Thread by @b0rk

a big thing I try to do with my zines is stick to fundamentals: things that haven't changed much in the last 10 years and that probably won't change much in the next 10 either

one thing I think is unfortunate about programming culture is that "knowing fundamentals is really helpful!" can sometimes turn really gatekeeper-y ("oh, you don't know how THING works? WELL YOU SHOULD!! IF YOU DON'T YOU AREN'T A REAL PROGRAMMER"). it's so unnecessary to do that!

the thing is that it's SO NORMAL to make it 5 or 10 or 15 years in your programming career without learning something that seems "basic" about how a computer thing works. And it's both:
1. good to learn some of these "basic" things
2. totally okay to not have learned it yet!

instead of having big arguments about which COMPUTER_THINGs "real programmers" should know to do their job, I'd much rather we all just admit that we're all gonna need to learn new things to do our jobs well and that's okay.

I often see people say my zines are good for beginners. That's awesome! But I don't write for beginners. I write for _anyone_ who's realized "oh, wait, I've been programming for X years and I don't know that thing, and I'd like to know it now please".

Something else that's hard here is that the internet is FULL of bad explanations of computer concepts that almost seem designed to make you feel dumb.

I've gotten good at recognizing "No, I'm smart, the problem is that this explanation sucks. I'm going to find a different one."

I guess I need to write a wizard zines manifesto at some point