the world needs more recreational programming.
like, was this the most optimal or elegant way to code this?no, but it was the most fun to write.
Yes. This.
As Baz Luhrmann didn’t say, despite the implications of this video: code one thing every day that amuses you.
There is no greater way to protest the monetisation of the Web, the descent into surveillance capitalism, and the monoculture of centralised social media silos… than to create things just for the hell of it. Maybe that’s Kirby eating a blog post. Maybe that’s whatever slippy stuff Lu put out this week. Maybe it’s a podcast exclusively about random things that interest one person.
The pre-corporate Web was fun and weird. Nowadays, keeping the Internet fun and weird is relegated to a counterculture.
But making things (whether code, or writing, or videos, or whatever) “just because” is a critical part of that counterculture. It’s beautiful art flying in the face of rampant commercialism. The Web provides a platform where you can share what you create: it doesn’t have to be good, or original, or world-changing… there’s value in just creating and giving things away.
(And, of course, the weirder the better.)