Adina posts about creating an IRC bot as well as giving her reasons for not living up to the macho geek ideal. Whether or not she is not living up to a stereotype is irrelevant because I think her list is something that I strive for and I would think most other geeks do as well.
I like assembling things from piece parts. The ubergeek ideal is building a system from the ground up; reuse is a pragmatic necessity, but a fall from the ideal.
In my opinion, true mastery comes from realizing that someone else has already created something which you can use. This is why you can do so many cools things with stuff like the Google API, Amazon API, del.icio.us and Technorati. Building on top of someone else's work saves you time and energy plus allows you to focus on the itch you want to scratch.
Posted by Josh at April 9, 2004 05:09 PM | TrackBack