Software, something for the machines

Here you’ll find a snippet of some of my favorite, free, personal projects from over the years – most of which have to do with music ✨.

I’ve been experiencing software for most of my life, from neopets to netflix and I’ve been writing it for a while now also. I have a lot of love for the practice; it’s my craft, it’s a way that I play, and it’s also what pays the bills. Despite this, there are still many things about modern software that I do not like 😔

A few of my gripes about the current state of software:

• Gains in available computing resources have created a lack of mindfulness around utilization. Much like a certain set of constraints can enable great art – resource constraints (even artificially imposed) can enable great software.

• The ubiquity of frameworks that are pedaled, adopted, and discarded is a distraction from writing great software. Frameworks are not tools, they are paradigms - undermining our understanding of software in their quest for dominance of the ecosystem. Tools say - “I’m here to help” and frameworks say “Join or die!”

• The surveillance economy and the attention economy which software enables should not be normalized. Remember - if something’s free, you are the product.

But! There’s still hope 🥳 A short list of my favorite software out there these days:

• soupault.app - tool that helps me make this site!
• lichess.org - free forever from donations
• sr.ht - the hacker’s forge

These are all great because they’re free, they’re open source, and they provide a great user experience – which is the golden standard of software.