I didn't realize we had this nifty new neofeels command, I like this. It's certainly a lot more responsive than the older TUI. But onto the feels.

I've been up and down with a weird depressive bout lately, and while I want to say I don't know why, I have some ideas. It mostly revolves around my own listlessness, as I perpetually try to find a place where I belong but then feel quite alienated. Going back to school has certainly helped, since industry is feels like hollow cash grab with little social or intellectual merit in the modern day, but it's not perfect obviously.

It's only gotten worse as I've fully fallen in love with and adopted lambda calculus and Scheme as my main mechanisms for programming. Functional, let alone untyped functional, is becoming a fairly niche world. But I am determined with it all the same as I feel like I have finally found my new home in programming, after leaving ANSI C and C99 due to their flaws impeding my abilities to write more complex, adaptable software. So I love Scheme; certainly the lambda calculus, the latter being the purest form of computation there is. But I find it hard to share that excitement and love with others throughout the technology and computer spaces.

Most people seem to find programming a means to an end, and not an art or science in and of itself. I find that interpretation of things extremely unfortunate, as programming languages and programs themselves are the most impressive use of formal language we as a species has ever accomplished. They stand in the face of mathematics and laugh as it relies on a flawed, informal representation, while programs are written in formal grammars. In the realm of formal sciences it is unparalled, both in its ability to be applied and ability to represent abstract and physical concepts. While I prefer my incantation language to be that of Scheme, and the lambda calculus, there exists all sorts of languages that allow you to write incantations.

I don't know why I feel this way, maybe I am wholly incorrect and I am surrounded by people who love the abstract, theoretical, and formal components of computing. But instead I tend to see a love and fascination with the hardware, the computer itself, which saddens me some. With the fascination so solely focused on the physical, the applied, we see programming languages drive to meet the computer. Ugly languages, meant to represent expose or proxy the computer itself, are then brought forward as the de facto standard for computing. But while the computer is undoubtedly important, but it isn't the point to me.

I don't mean to say there is anything wrong with the fascination with hardware, and computers, but moreso that it skips the beautiful nature of what enables that software to be written. A computer is a machine for applying software, or programs, not the facilitator of the act of programming itself. In much the same way the differential engine did not enable calculus, or an abacus enable arithmetic, it is just what we use to apply all that we know.