A life update from Zach Oakes: Zig, AI, unemployment, and more
48 points by self
48 points by self
Zach Oakes, who some of you might know from his many Clojure projects, disappeared for a while. He recently posted this and a couple of videos about what he's been up to and his VCS system.
I feel for the guy. I don't know much about his work but it takes guts to put yourself out there in such an honest way.
Yeah. I get it. Several of my friends have already left the software industry for harder, lower paying jobs -- but jobs that don't involve interacting with AI.
I've kept things going for the last while, consulting on projects I find interesting, but I'm not sure how long that'll last. I've got a month or two before I should pick up my next project.
I'm still enjoying building things, but the professional software engineering world feels like it's rapidly becoming depressing to engage with. It would be nice if we weren't enshittifying as much as we can as fast as we can.
I would like to see a blog post or something on xit and what it tries to do differently than git. making a competing project to replace a tool such as git needs at minimum an explanation of the why.
This may exist but I have never heard of xit prior, so it's hard to grok
I am impressed by the calm, unflashy straight up honesty and transparency. Zero hype, all substance.
I can relate to so much. I'm sure every "born developer" can.
Society's systems for finding and utilizing (and rewarding) talent are so clunky, and that's one reason someone like Zach can be sitting off the the side somewhere, unfulfilled.
Zach, I hope you hang in there and keep moving forward (I don't know what that means any more concretely than that, but keep trying to do it).
I wonder what it took to be able to afford two year unemployment as a form of selfcare, rather than it being a source of debilitating anxiety.