Did it feel like an addiction? Yes. But I was too hesitant to delete it. It felt like the marketing foundation for my greatest hobby (and job): building stuff. I’ve met so many nice people there and it was just too much fun. Nope, no way I could have deleted it.

I always complained about Twitter, though. I couldn’t understand why they have thousands of employees while the product doesn’t change at all. Actually, since 2021 or so, they really did change a lot of stuff. Unfortunately, that made it worse for me.

It felt like the algorithm took over. Some of my posts were surprisingly successful, some of them were barely seen. My timeline was cluttered with people I barely know. I probably wasted even more time scrolling through the now endless timeline, while also feeling it doesn’t give me anything anymore.

Consuming the content felt like eating fast food, writing felt like gambling.

In 2022 I’ve gone through a lot of ups and downs. Burn out, ough. Become a dad (again), yay. Lose friends, ough. Meet a ton of new people, yay. Break up with my work, ough. Enjoy new hobbies, yay.

Those times are the times you learn the most, though. One of the numerous lessons I’ve learned: I want to own my online me. I don’t want to fill the content buckets, feed the algorithm and grow an audience on whatever platform. No, thanks.

In July I started to overhaul my website. I don’t have any ambitions to make it big, or to do whatever with it. I just want to maintain it like a garden. And I want to own it. That’s all.

Show up every day

Want to learn something new, but it’s overwhelming? No worries, just do a little every day.

Want to build something huge, but it doesn’t seem feasible? Just start and see it evolve even with a few minutes every day.

Want to solve something, but it’s too complex? Think about it. Even if it’s just for two minutes, as long as you’re doing it every day.

I’m baking bread for two months now. Not now and then, but every single day. On some days, I’m really dedicated to it. On other days, I’m just doing it without thinking about it. But I do it.

It’s awesome how far I’ve come with just a few minutes a day. Can’t wait to stand up tomorrow morning and heat up the oven. :)

What’s your do-it-every-day-thing?

But I felt the fear of missing out. Just recently I’ve set up a project with Node, Vue and GraphQL. And I hate Node.

Running npm install seems to have a 50 % chance to succeed on my machine. It’s just causing random issues I don’t even understand. Is that really what the cool kids are still using today?

But I must admit I also love Node. You can start with a single file, install some packages and design your own structure and APIs. It feels very … free. With all the upsides and downsides of freedom. While I wouldn’t start a PHP project without Laravel, I don’t hesitate to start a Node project without a framework.

Anyway, I’d love to look at something completely new. Over the last months I’ve learned Swift UI. It’s cool and all, but I don’t enjoy mobile apps enough to stick with it. I gave React another chance and I can build stuff with it, but I don’t enjoy it.

Also, I’m not in the phase of my life to invest that much time into learning everything about a completely different ecosystem. When I write JavaScript or PHP, I’m in the flow pretty quickly. My fingertips fly over the keyboard, and most of the time it just works.

I don’t want to be that guy thinking about the tech stack too much. I use what helps me to achieve my goal. I don’t even see my self as a “developer”. It’s just that code helps me to bring my ideas to life. I should probably ignore my fear of missing out (and you, too) and accept to be a JavaScript/PHP person for now, as long as it helps me to build cool stuff.

While thinking about all that I noticed something else: I won’t start a project without a code linter/formatter (or what you call those tools) anymore.

Whatever it is: ESLint/xo for JavaScript, PHP-CS-Fixer/Laravel Pint for PHP. It’s one of the first things I set up. It’s just too cool to throw some code in the editor, hit save, and see it format well automatically or – in some cases – even get rewritten for you.

Old twitter is not dead

@DCoulbourne on X (formerly Twitter), Source

I don’t want to be this guy, but Daniel, you’re wrong. Twitter used to be my home. It’s incredible how much of my attention it was and still is able to capture. Way more than I like. I had a 1-year break, when I was only posting on Mastodon, but I came back.

I came back because all my friends are still there, and I still value reading their posts, sending them DMs, cheering them up and making fun with them.

However, those interactions happen in the middle of a haystack of social media fast food. Am I missing the old days? Heck, yes. It feels like people are screaming for my attention from left and right, trying to sell me whatever they have, bragging about their MRR. While I still sit in the middle of all that, on a calm table meeting a few good friends.

The old Twitter is dead. I miss a lot of what made Twitter special for me. But as long as I have those lovely interactions with the people I value, I’m afraid to say it, but I’ll have to stay.