A Tribute to Steve Yegge

by Josh Staiger

I don't know who Steve Yegge is, but he rocks.

And here I thought I was the only one in the world with a day job programming Java, an unhealthy obsession with Emacs, and secret affairs with Lisp, Scheme, Ruby, blogging, and Google on the side.

Observe:

and similar drunken blog rants.

I don't care how much of an idiot Stevey says he is; he's right up there with Paul Graham, Philip Greenspun, and Mark Pilgrim in my book. Those who know me know that's the highest compliment I can possibly pay a person.

Reading these guys for the first time stretches your mind. It makes it hurt a little - in a good way. It allows you to catch glimpses of things that were right in front of your nose that you didn't know were there. I can't really describe it other than to say, from what I've read about the Zen and Buddhism, this has to be what the enlightenment is like... at least a little bit... at least the awakening part. Ok, maybe not, but still.

'Welcome to my life. I'm the cow in the Gary Larsen comic1 -- the one who looks up, shocked, and says: "Hey, wait a minute! This is grass! We've been eating grass." The other cows stare blankly, munching the grass.'

-- Steve Yegge in The Emacs Problem

Quotes like that get me all kinda teary-eyed.

After years of pondering the Lisp and Emacs and Java and closures and SQL and XML and RSS and Atom and REST and continuations and Javascript and Objective-C and Cocoa and Perl and Python and Ruby and the Gang of Four and blogging and blog meetups and Peopleware problem I think I've finally gotten to the point where I can read a guy like Stevey, understand exactly where he's coming from on many issues and feel completely comfortable saying something like:

"See all that crap that guy over there is ranting about? Yeah... what he said. Right on, brotha."

Whereas before I would have simply said "Aha!" or "Holy hell, he's right!".

Of course, I'm still saying those things - often, in fact - just not exclusively anymore, and it's a far cry from that kid who just graduated from college and was trying to convince himself that J2EE was the best thing since sliced bread, because it had to be, right? Because that's what they used at IBM, and IBM couldn't be wrong.

That's the feeling I get, and it's none too bad. Now if only I were only smarter... If I only knew how to write like these guys. If if if...

[1] For the love of god, if anyone actually has this comic or knows where I can find it, please let me know.

Disclaimer: Just so you know, in honor of Steve, I've had a few glasses of wine before writing this - which, if my previous entry is any indication, might become a theme with me for a while. So pardon the misspellings and horrible grammar.