💾 Archived View for erock.io › 2021 › 03 › 04 › adventure-into-gemini-as-fe-engineer.gmi captured on 2022-04-28 at 17:59:01. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I wanted to talk a little about my current profession and why the juxtoposition
of it with gemini is interesting to me.
It seems like most people venturing into the gemini space are people who live
inside the terminal and never want to leave. There is also some overlap of
people that have disdain for the modern web because of how bloated websites have
become. With javascript, ads, popups, cookie consent modals, I can hardly blame
people. The modern web reminds of nascars with advertizements plastured on their
vehicles. It seems like every website is trying to monetize itself into silicon
valley stardom and as a result, it has ostrcized its early adopters. The people
begging for a simpler web have lost the battle. Even after many attempts to
bring the web into their terminals (e.g. lynx, w3m) it ends up a hack at best
and at worst completely unusable.
Enter gemini. Gemini is against everything about the modern web and wants to
bask in the nostalgic glow of a past life. A life where documents didn't shift
out from under you. They are static, there's a strict 1:1 mapping between the
gemini page and the number of requests made to the server to render the page.
I'm fascinated by this world because I also live in the terminal, but it's also
my job to build web apps. I've been working as a front-end software engineer for
the better part of 5 years now. I build massive javascript web apps for
companies that are trying to monetize the web. I'm building the demons that
haunt the people that enjoy gemini so much.
I agree with the sentiment behind the need for gemini. I think the web has
transformed into a completely different utility than its original intent:
communicating with people. It still very much is about communication, but its
been co-opted by commercialization, which I think is both good and bad. Billions
of dollars are being made off of voluntarist companies building web
applications. The employees are not working in factories, sacrificing their
health and bodies for a paycheck. The only exploitation of its customers are
data. This is not to say people's data isn't sacred, I just think we need
perspective. The people employed in tech lead relatively comfortable lives, and
I think there's something of value to it. Whether we want to admit it or not, we
are generating value for businesses around the globe and it doesn't appear to be
slowing down.
I guess I've read a lot of comments around the gemini community showing disdain
and vitriol for the modern web, but I have a different perspective. I enjoy the
modern web for what it is just like I'm really enjoying gemini for what it is.
In my next article, I'm going to write about why I love javascript so much and
argue for why you should as well.
"My adventure into gemini as a front-end engineer" was published on March 4, 2021.