Blog post: Nerves, apparently popular with agents

I blogged again. No agents involved in the typing. More in the topic.

This bundled together some thoughts that were sloshing around. Nerves feels like its growing. Getting solid numbers is hopeless but interest is certainly not shrinking.

Publishing about Nerves is near dead quiet though. Which I think could give the wrong impression. So here is a counterpoint.

Read it here

Levels of engagement

My previous newsletter drew some lovely and thoughtful replies. Generally among them was the admission of pulling back from the public coding spaces. Either due to pulling back from coding beyond the day job or due to the spaces not being all that constructive and focusing on the things that make number go up.

If you enjoy the act of programming the press of agentic coding is really alienating. You end up decoupled from the craft. For me and many other small business type folks there are other signals that feed back pretty clearly. I have many other axes I can do interesting stuff on than just the code so I still feel plenty engaged. But I see all the larger spaces becoming quieter and less interesting.

I see the very close collaborations and the interpersonal exchanges swelling. I feel like a lot of the people coming to Goatmire are looking for refuge from feeling disillusioned and just wanting to connect with other people that care. Which is beautiful and terrifying. Like we're grabbing on to each other in the face of a storm. I don't like that people are worried, exhausted and frustrated. It makes me quite happy that the response is to attempt to connect more though.

I see this in several areas of collaboration around Goatmire and Nerves. People are putting in ridiculous amounts of sweat to make the conference great. And there are clusters of people doing lots of work to make awesome workshops, talks and software projects. Crossing over their respective efforts into full-on collaborations to make them all more impactful. It's wild.

And then we have things are straight up conspiratorial collaboration for making the conference a better and more interesting thing. Some of it technical but mostly pulling on skills that people generally don't get to share in the ecosystem.

I wish you could see it all because it is heartwarming. In the face of everything that is going on people are doing art. People are making cool hardware, better systems, taking wild swings. And having a nucleus, a physical gathering, a real deadline just helps people drive towards a common thing. I'm just guiding, this is mostly other people and it is beautiful.

With all this going on I look forward to meeting the people and getting to do hands on stuff with them more than I look forward to the conference that it all builds around. I have high hopes for the conference but I adore the people. And this has been a recent lesson. Frank (the Nerves guy) and his family dropped by here for a day or two earlier this year. It was so good to spend time in person. Damir (who does emerge, drones and much more) and his girlfriend came by on their way to a metal concert. Some of the highest bandwidth nerdery I've had in ages. The joy I know we both had of talking to someone who already knows all the surrounding stuff and we could just get into the things we really care about. Absolute magic.

It was Frank and Damir because I've been conspiring with them for a while now. For you it should be other people. But if you have the opportunity to travel and visit folks you enjoy working with online. Or if you have the opportunity to host. It is so valuable. Maggie and Bruce Tate having been doing this since forever. My visit to Chattanooga was no different. I spent time at their house, got to know their dog, walked up their mountainous slopes.

Or organize local hikes with other community folks you appreciate. Meetups are also cool. Just meeting more people in person and putting in the effort to take it beyond an event. Fundamentally we need to make more friends, spend more time together, in person and online both matter. And then we'll both have people to grab on to and people to weather the storm with.

Thank you for reading. I appreciate you. Specifically.