I often make the mistake of holding too strongly to my opinions. I will try to keep this list up-to-date as tribute to those moments.
The list is sadly trivial and short. I could definitely use help remembering more events. Do reach out if you ever caught me being wrong in public.
- I missed the point of Rails: it’s not technically innovative, but so what? Think of the competitive advantage that comes from not having to pay someone $100k+ a year to manage a k8s cluster. The web is better off because of rails
- I was too radical about advocating privacy online. Kevin Quirk’s record of switching to Windows reminded me that there are more important things out there: “Yep, privacy is an issue (…), but I’d rather sacrifice some personal data and be able to spend precious time with my family, than be completely private and miss that time."
- While my opinion on Brexit was never strong either way, I now realize I’ve been looking at the EU through the wrong lens. Martin Kleppmann’s brief lament, where he describes it as an admittedly flawed peace project, has made me reconsider
- I used to think the modernization of languages, such as the Orthographic Agreement of 1990, as well as the one from 2009, was a sign of a dumbing-down population. Monteiro Lobato changed my mind and convinced me it is natural and desirable for evolving language rules.
I am bound to come across several further items on the “coronavirus and lockdowns” front, which I failed at not having an opinion on. But what can I say, isn’t that all of us.