Silicon Valley way of life

I’m working my way through Season 3 of Silicon Valley.

Something changed. I really enjoyed the previous two seasons but this one is seriously depressing.

I recognize all the characters. I have different names for them. I knew the big VC as a partner at Kleiner Perkins.

There’s a guy who gets a $20 million windfall and blows through it in no time. I know that person too, only the guy in the show the character isn’t exhibiting the weirdness that comes with someone who wants to destroy his or her own success.

I played the role of a number of the characters. Usually the awkward team leader who didn’t fit in well with the business types.

A lot of the systems that didn’t exist when I showed up in Palo Alto at age 24, in 1979, ready to take on the world. I would have loved being part of an incubator with lots of other nerds to hang out with. There weren’t enough independent developer types back then to pull something like that off. And the idea that programming was something creative was pretty radical for the tech industry of the early 80s. I think at its core the VCs still don’t get that it’s creative.

But some of the problems of Silicon Valley persist, they existed when I came there and they still exist. It’s a lonely place. No social pulse. Everyone works all the time. It has its moments but usually it’s not very much fun.

I became part of it and it very much became part of me.

One of the most depressing things is that they’re still arguing over tabs vs spaces. It bothers me because I’m not a member of either school. I write code in an outliner. My editor takes care of that, I think it uses tabs, but I could easily change it to use spaces. They say, in the show, that it all gets compiled to the same thing when the machine runs it. True! But I’ve gotten even higher level. The code they edit by hand to me is object code. The depressing thing is the kids who inspired the characters in the show are having an argument that’s much, much older than they are. It is resolvable. But they’re still arguing about it! No one listens. Progress is made at a snail’s pace.