It ain't mine

I was at a very interesting meetup event in Gothenburg hosted by Webbhuset. They are one of the drivers of Elm enthusiasm in the region (and Sweden). And they brought in Evan, the creator of Elm.

I won't get into what his talk was about, he specifically asked that it not go online. He was looking for small-scale feedback on the stuff he is currently working on. I found it very interesting, a good talk, cool ideas.

What I find even more fascinating is his process. I think his is unusual. He said that he avoids following current trends closely. My interpretation of what he said is that he wants space to find his solutions to problems. Solutions that seem "right". And that he would rather read old research papers than follow recent developments. Essentially focusing on fundamentals and evergreen material. He also described the process of Elm's creation as asking what more could be removed, rather than added.

I respect this a ton. It seems like a slow, meticulous, creative process. Elm is generally regarded as a very elegant design, tight, focused constrained and effective. Some people don't like it. The people who like it tend to love it.

This is not my process. I wish it was sometimes. But it is not how I operate, it is not how I'm wired. I ingest a ton of inputs and then try to synthesize. I try and fail agressively. I also don't do compilers, so not really the same thing :P

But I also spoke to other people that just fundamentally prefer operating at different abstraction levels than I do.

It can be a challenge to find shared ground and work together when you have very different processes. But there are many processes that can work and produce results. I don't think Evan's process is the most effective for building a large open source community, I suspect he would agree. But his process is intentional and relevant to his desires and priorities. I don't know the man but it was very nice to talk to him and I enjoyed how considered he seemed in his approach.

And his excitement about what he does was palpable which is something I feel bridges between different people with different desires, focus and process. "Oh, you also care deeply about doing the thing you do."

If you have questions or comments they are very welcome in response here to lars@underjord.io or you can find me as @lawik@fosstodon.org on the fediverse.

Thanks for reading, I appreciate it.