Here in London, there’s a vibrant coding scene, and there has been for a long time.
Yes, the London coding scene is vibrant, and there’s a lot going on.
It’s sometimes slightly hidden though.
In the London coding scene…
There are various groups and events and communities that are not always easy to find or join without knowing that they exist.
This is because they tend to grow organically, through word-of-mouth. This is how most people discover London’s version of future of coding. And the same thing happens with the live coding community here, which is basically a telegram group you get invited to.
Additionally, the communities that make up the larger scene are largely decentralised, often with no immediately visible connections between them.
But the connections are there. It’s the people!
It’s the people, stupid.
People are often part of at least two or three communities, rarely just one. And together, these people serve as the bridging glue that glues together the whole scene, connecting its moving parts, allowing our shared values to spread and evolve. There’s a culture of demo, of code, and of cheekiness. Of course there is.
Yes, the London coding scene is vibrant, and there’s a lot going on. But because of its hidden nature, newcomers sometimes don’t realise that.
SF stands for “the San Franciso business scene” and I’ve never visited it, although I did once visit the city of San Francisco, but that is a completely different thing, or so I’ve been told.
Anyway, I’ve never visited SF, so I have no idea what it’s like, and I don’t care to find out.
I have no interest in how SF does things, or what its shared values are, or what the community’s like, or where the events are, or who the people are, or what companies are out there, or what its politics are, or anything at all about SF.
I don’t care about SF. And this is an enjoyable belief to hold, because it seems to outrage some people some times for some reason.
Occasionally, newcomers turn up in the London coding scene, and this is nice. London is a real convergence point for many people, so this happens often, and yes this is nice.
And very occasionally, one of these newcomers decides to set up a new meetup within the London coding scene, and this is also nice. Yes it is very nice.
And during the meetup, these newcomers sometimes say something funny to the crowd. They say something like, “There’s not a lot going on in London.”
And then they say, “So when I moved here from SF”, which is also quite funny.
And they go on to say, “I wanted to bring some of SF to London”, which, yes, is funny.
And proudly, they say, “Some people have commented that this meetup reminds them of SF, which I’m pleased to hear.”
So this is funny, because these newcomers are simultaneously very helpful to the London scene, while also being very wrong about it.
And this is how we ended up with three London meetups with the same name.
Like I said, I’m not part of the San Francisco business scene, and I’ve never visited, and I don’t plan to. Quite the opposite: I hope to actively avoid it, if I can.
The only way I can learn about SF is by seeing how it changes people who visit it. It’s a black box to me: Londoner goes in. Londoner comes out. What changed?
Human in. Different human out.
Well…
I’ve never met Bret Victor and I’m sure he’s a lovely guy.
I really enjoyed watching his talk about dead fish long before I got into all the disgusting computer stuff I’m doing nowadays.
I watched and read through all of his stuff a long long long time ago. It was all very compelling, and I thoroughly enjoyed his talks.
I did disagree with quite a lot of what he was saying, but it was no bother because it was very thought-provoking anyway.
And I didn’t think about him for many years.
Until…
When people come back from SF, they’re usually not talking about code. They’re not coming back to share all the brand new things they learned about coding, or demos, or even design or creativity or community, or anything like that.
No, they come back with something else…
When I started giving talks about my coding projects, that’s when it started. After every single talk, someone would approach me and say to me, “You gotta check out this guy.”
Then— Yes, it’s coming.
“He’s called Bret Victor. You should really look him up. I think you’ll learn a lot.”
I distinctly remember the first time this happened. I found it quite amusing, and I told the people that I was with about it.
You might not understand why it was funny to us.
Business! Money! Profit!
That’s all people talk about when they come back from SF.
It’s never: “I’m back from my trip in SF and while I was there, I learned so many things about coding.”
It’s normally: “I’m back from my trip in SF and while I was there, I learned so many things about raising capitol and aligning steak wholders and going-to-mark-it strategyizing”
Which is perfectly fine and all but—
And of course, I might be completely wrong here about SF. Like I said, I’ve no interest in going there, and I can only poke it as a black box: Seeing how it changes people who pass through it, from my outside stance.
It’s perfectly fine to care about money and business and what-not. I’m not against it— that. But— Look, it’s just an observation that I made. Listen—
Time after time, talk after talk, people came up to me afterwards and told me, “I think what could really elevate your work is if you look up this person— You should write this name down. Ready? His name is—”
“Bret Victor?” I ask.
“Bret— Well, yes. How did you know I was going to—”
I was looking forward to discovering what the New York scene was like. I had only ever visited for holidays before: Never for computer-related things.
And it was very nice!
But surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly), some familiar things happened.
First of all, yes. People came up to me and told me that I should—
“Look up Bret Victor?”
“Yes. Wait—”
Live coding is when you program something on-the-spot.
Or, it would be, if it wasn’t stuck within the wider context of—
You see:
Listen closely:
The programming world is full of elitism and toxic masculinity and and no no no no no no no no not yet not yet
The other thing that happened in New York was this:
People praised the events for being, “something you would get in SF”.
Not even New York was free from SF’s shadow. It wasn’t just a measley London / british thing, no. No, SF looked over us all.
How do you define something?
Well, usually, you do it in terms of something else.
You take something that’s already there / that’s already part of the shared canon, and you say how it differs and how it doesn’t.
That way, people know what you’re talking about.
That way, you can create a binary division between all things in the universe: Some things fit your definition, and some don’t.
A popular blog post states how the New York scene is different to SF. It tries its best to distance the two scenes far apart from each other. It’s an attempt to create a binary division, to escape SF’s reach: An attempt to escape the canon.
But in doing so, it only makes things worse.
By defining NYC in terms of SF, it only strengthens SF as the center of the universe: The canonical tech scene, that SF is, and other things are not.
NYC is a non-SF scene.
When people introduce their projects to me, they often define it in terms of the canon: The canon, in this case, often being Bret Victor. At least it is in the worlds I tend to work in.
“My project is like Bret Victor’s thing, but instead of X it does Y.”
“It’s like if you took Bret Victor’s thing but you add Y and X as well.”
Their work is placed in the context of / in relation to the existing canon.
“You can map out the route from Bret to here.”
There’s a plottable path to-and-from the thing we all already know.
Ivan Reese writes…
Chicago and Toronto would like a word with you (and NY)
Because they’re always being defined in terms of NY.
Eg: The Second City — famous Chicago comedy group whose name is self-deprecating in reference to this.
Ironically, Chicago and Toronto are “great” cities. When you live in a tiny little middle-of-nowhere, so many discussions with folks from bigger cities come down to “Why live there? They don’t have XYZ. It’s nice to have XYZ.”
Living somewhere small often means living in a shadow. Do with that what you will.
Ivan is right. The canon filters down a long food chain. NYC gets defined in terms of SF. Chicago gets defined in terms of NYC. And many places get compared to London too. I’ve lost count of the number of people who’ve told me “Manchester is basically a smaller London” and that couldn’t be further from the truth. To say that is to do both cities a massive disservice.
Let’s recap.
Chicago is not New York.
New York is not San Francisco.
San Francisco is not London.
London is not Manchester.
Bret Victor is not London.
And I am not Bret Victor.
Or am I…?
No, I am not.
By writing this blog post, I’m only making it worse. With every new paragraph, SF becomes even more cemented as the canonical tech scene, and Bret Victor becomes even more of a saint.
I sometimes wonder what it’s like for him, what with being canonised so consistently and all.
I do know that he recently shared an extra section on his process page — within the last 30 days it seems.
In the new section, BV (Bret Victor) laments, “There’s also a weird sense of entitlement on the part of many people (why do I owe anyone anything in the first place?)”
I am not Bret Victor.
I am also non-binary. My gender isn’t defined by what it is! It’s defined by what it isn’t.
As much as I would like to escape the canonical gender binary that this world seems to be obsessed with… Unfortunately I cannot because I’m tied to the canon by name. The binary defines me. It’s my starting point / my basis of identity.
It took me a long time to realise this. I mean, I feel silly for how long it took me to realise this, but: You can’t escape the canon, no matter how hard you try.
CHAOS TO THE CANON will be continued (some day) in part two.
This blog post was fast-tracked by someone paying 99 pounds to get it to the front of my queue.
Back to the wlkkiiiikkllbbbhgggff