Things are quite good with me. I have been doing some in-depth work with a client where the unknown unknowns were hitting me with impostor syndrome something fierce. That work is starting to unfold now and the feeling of peace of mind is returning. Complex systems can really cause some discomfort, can't they? Well, I'm over that particular hump, so I'm mightily pleased with myself.

I've heard it said that any ground work you lay in your business only shows results months later, especially for marketing and promotion. This seems to check out. I wonder if it is end of year budget spend or something else but I'm suddenly getting plenty of project leads out of the blue. I wasn't hurting but that's reassuring and gratifying. Thanks for thinking of me. I have bandwidth for advisory work, mentorships and that kind of thing. Hands on stuff would be case by case.

Last few days have also let me start picking up decent writing speed with my ZSA Moonlander keyboard. Took a while to find a decent enough approach to switching to Swedish characters and actually deciding on how I want to use it. Lots of adaptation. My daily driver was a Microsoft ergonomic full size nordic layout. Quite different. But I'm liking this quite a bit. Not fluent, but mostly productive. Might try to give a proper review on the site at some point. Let me know if that's of interest.

Publishing since last time:

• The Mac is losing me
• Asking a tech recruiter
• Wisps, a touch of whimsy

And I was invited to talk to Preslav Rachev about my history with Elixir. That turned into this interview. He edited me down to be fairly brief. It was good fun.

Corporations average away from greatness

So I've been thinking about masterpieces, great craftsmanship and what it takes to lovingly craft something magnificent, exceedingly useful or simply beautiful. When I was younger I felt places like Google, Apple, etc. were filled with aspirational genius. And yes, they certainly have people who are inspiring. But the output doesn't generally excite me. These days I can't imagine wanting to work at one of these places, not even an ostensibly hip one like a Spotify or Netflix.

By some kind of average across company size and business complexity they all tend to suck in some ways. Spotify and the podcast lock-in. Apple and the opaque self-congratulatory facade. Microsoft and the .. well, they have mostly improved in my eyes but now they puts ads in their OS. Google, that for a number of years of my young tech life was the pinnacle of innovative creative tech is now the least focused, weirdly stagnant behemoth that just wants you to not leave their dataset. I don't think I need an example for Facebook.

So I don't like big companies. Big woop. But I also don't think they are prone to creating good work. Take gRPC. I'm not particularly impressed. I see its utility for something like a Google. But I don't find it elegant or compelling. I think most people would struggle to call Kubernetes beautiful or elegant. It serves a useful purpose which isn't something to sneeze at but it is also incredibly complex, full of sharp edges and really well suited for large organizations.

There are some interesting things coming out of widely distributed, loosely organized approaches such as Debian and the Linux kernel along with other major long-running open source efforts. I wouldn't necessarily say that the whole of that is masterful or beautiful. But exceedingly useful it is. Beyond what I think corporations generally deliver. The conflict between profit and delivering the good solution isn't there.

But if you, like me, spend time thinking that we should build more efficient software, respect user resources and implement things in robust way. Build things that are fit for purpose rather than incredibly abstracted one-size-make-it-fit solutions you should not be looking at big companies. It doesn't make any kind of sense for them apparently.

I would look to small creators at the outskirts and in the niches. The Mac has historically been a good home for caringly crafted native applications for example. iOS similarly has that power-user culture of paid software if you contrast it to Android. Linux desktop software tends to be quite technically sound, though the polish isn't usually great. Big companies will just use Electron or equivalent and call it a day and in the grand scheme of things they get away with that. Spotify used to have a very snappy desktop application on the Mac. Woof.

When looking at a software company like Panic on the Mac or indie creators making trackers for music, enthusiast emulators and those deep niches. That's where I think the gems of software creation live. I'm hardly the first to think "what if we could build software like the demo scene builds demos". There's mastery there, there's definitely beauty. It is caring about the thing you are making sharpened to a needle point. Small teams and individuals.

Now what moves your needle will vary from what moves mine. I'm very curious to know where you do or do not find beauty in software. But I firmly believe that while corporations can achieve some very capable things they are not the place to look for inspiration. They are slow, unfocused and in aggregate uncaring. Even when they employ awesome people. I dare say that most cool things coming out of big companies are the consequence of small teams or individuals finding their autonomy and not being too held back.

So this was a rant. Not quite the rant I had in mind. But maybe it sets the stage. I have something in the back of my head saying "Masterpieces - We're not even trying" but I'm not sure if that's something worth pushing into.

If you have thoughts on this, just reply or email lars@underjord.io, always curious to hear from you all.

Thank you for reading and offering me your attention, I appreciate it.

- Lars Wikman