Ruby is constructed as a sexual, sensuous, and exotic language as a function of its core rubrics and the semiotic/anthropological contents of the ecosystem built around it. The names used to describe it have a certain luxury and rarity: Ruby, its libraries Gems.
God this stuff pisses me off. Who was it that first decided that in order to deconstruct a culture or a work of art you must first learn to write like a complete toolbox?
The thing is, I’m probably a lot more open to deconstruction than your average left-brained nerd. I love looking for assumptions, implicit biases, and the like. I’m on record as believing that the structure of a teaching is often more influential than the content: for instance, if you learn about democracy inside a totalitarian system (e.g. the average school), you may learn facts about democracy but you will learn the habits of subjugation. I am hip to the system: I get it. The world we live in is not just face-value; there are subtle undercurrents that go unquestioned and are thus more powerful than any of the surface meanings.
But good GRAVY why the fuck do people have to write about this stuff like a 14 year-old who just got his hands on a copy of “The 100 Most Pretentious Words in the English Language”? Is there a single pomo writer out there who isn’t still trying desperately to impress her college professors?
The article above seems to have some genuine insight buried in it, trying hopelessly to crawl out from under ten tons of pompous academic fronting. When the author allows herself to speak like a human being she makes perfect sense: ” I was only in Silicon Valley for a few months and I had already heard more than I ever wanted to know about how Twitter and Apple were founded, about the cultures and philosophies of their founders, etc.”. But then she gets yanked back into impenetrable word-soup.
Seriously, who started all this? Are they still alive? Is there any chance at all I might meet this lingual terrorist in a bar someday and punch his or her lights out?