Re this important thread from @grimalkina:
https://mastodon.social/@grimalkina/111972810596703896
I just gave a little soapbox to my Software Design and Development students that I give every time I teach the class, and I’ll give it here on Mastodon.
Software development is an intensely social discipline.
1/
Software is made by humans for humans.
Most software is made by teams. All software involves interacting with other people. When you use a tool, a programming language, you’re interacting with the people who made it; when people use your software, they’re interacting with you. When software works or doesn’t work, that’s the decisions of others, the work of others that you’re experiencing. It’s people all the way down.
2/
Most software is made by teams, and software development is an •intensely• social activity. Software projects stand and fall on the relationships between the humans who create it: whether they understand each other, whether they collaborate well, how they make each other feel.
Computers don’t fill in the gaps and misunderstandings for us with common sense; when we don’t understand each other, we •codify• that misunderstanding in our code, fix it in place and turn it loose.
3/
The best software tester I’ve ever known once said to me, “Whenever I start at a new place, I find out which teams hate each other. Where their systems interface with each other is the first place I look for bugs — because they’re not talking to each other.”
Software projects stand and fall on the relationships between the humans who create them. (A corollary to Conway’s Law.)
4/
Now please don’t misunderstand me (and here imagine me looking earnestly to the students): when I say it’s “intensely social,” I don’t mean that you have to be an extroverted social butterfly.
You can be the world’s biggest introvert and make great software.
You can be socially clumsy (I am!) and make great software.
You can be autistic and make great software.
You can be chatty and charming, or silly, or dry and serious, or linear, or chaotic, or or or…and make great software.
5/
What you can’t be is misanthropic. When you write software, you are in relationship with other people. And if you don’t care about people, if you just •hate• people, if you can’t care about healthy relationships, if you cannot be bothered to communicate or to listen or to just give a ground-level shit about other people, DO NOT get into software. You’ll crash and burn — and you’ll cause terrible harm as you go down. Find some other discipline to go torment.
The rest of you…come on in.
/end
I had a professor/mentor in college that frequently gave a speech pretty similar to this, but for art:
- It's about two way communication with another human,
- Tools (brushes, pencils &c.) and media are the paths to this connection,
- Art for art sake is bullshit, enrich your life and the life of the consumer,
- Otherwise, you will be very bad at this and,
- If you're in this class to become a rich and famous artist get the fuck out.
Surly old Irish man. I loved Sean.
Yeah, he didn't mince words. Brilliant painter. Awesome instructor. Later, I'd come to find out awesome boss. He just happens to be one of those people that really should have come with documentation. A quick start guide, at the very least. LOL
Invariably, by the second or third meeting, only one or two of the truly interested students who weren't in our program would remain.
@helplessduck @Gaolaitch @inthehands It's the same way in music, too. The music may be gorgeous, and it might be satisfying, invigorating, absolutely wonderful to play, but when I perform in front of others, I'm hoping that I can add what they need to their lives 
Some people need encouragement. Others need invigoration, while yet others need soothing. I've had the pleasure of making people dance, making them cry, and rarely, sooth the broken-hearted 
At the end of the day, all of our thousands of hours of practice are in the hope that, in those key moments when a person truly needs our music, we'll be skilled enough to share it with them in the way they need it 
@OctaviaConAmore @helplessduck @Gaolaitch This musician agrees. You can’t always meet people where they’re at, but you do have to reach toward them. Much the same with teaching as well.
I’m also a big defender of making music for one’s own self, and not feeling like it doesn’t matter or doesn’t count because it’s a private pursuit, a secret garden. Meeting people where they’re at includes one’s self.
@inthehands @OctaviaConAmore @helplessduck I have serious amounts of baggage in this area. My training toxified the idea of audience by demanding that I aim for perfection, and so imagine the listener as a critic with the perfect ear who will know if I fall short of perfect. I’ve spent many years trying to disempower my hyper-criticism; it’s only lately that I find I can play to a real audience, whose opinions I believe and trust. Rather than failing at the impossible, again.
Imagining a real human being as my ideal audience sort of crowds out the hyper-critical one, I find. Or at least gives me an alternative to play to. Little steps.
@Gaolaitch @OctaviaConAmore @helplessduck So sorry you went through that ordeal!
Cello is wonderful. Piano’s my thing, but I were going to seriously learn a second instrument, cello would be it.
@jagthedrummer @Gaolaitch @inthehands @OctaviaConAmore
And they science and the arts are two opposite worlds!!!
BAHH! Charlatans! 😂
Paul Cantrell
helplessduck
Octavia Con Amore 
Succubard's Library
Jody Hughes
Jeremy Green