
Real engineers are slow and boring, for they’re weighed down by reality. An illusionist is constrained only by his imagination. He is free to act out the most elaborate of scenarios, the more salacious the better. The public‘s perception of a hacker is shaped by scenes of revelry and blowjobs — be the rare individual who plays on their misconceptions, allowing the uninitiated to indulge in their fantasies, and you’ll be hailed a hero.
First, you have vim, a highly configurable text editor so hard to use millions of developers have been inadvertently trapped in its claws, unable to figure out how to close the damn thing. The mere fact that you have the audacity to use it elevates your status among your colleagues. You seem downright mythical, illuminating others about subjects as historical as the holy Editor war and stirring up support for your crusade against the Church of Emacs.
But a whole class of problems goes away from my life because I see people as having around them a two or three foot invisible buffer. If there is a stray hair on their jacket I ask them if I can pluck it from them. If they don’t want that, they’ll do it themselves. If their name is now Susan, it’s Susan. Whatever happens inside that buffer is entirely up to them. It has nothing to do with me.