A readme file for Dylan Araps from 3 days ago saying “have taken up farming” and the github page for neofetch has also been archived. Good for him I guess.
At some point every professional computer person - programmer, sysadmin, whatever - will seriously consider piling all their computers into a big pile, lighting them on fire, and moving to the country to start a new life making things with their hands
Plants and animals don’t file tickets.
Things made out of wood don’t suddenly stop working cos you looked away for 15 seconds and Wood v2.1.4 is incompatible with Nails v4.0, but if you upgrade Nails you also have to upgrade Paint to v2.2 and they completely changed their API because the old API wasn’t sufficiently cool anymore
Woodworking is very popular among techies for a reason. As are playing music and climbing (bouldering)
I’m an avid hiker personally
Especially in the local wilderness where I don’t get cell reception
It’s nice knowing that literally no matter how important somebody thinks their problem is they can’t reach me no matter how hard they try AND no matter how much my reflex is to check my email for “important” things that need taken care of I literally can’t check it.
I am also an IT nerd that hikes as much as I can, when the weather permits. Too many of my local trails have decent reception so I have to just forget my phone exists for a while.
This past weekend, I picked up a little wooden craft kit. All the pieces were pre-cut and I just had to glue and fit things together. I put it together yesterday and I can confirm, it was the most satisfying thing I’ve built in ages.
Woodworking and rock climbing scratch the problem solving itch in different ways, on top of the creative (in woodworking) and physical exercise (rock climbing) itches common in most people.
I never understood techies that do climbing, how are their wrists not completely fucked adding that kind of exercise to the usual tech problems??
Climbing usually builds strength and helps to reduce chance of repetitive strain injuries. Finger injuries, however, are super common but fortunately don’t typically hinder typing.
Interesting, I still weight 116kg so climbing isn’t an option for me but I would have expected it to make the wrist injuries worse
If you’re saying you think you’re too heavy to climb: while that may be true now, you could consider using that as an activity target. That is, you want to be able to do the thing, so you can figure out a plan (which might involve a doctor - I don’t know your situation) that gets you on a trajectory such that you will be able to get into climbing in a year or two. It won’t happen overnight, and it will likely not be easy, but you can get there!
Fwiw: I recently lost about 10kg and am doing well with keeping it off, mostly with just conscious lifestyle changes (portion control, forcing myself into more active habits, being more judicious - though not puritanical - about my food choices), and the difference in my average energy level is frankly remarkable.
Exercises using wrist strength actually help with those problems. I haven’t done climbing, but I do tend to include wrist related stuff in my routine.
e.g. nunchuck exercises are good for shoulders and wrists. Quarterstaff spinning has also been useful.I didn’t understand the downvote I’m the first half… and then I read the rest.
🤷
You thought
In fact, your farm equipment is made not to be repaired by you. Your tractors and what have you are very anti repair
It’s probably cheaper to import a Zetor or MTZ from Europe, the 70s-80s models are still very much in use.
I mean, you could get a 70s-80s model American tractor, too.
And then you call the vendor and they say there is nothing they can do after you sat on hold for several hours
Or wood 2.2 has an unpatched zero day and now some dude in Russia owns your barn until you repaint every surface (wipe and reload)
Goat: breaks into your house, shits all over your living room
You: “oh fuck it’s Steve”
No need to deal with aggressively incompetent management when planting potatoes.
Damn there must be so many farms opening in Stardew Valley.
I’m more of the “Van by the River” or “Hermit in a Log Cabin” type.
I’m still working in tech (remotely), but otherwise living the “hermit in a cabin” lifestyle. It’s nice.
NGL “Hermit in a log cabin” sounds really nice
“Hermit in a log cabin” is my retirement plan. If I could WFH from a log cabin I definitely would.
But I still pine for a cabin in the woods
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If you pay attention, you start noticing that a lot of DIY/maker Youtubers are former software developers.
Make tons of money as a software dev and get a big collection of tools and retire early to Spend the rest of your days as far away from software as you can
I’ve basically done that minus the lighting stuff on fire part. Moved out to the country, still making a living with the whole computer stuff but I own some forest, I’m a volunteer firefighter and I’ve got a huge, wild garden.
It’s good for my mental health.
Hey me. Nice to see me out in the wild.
I chucked most of my computer stuff, but kept a laptop for work, and a somewhat aging desktop to game on rainy nights, and moved to a piece of forest far from others.
When we first got out here there wasn’t even enough space to park our truck. I cleared enough Forest to park our travel trailer and live in while we built a tiny 12 ftx30 ft house.
Now I spend my mornings feeding birds and doing minimal tending on a very wild (by design) garden.
Strongly suggest others who can do so to give it a try.
Especially people who are in any type of job where systems, thinking and infrastructure was part of your daily thought process.
Life out here is very hard at first as we set up the infrastructure but everyday it gets a little bit easier and eventually the workload should be smaller here than it is at a normal job. That’s when I’ll quit my normal job.
When does it happen? I’m 53, and still obsessed with software development and technology in general. Moving to the country sound like it’s nice and quiet, but too far away from urban things I enjoy.
Oh don’t get me wrong, 99% of the time I love my career and 15 years in I still get a kick out of crafting code to make the stupid little machines do what I want.
The other 1% of the time - a couple of days a year - I get home at the end of the day with a profound sense that these machines are driving me slowly mad
Can confirm, am currently at the country. Still not at the point I want or can permanently move, but it’s so good for the mind.
Farming is hard, physically and mentally, especially organic. And necessary. This is wholesome.
Oh definitely, but far more physically than mentally when you start getting used to the country life. The good thing is that work comes in sprints with spring being the hardest by far.
I’ve been pretty much only trimming for days just to get everything under control and I’m still not done. And in like 2-3 weeks I’ll need to do it all over again because you can practically see the grass and weeds growing. When it gets hotter and drier, the growth slows down significantly and it’s more manageable. It’s the same with crops, you break your back in spring and work hard in autumn, but summer and winter are pretty chill. Those sprints make it easier to get used to because you’re not doing the same things day in and day out.
There’s a surprising amount of overlap between programming and farming. Research, diagnosing, solving issues, refactoring, etc. And it definitely favours a DIY mindset for fixing and making things. For example I’m planning on building an automated watering system with microcontrollers because I could make it for a fraction of the price of a commercial product.
Organic is not that much more difficult if you’re only growing for yourself. But being good to nature definitely makes everything harder. Like we could use chemicals to kill everything except grass, but leaving native plants is good for the ecosystem while making trimming far harder.
There was this math guy in the 90s, he wrote a manifesto. Did not end well for him.
Joke’s on you. I’m still a sysadmin and doing things with my hands for years.
I grew up on a farm, any programmer that thinks farming or ranching is better is gonna have a rude awakening as to why there are very few farmers anymore.
So no not every computer guy dreams of the farm, repairing 10miles of fence every April for the entire month all day every day isn’t what I would consider an improvement over programming. And that’s the easy part wait till you gotta help an animal struggling to give birth.
I get programmers have this idea that farming or ranching is more pure somehow but it is murder on your body and soul in ways you wont understand. programming and computer stuff is a cakewalk in comparison. more politics but learn to play the game of thrones and its not too bad.
I’m getting really close to that point tbh. Machining and metalworking looks like a ton of fun.
Yeah, I’ve learnt over the years that having non-computer based creative hobbies is really important. I did a bit of leather working for a bit - tools are cheap on AliExpress and it doesn’t take up a ton of space unless you go really deep. Spend a few hours on a weekend in the garage making a thing that is tangible and I can hold and doesn’t require maintenance
It’s all fun and games until you realize modern farm equipment has more shitty tech in it than the datacenters you’re running away from
You make a good point but I think farmers get to see this thing called the sun. I hear it’s pretty neat but I wouldn’t know myself.
So it’s something nice to see eh? How much for a month’s subscription?
SaaS (Sun as a Service)
There is a lot more to be offered aaS than what we usually use these acronyms for.
I hear SaaS (Sex as a Service) is the oldest business.
You didn’t pay monthly sun subscribtion
Shh dont give the oligarch class any ideas!
I hear you can self host sth called photovoltaic on your rooftop to get it for free!
Don’t buy into their lies! The sun is evil, 100% of people that have gone out into the sun are dead or dying, it is constantly screaming at us and spitting burning rays of hellfire at us. It could destroy us all with with one little sneeze! That monster needs to be stopped!
Nah, too hot.
Too bright too. Needs a nerf.
There’s a reason I farm with old relics, they aren’t “optimized” like the new stuff but they’re cheap and reliable to keep running.
Most of my implements don’t even have an electrical connection and some of the tractors have literally a starter motor, alternator, battery. Maybe lights if you’re lucky!
My farming mostly stays analogue, but that’s not to say it doesn’t require logic
Fair point, and I can’t not think of Louis Rossmann after reading this. Still, I’m not sure how much it affects small scale farming (assuming that’s what the neofetch dev is doing).
Thats why he needed all that programming education to hack the shit outta those John Deere’s
Dylan is a genius of the profound variety. I was concerned when he seemed to disappear; I’m delighted it looks like a happier ending.
Thank you for making the world make better sense, Dylan!
exit 0exit 0🥹
So he went out to touch grass literally
Ugh another developer lost to the outside.
One of us… One of us… One of us!
Man got tired of working for JojaMart
Join us. Thrive
Sometimes I feel like farming would be better than DevOps.
Whats a good alternative?
Get a remote job and do both until you know enough to quit tech?
I meant for neofetch lol
Lol that makes more sense now that you clarify. I’ve heard great things about farm simulator too though. It’s certainly cheaper than a ranch.
For your actual question apparently fastfetch?
Yeah fastfetch is great, much faster than neofetch of that matters at all to you
Personally I use macchina
Farming is a very full-time job, although I suppose you could get part-time work as a farmhand.
Wood cutting might have a similar appeal.
Goat herding.
If you’ve seen the memes on Reddit you’ll know what I mean
The sheeps seem to compile themselves.
as a relative outsider looking into this this is a profoundly bittersweet/wholesome story lol. almost akin to bill watterson. glad fans of his can know he’s okay 💙
RIP neofetch, good luck to Dylan.
Using Linux is just the first step to leaving tech and becoming a farmer. And we all want it one day
Is this the plot from “mongodb is webscale” . . .
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I’ve been using fastfetch for a long while.
It was abandoned for years
Tbf what else would you want that to do? It was done
I mean, had it been rewritten in Rust yet?
There are always issues, new distros, detection improvements, etc etc. Neofetch has 11 PRs open this year alone.
I can’t think of a single piece of software that’s “done.” Even TEX is only at version 3.141592653, not π.
There are some commonly used programming algorithms and snippets that have been in use and unchanged from their original C code since the 70s and 80s, because they do exactly the thing they are supposed to do, and nobody has come up with a better way of doing it. I have a fast hash function in a program of mine that was written by a guy in the early 2000s who was benchmarking various existing hash algorithms of the time, and that same function is still used in hundreds of other pieces of software.
I don’t know of entire full programs that are like this though.
I know at least one pr that wasn’t (still hasn’t been?) merged for years; Proper 8-bit color sequence support.
