I've Been Inspired

Updates

Things look a bit different since the last time I made a post

• NEW: “SUBSCRIBE” button at the bottom of the site. Sign up to be receive an email when I add a new post
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• UPDATED: The moon emjois to control light/dark mode have been replaced

This post will be much more technical than the previous two. I’ll try my best to define any jargon.

Idol

a representation or symbol of an object of worship

Having an idol is a dangerous thing. From my brief research on idols, the one word that keeps scaring me is “blindly”. It’s surprisingly easy to ignore someone’s flaws when you look up to them.

I think the only idol I’ve ever had is David Ortiz. In my eyes, he can do no evil, he was a mythical figure when I was growing up. If someone showed me the lab results from when he tested positive for PEDs, I’d stop believing in science altogether.

No more idols, lets have role models instead.

Role Model

an American singer-songwriter and former rapper¹

a person looked to by others as an example to be imitated

That’s a lot less scary.

I (like most people) have had a lot of role models, and today I added one to the list.

Mitchell Hashimoto

The next couple of paragraphs will look a lot like what the kids call glazing

Mitchell doesn’t have a wikipedia page (he probably should) so I’ll link his website² instead. He co-founded HashiCorp, a very succesful software company and now works on the terminal that I am using at this very moment, Ghostty.

Neither of those two cool things are enough to make someone a role model, so I am going to share what about Mitchell makes him a good example to follow.

• Passionate. Has a sh*t ton of money and still codes when he has the time.
• Philanthropic. Donated $300k of that sh*t ton to the Zig Software Foundation.
• Seemingly good guy. Tweet from today speaks for itself.

I found a role model! What now?

Easy, I start to code for the passion, then I’ll donate $300k and tweet about my child (neither of which I have).

No. Start by learning about the behaviors that made them succesful and begin implementing them as you see fit. DO NOT just copy their lifestyle and start to believe everything they do in the hopes that you will become them, that is creeping back into idol territory.

I’ve listened to a couple of talks and podcasts that Mr. Hashimoto has done and here are the main things I have taken from them.

• He is always working on a side project
• He started Ghostty because he wanted to use Zig and learn about something he didn’t have too much familiarity with (terminal emulators).
• He reads the reference/manual/docs and standard library of a programming language before writing a single line of code.

I recently started a side project (this site) and have been going back and forth with the theme so I am going to make my own. Side project ✅

I don’t have much experience using Hugo or frontend development. Opportunity for learning ✅

Time to read a bunch of stuff.

Final Thoughts

Everyone is their own person and you should never try to be someone else, but it is okay (maybe even encouraged) to learn from and admire certain aspects of others.

If anyone has any thoughts or ideas on how to make this site better please let me know.

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I’ll leave you with a quote about idolization that a wise friend of mine named Noah said 7-ish years ago (I have no clue why I still remember this).

The only person you should look up to is Jesus