you with something that I say a lot. Code is a living representation of who you are right now. Tomorrow it will be different. I have yet to meet somebody who didn't show me their code without first apologizing for it. And the truth of the matter is you're simply apologizing for being who you were when you wrote it. And that's all it is. There's no set path. There's no way to get to perfect. Perfect doesn't exist. There's only the wisdom and experience and love you carry in your heart. Code is a living representation of who you are right now. And if you wanted to get better, make sure that you see the living representation of those around you everywhere you go. And carry that with you to your next conference, to your next conversation, and share and share and share. Thank you all so very much.