I often make the mistake of holding too strongly to my opinions. I will try to
keep this list up-to-date as tribute to those moments.
The list is sadly trivial and short. I could definitely use help remembering
more events. Do reach out if you ever caught me being wrong in
public.
- I missed the point of Rails: it’s not technically innovative, but so what? Think
of the competitive advantage that comes from not having to pay someone $100k+ a
year to manage a k8s cluster. The web is better off because of rails
- I was too radical about advocating privacy online. Kevin Quirk’s record of
switching to Windows reminded me
that there are more important things out there: “Yep, privacy is an issue
(…), but I’d rather sacrifice some personal data and be able to spend precious
time with my family, than be completely private and miss that time."
- While my opinion on Brexit was never strong either way, I now realize I’ve been
looking at the EU through the wrong lens. Martin Kleppmann’s brief
lament, where
he describes it as an admittedly flawed peace project, has made me reconsider
- I used to think the modernization of languages, such as the Orthographic
Agreement of 1990,
as well as the one from 2009, was a sign of a dumbing-down population.
Monteiro Lobato changed my mind and convinced me it is natural and desirable
for evolving language rules.
I am bound to come across several further items on the “coronavirus and
lockdowns” front, which I failed at not having an opinion on. But what can I
say, isn’t that all of us.