Brutkey

Ron Jeffries
@RonJeffries@mastodon.social

I wonder if I'm the oldest living programmer who programs almost every day.

Ron Jeffries
@RonJeffries@mastodon.social

I am strongly opposed to having my work included in any LLM, which will, by design, mangle, garble, and change my words, while simulating my style in a statistically credible fashion, producing text that reads as if I might have said it, but did not.

-- response to an inquiry.

Ron Jeffries
@RonJeffries@mastodon.social

Finally figured out how to log in to Xitter to deactivate my account: deletion is automatic after a delay. I hadn't posted for ages. Felt that even leaving my name up was too much support for the hell site and its REDACTED owner.

If there's ever a Ron Jeffries there, it isn't me, my late dad, or my late son.

Ron Jeffries
@RonJeffries@mastodon.social

Wow, are you serious?!
https://mastodon.social/@mhoye/115017706383787758

Ron Jeffries
@RonJeffries@mastodon.social

@GeePawHill@mastodon.social
I'm wondering here ... ISTM ... just riffing here ...

ISTM that excellence is by definition rare. Every successful system (plant, animal, species, any complex system) succeeds not because of its most excellent elements, but because its mediocre elements are good enough.

Maybe what we, you and I, care about really doesn't matter to success, not because of extractive capitalism, bad as it is, or the like, but because excellence, by its nature, is just a lovely irrelevance.

1/2

Ron Jeffries
@RonJeffries@mastodon.social

@GeePawHill@mastodon.social

That might not even be bad. As we both know, striving for excellence is its own reward, quite often its only reward.

But it is a reward. You know, as I do, the joy of making.

I suspect that that joy, and the joy of sharing, of once in a while sparking someone ... might be what it's all about.

Mediocre works. It has to work. It's a fundamental law of complex systems (that I just identified).

2/3

Ron Jeffries
@RonJeffries@mastodon.social

I am strongly opposed to having my work included in any LLM, which will, by design, mangle, garble, and change my words, while simulating my style in a statistically credible fashion, producing text that reads as if I might have said it, but did not.

-- response to an inquiry.

Ron Jeffries
@RonJeffries@mastodon.social

I wonder if I'm the oldest living programmer who programs almost every day.

Ron Jeffries
@RonJeffries@mastodon.social

Finally figured out how to log in to Xitter to deactivate my account: deletion is automatic after a delay. I hadn't posted for ages. Felt that even leaving my name up was too much support for the hell site and its REDACTED owner.

If there's ever a Ron Jeffries there, it isn't me, my late dad, or my late son.