This reminds me so much of Maggie Appleton blog post on "Home-Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers" [1]
We have so many people who are so excellent and fast and developing nowadays that we can even afford the time to build things for our community, friends and even just for ourselves.
It has probably always been like this, but I am just personally observing a higher-degree of people doing and talking about it. Even just the small-web/neocities bobble points into this.
What incentive do companies have to do this? It seems quite profitable for them?
I am quite strict here with my comment; but honestly, I can't see much reason other than making new products that are made as an "anti" movement, but companies will just find new ways to get people hooked -- because it is profitable for them to do so.
This happens regardless as people leaving companies and whatever they produced. You will find so many examples of code out there in production and works through hopes and dreams.
And you know what? If it works it works - regardless how it was produced.
Been gaming since forever and in the last 5 years I started getting nausated 70% of games I have played (also old once that were fine) and generally this is also what is working for me -- just a little bit here and there it gets a lot better.
I understand the article talks against this, but I am grateful that I am able to do this, but I wouldn't recommend it for everyone.
Arguably a lot of people consider it too cold most of the year.
But otherwise I would say that when the weather is good the water is filled quite up with people at a comfortable level!
I really liked Google Timeline, but started going away from it (in my de-google phase right now), it was nice to go back to when I had been biking a specific place in town, but couldn't remember exactly where.
And I have also been doing some PolarSteps for quite a while, but wanted to start making my own travel books now.
This seems like a perfect tool for both of this!
(iOS user, so seems like the space a little more limited)
I agree with the sentiment that you should simply reduce and focus. With that in mind, I would also encourage you to write down things related to the interests that you don't give any focus to — inevitably, they will come up. Random ideas, articles, people talking about it, etc. And I think they needs to be processed to get them out of your system.
Personally, I enjoy at least writing down the ideas, passions, or motivations I have towards them somewhere and collecting them. Then, if the time comes when I choose that interest or topic, I already have a good bunch of well-marinated ideas. Of course, that can also overwhelm me, but then you just go to step 1 again!
Great examples, thanks for sharing all of them! Love Chris’ real life commits messages. Find them very nice just to get general overview of what was going on in your life at the time.
#indieweb movement also has a lot of roots in similar ideologies with people going into lowtech -- so I would also check that out, but that is a pretty massive hole to dig into already :-)
https://fosdem.org/2026/events/attachments/9NCWUR-reticulum_...