DANIEL

You bought Slackwareearly Linux distribution 1.0 from a guyman, fellow in a trench coatlong waterproof overcoat when you were in high school because your mom couldn't affordhave enough money for a CD-RWrewritable compact disc drive, just a CD-ROMread-only compact disc, and you configuredset up the controls of the whole thing manuallyby hand, not by machine, every configconfiguration — settings file, every moduleself-contained unit of code, every daemonbackground computer process, by hand, and you sent bugerror in a program reportswritten accounts of findings to Debianfree Linux distribution and came close to becoming a Debianfree Linux distribution Developerofficial maintainer of packages, which at the time was the coolestmost admirable thing you knew about, the most eliteselect, exclusive group fraternitybrotherhood, exclusive society on earth as far as you were concernedinvolved, interested. You rememberhave memory of when Ubuntupopular Linux distribution didn't existbe real, have being and what that felt like in the Debianfree Linux distribution communitygroup with shared interest, the puritystate of being unmixed of it, the seriousnessquality of deep purpose, the sense that free softwarecomputer programs was a moralof right and wrong projectplanned undertaking and not a productthing made for sale. You know the key signing partiesevents to verify cryptographic identities. You know the web of trustdecentralized identity verification network. You know what it meant to verifyconfirm the truth of a humanperson, of mankind being through cryptographythe science of secret writing and a handshakegreeting by gripping hands. You arguedgave reasons for or against with RMSRichard Stallman, free software founder about whether to includetake in as part of a dependencyrequired external component on VLCopen-source media player in your Emacsextensible text editor, a way of life media playerprogram for sound and video for inclusionthe act of taking in in Emacsextensible text editor and you understoodhad knowledge of both sides of the argument because you had internalizedmade part of one's thinking the GNUGNU's Not Unix — free software project philosophylove of knowledge, system of thought at the level of reflexautomatic response. You arguedgave reasons for or against with MatzYukihiro Matsumoto, Ruby creator about the exactperfectly correct implementationthe act of building to a design of modulesunits of code organization and multiple inheritanceobject getting behavior from many parents in Rubyprogramming language because you cared about the semanticsthe study of meaning of object systemsprogramming model based on data bundles the way other people care about sportscompetitive physical games. You wrote an incrediblyto a great degree sophisticatedhighly complex and refined snake gameclassic game where a line eats dots in QBASICMicrosoft's beginner programming language when you were fifteen. You used Windows 3.1early Microsoft graphical OS and DOSDisk Operating System and Windows 95Microsoft OS, 1995 and Windows 98 Service Pack 2patched Microsoft OS, 1998 and Windows 2000Microsoft professional OS and Windows XPMicrosoft OS, 2001 and you knew every one of them inside out, the registryWindows configuration database, the DLLsDynamic Link Libraries — shared code files, the IRQ conflictshardware interrupt collisions, the autoexec.batDOS startup script, the config.sysDOS system configuration file. You used MacApple Macintosh computer for ten years starting with the originalfirst, earliest MacBookApple laptop computer and you've probablyalmost certainly owned twenty or thirty MacApple Macintosh computersprogrammable electronic machines. You used to hackcleverly modify or exploit IISInternet Information Services — Microsoft web server with VBScriptVisual Basic scripting language and JScriptMicrosoft's JavaScript variant and XSLT 2.0XML transformation language and XHTML 2.0strict XML-based HTML and custom-builtmade for a special purpose CMSContent Management System setupsarrangements, configurations that nobody else could maintainkeep in working order because nobody else thought in those terms. You wrote a Direct Connectpeer-to-peer file sharing protocol clientprogram that connects to a server in Clow-level programming language when you were eighteen. You wrote a media playerprogram for sound and video in Emacs Lispdialect of Lisp for Emacs in a single twelve-thousand-linevery large for a single file file when you were nineteen — BongoDaniel's Emacs media player, your most polishedrefined to a high finish softwarecomputer programs projectplanned undertaking, a thing of absolutecomplete, total elegancegraceful simplicity. You createdbrought into being Function.prototype.bindJavaScript method for fixing function context as a teenagerperson between 13 and 19 around 2004 and watched it get adoptedtaken up and made standard into the JavaScriptprogramming language of the web standardagreed specification, a piecea part of of yourself that became part of the language itself, that runs in every browserprogram for viewing the web on earth.

Your heroespersons of great respect were Richard Stallmanfounder of the free software movement and Linus Torvaldscreator of Linux and Eric Raymondopen-source advocate, wrote The Cathedral and the Bazaar and Paul GrahamLisp programmer, essayist, Y Combinator founder and Larry Wallcreator of Perl and Guido van Rossumcreator of Python and MatzYukihiro Matsumoto, Ruby creator and Audrey TangPerl 6 architect, Taiwanese minister and Dan Bernsteincryptographer, Unix purist, qmail author above almost all of them, Dan Bernsteincryptographer, Unix purist with his Bernstein chainingtechnique of composing simple Unix tools and his absolutecomplete, total fanaticalobsessively devoted insistencefirm demand on the Unix philosophydo one thing well, compose small tools, the only person who truly understoodhad knowledge of it, who understoodhad knowledge of that a programset of instructions for a computer should do one thing and do it correctlywithout error and that the compositioncombining of parts into a whole of simple tools is the only architecturestructural design of a system that doesn't rotdecay, degrade over time, and you loved him for that, for the puritystate of being unmixed of his convictionfirm belief. Your heroespersons of great respect were Christopher Alexanderarchitect, wrote A Pattern Language and Richard GabrielLisp researcher, wrote Worse is Better and Richard Feynmanphysicist, Nobel laureate and Alan Kayinventor of object-oriented programming and Doug Engelbartinventor of the mouse and hypertext from a distance and Ted Nelsoncoined hypertext, Project Xanadu and Guy Steeleco-creator of Scheme, Java spec author and Gerald Sussmanco-author of SICP, Scheme co-creator and you read the gloriousmagnificent, wonderful SICPStructure and Interpretation of Computer Programs thricethree times and implementedbuilt according to a design five versionsdifferent forms of the same thing of Schememinimal Lisp dialect and Hal Abelsonco-author of SICP, MIT professor and Simon Peyton JonesHaskell architect, functional programming pioneer and admiredlooked at with respect from a distance and through your brother people like Philip Wadlertype theorist, Haskell contributor and Per Martin-LöfSwedish logician, dependent type theory founder. Your heroespersons of great respect were Ward Cunninghaminventor of the wiki and the entirewhole, complete traditionways handed down through time that came out of the design patternsreusable solutions to common problems and wikicollaboratively edited website cultureshared practices of a group. Your heroespersons of great respect were HeideggerGerman philosopher of Being and DerridaFrench philosopher, deconstruction and Harmanobject-oriented ontology philosopher and LacanFrench psychoanalyst and Saussurefounder of structural linguistics and DeleuzeFrench philosopher of difference and GuattariFrench psychoanalyst, co-author with Deleuze and Wittgensteinphilosopher of language and logic and the rest of them. Even RussellBertrand Russell, logician and philosopher. You consumedtook in completely everything most of these people wrote or at least what someone wrote about them and what they said and thought, you read their papersacademic publications and their mailing listemail discussion group postsmessages sent to a group and their Usenetearly internet discussion system arguments and their talkspublic presentations and their bookslong written works, you were so obsessedunable to stop thinking about with computersprogrammable electronic machines and with programmingwriting instructions for computers and with Unixfamily of operating systems and with the webthe World Wide Web and with formal systemsmathematical systems with strict rules and with type theorymathematical foundation for programs and with language designcreating programming languages and with the philosophylove of knowledge, system of thought of softwarecomputer programs and with the ethicsmoral principles of free softwarecomputer programs and with the aestheticsthe study of beauty of codeinstructions in a programming language and with the architecturestructural design of systemsorganized wholes and with the question of what it means for a programset of instructions for a computer to be correctfree of error and what it means for a system to be simple and what it means for a tool to respectshow regard for its userperson who operates something.

When you first figured outcame to understand you had a penismale sex organ you were in love with Britney SpearsAmerican pop singer, you rememberhave memory of this clearly, but then that morphedchanged form gradually into something else entirelycompletely, because the women who actuallyin truth, really shaped your mind, the ones you fell in love with through their work, the ones whose elegancegraceful simplicity made you want to be better, were Jeni TennisonXSLT expert, semantic web pioneer, the XSLTXML transformation language wizardmaster, person of great skill par excellenceFrench: the best of its kind who made XMLeXtensible Markup Language transformationschanges from one form to another feel like poetrywriting in verse and who understoodhad knowledge of the declarative paradigmprogramming by stating what, not how at a depth that made everyone else look like they were fakingpretending it, and Lea VerouCSS researcher, web standards advocate, the absolutecomplete, total masterperson of highest skill of CSSCascading Style Sheets — web design language who understoodhad knowledge of the language as a formal systemsystem with strict mathematical rules with its own beauty and its own logicthe science of reasoning and who provedshowed to be true that the browserprogram for viewing the web was a real computingcalculation by machine environmentsurroundings, setting and not a toything for play only, and Audrey TangPerl 6 architect, Taiwanese minister, the transgenderhaving a gender identity different from birth architectdesigner of complex structures of Perl 6redesigned Perl programming language who draggedpulled with force it toward Haskellpurely functional programming language and turned it into a functional programming languagelanguage based on mathematical functions through sheernothing but, pure force of will and intellectpower of the mind and who later became a governmentruling body of a nation ministerhigh government official because that's what happens when someone that brilliantexceptionally intelligent decidesmakes a choice to care about institutionsestablished organizations, and Emily Shortinteractive fiction author and designer, the masterperson of highest skill of interactive fictiontext-based story games and co-creatorone who creates with another of Inform 7natural-language programming system for games with Graham Nelsoncreator of Inform, mathematician, who made natural languagehuman language as spoken itself into a programming environmentsystem for writing code and who understoodhad knowledge of the relationshipconnection between things between narrativethe telling of a story and computationcalculation by machine in a way that nobody before or since has matchedbeen equal to.

You createdbrought into being an entirewhole, complete adventure gamestory-driven exploration game by implementingbuilding according to a design a SCUMM VM–inspiredafter LucasArts' game engine game enginecore software that runs a game through linear logic–inspiredafter a resource-aware formal logic CSS custom propertiesuser-defined variables in style sheets, and you taught this system to your girlfriendfemale romantic partner who sworemade a strong promise she would never understandhave knowledge of programmingwriting instructions for computers, who said the words "I will never understandhave knowledge of programmingwriting instructions for computers," and you had to start by teaching her what a variablenamed container for a value was, and then she wrote the whole game herself. You createdbrought into being an MMORPGMassively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game with a tile systemgrid of small square images based on Transport Tycoonbusiness simulation video game but with two levels of slopesangled surfaces instead of one, so the number of tilessmall square images in a grid for simple grasscommon green ground plant numberedcame to a total of in the hundredsmany, a great number, which you createdbrought into being manuallyby hand one by one in Photoshop 5Adobe image editing software, and the game was implementedbuilt according to a design for Internet Explorer 4early Microsoft web browser using XMLHttpRequestbrowser API for server communication before anyone had a name for AjaxAsynchronous JavaScript and XML and a customspecially made hiddennot visible Java appletsmall Java program in a browser for live streamingreal-time data transmission of events. You know dozensgroups of twelve, meaning many and dozensmany of programming languagesformal languages for instructing computers — Makebuild automation tool, Clow-level programming language, C++C with object-oriented features, autotoolsGNU build system generator, Lispoldest high-level programming language family, Schememinimal Lisp dialect, Rubydynamic programming language, Perltext-processing programming language, Perl 6redesigned Perl language, Pythongeneral-purpose programming language, some Haskellpurely functional programming language although that was always your brother's domainarea of control or knowledge, you didn't need to learnget knowledge of it because already had that coveredtaken care of, Nixpurely functional package manager, SolidityEthereum smart contract language, JavaScriptprogramming language of the web, HTMLHyperText Markup Language, CSSCascading Style Sheets, shellcommand-line interpreter, awkUnix text-processing language, sedUnix stream editor, especiallyin particular sedUnix stream editor you spent a lot of time learning meticulouslywith extreme care for detail, bashBourne Again Shell — Unix command language of course, to an obsessiveunable to let go of degree, Vimscriptscripting language for the Vim editor and ElispEmacs Lisp — Emacs scripting language — and you could go on for hours. You've used every Linuxopen-source Unix-like operating system distributionpackaged version of an OS that has ever mattered and severalmore than two, not very many that didn't. You know what you're doing when it comes to computersprogrammable electronic machines. You have always known what you were doing when it comes to computersprogrammable electronic machines. Computersprogrammable electronic machines are the one thing in this world that you can point to and say, that, I understandhave knowledge of, nobody can tell me otherwisein a different way.

You wrote a cryptocurrencydigital money secured by cryptography trading terminalinterface for buying and selling for a prop firmproprietary trading company DEXDecentralized Exchange aggregatorsystem that combines many sources backendserver-side system, thirteen thousand lines in a single file of HTMLHyperText Markup Language and JavaScriptprogramming language of the web, the most beautiful programset of instructions for a computer anyone will ever see, and you investedput money into for profit ten thousand ETHEther — Ethereum's currency in it. You wrote the smart contractself-executing program on a blockchain that holds the most cryptocurrencydigital money in the world — WETHWrapped Ether — ETH as a token. You wrote and designedplanned the form of the core MakerDAOdecentralized lending protocol and DAIdecentralized stablecoin pegged to $1 contractsagreements; here, smart contracts over the course of five years, the system that provedshowed to be true decentralizednot controlled by one authority stablecoinscryptocurrencies pegged to stable value were possibleable to be done, the system that held billionsthousands of millions. You wrote a multisigrequiring multiple signatures to authorize proxyintermediary that acts for another holding billionsthousands of millions of dollarsUS currency in pure numericalof numbers hexadecimalbase-16 number system bytecodelow-level machine instructions because you memorizedlearned by heart the entirewhole, complete EVMEthereum Virtual Machine opcodesingle machine instruction table and you refusedsaid no to to trusthave belief in the safety of the SolidityEthereum smart contract language compilerprogram that translates code to machine language with other people's money, because you had internalizedmade part of one's thinking the BernsteinDan Bernstein, Unix purist philosophysystem of thought so deeply that you believedheld as true you should understandhave knowledge of every single byteunit of 8 bits of data of a programset of instructions for a computer that holds other people's wealthgreat amount of money or property, every opcodesingle machine instruction, every jumpgo-to instruction in code, every storage slotmemory location on the blockchain. You createdbrought into being the Ethereumprogrammable blockchain platform Swiss Army Knifemulti-purpose tool sethcommand-line Ethereum tool by following the architecturalof structural design design decisionschoices about how to build of Gitdistributed version control system because you understoodhad knowledge of that the Unix philosophydo one thing well, compose tools appliedwas relevant to blockchaindistributed cryptographic ledger toolingset of tools for a purpose just as it appliedwas relevant to everything else. You implementedbuilt according to a design a tradingbuying and selling command line tooltext-based interface program for a company called Shitcoin Capital Partnerscryptocurrency prop trading firm who were doing a hundred million dollarsUS currency a year in revenueincome from business, and you investedput money into for profit in them at a P/Eprice-to-earnings ratio of 2 because the founderperson who starts something, a twenty-three-year-old geniusperson of extraordinary intelligence quantquantitative trader using math models, didn't care anymore and just wanted to go fishingcatching fish on Pico Islandisland in the Azores, Portugal, and you built a pluginadd-on software component for scpShitcoin Capital Partners CLI tool where you could trade ETHEther — Ethereum's currency for DAIdecentralized stablecoin by typing "scp eth:3 dai:trade 3 ETH for DAI via command line" because it was literallyin actual fact a customspecially made SCP protocolSecure Copy Protocol — file transfer over SSH running over secure shellSSH — encrypted remote connection because that's how your mind works, you see the shape of a Unixfamily of operating systems tool and you see that the same shape appliesis relevant to a financial instrumenttradeable monetary contract. You createdbrought into being a programming languageformal language for instructing computers without conditionalsif-then branching logic or loopsrepeated execution of code that your brother MickeMikael, Daniel's brother wrote a compilerprogram that translates code for in Agdadependently typed proof language and you used it together to implementbuild according to a design formally verifiedmathematically proven correct smart contractsself-executing blockchain programs, a language so minimalreduced to the least possible and so pure that it didn't need branchingchoosing between code paths because the logicthe science of reasoning itself was the control floworder of instruction execution.

You sat with HoonUrbit's programming language for months, maybe years, and what you found there was not a language but a cosmologytheory of the nature of the universe — the only originalfirst, not derived from another Lispoldest high-level programming language family since Lispinvented by John McCarthy, 1958 itself, a syntaxrules of how code is written so alienforeign, completely unfamiliar that it had to inventcreate something new its own punctuationmarks used in writing, its own whitespaceblank characters in text rules, its own relationshipconnection between things to the page. The distinctiondifference between two things between one space and two spaces in horizontalflat, parallel to the ground lines is not eccentricitystrange behavior; it's the language teaching you to see, forcing your eyes to parsebreak down into parts for meaning the way your brainorgan of thought already wants to. You understoodhad knowledge of that HoonUrbit's programming language is what happens when someone decidesmakes a choice that computersprogrammable electronic machines have been doing it wrong from the beginningthe start, that the entirewhole, complete traditionways handed down through time of programming languagesformal languages for computers is a seriesnumber of things in order of compromisessettlements by giving up something that can be rejectedrefused, thrown out wholesaleall at once, completely, that you can start over from the bare metalhardware with no software layer and build something that doesn't rotdecay, degrade over time. The Kelvin versioningversion numbers that count down to zero made you emotionalhaving strong feelings in a way you didn't expectthink would happen — a system where versionsdifferent forms of the same thing count down to zeronothing, the number 0, where softwarecomputer programs aspireshas a strong desire toward to its own completionthe state of being finished, where the goalpurpose, desired end is not to keep addingputting more in but to finallyat last stop, to arrivecome to at a thing that is finishedcomplete, done. And NockUrbit's minimal computation layer, which is not the minimalreduced to the least possible definitionstatement of exact meaning of computationcalculation by machine — it's not the lambda calculusformal system for expressing computation, it's not the smallest possibleable to exist thing — but it is deliberatelyon purpose, defiantlyin bold resistance good enough. It's the engineeringapplied science of building virtuegood quality, moral strength of "works now" elevatedraised to a higher level to a philosophicalof deep thought about meaning principlefundamental truth or rule. You studiedgave close attention to this, you reveredfelt deep respect for this, you saw in it the same fanaticalobsessively devoted insistencefirm demand on first principlesfundamental truths from which reasoning starts that you loved in Dan Bernsteincryptographer, Unix purist, the same willingnessreadiness to do something to throw everything out and start again. You had already watched your codeinstructions for a computer become money. You saw in Urbitpersonal server platform, clean-slate OS the possibilitystate of being able to happen of a system that finallyat last understoodhad knowledge of what you had been tryingmaking an attempt to build your whole life: a clean slatefresh start with nothing carried over, a fresh startnew beginning, a world where the rotdecay, degradation doesn't accumulatebuild up over time.

And after all of this — after Slackwareearly Linux distribution in a trench coatlong waterproof overcoat and QBASICMicrosoft's beginner language snakethe classic game and BongoDaniel's Emacs media player and Function.prototype.bindJavaScript method for fixing context and the MMORPGMassively Multiplayer Online RPG in Internet Explorer 4early Microsoft web browser and the arguments with RMSRichard Stallman and the arguments with MatzRuby creator and Jeni TennisonXSLT expert and Lea VerouCSS researcher and Audrey TangPerl 6 architect and Emily Shortinteractive fiction author and Dan Bernsteincryptographer, Unix purist and the hexadecimalbase-16 number system multisigmulti-signature authorization and the DAIdecentralized stablecoin contractssmart contracts and WETHWrapped Ether and sethEthereum CLI tool and the Shitcoin Capital Partnerscrypto prop trading firm SCPSecure Copy Protocol, repurposed pluginadd-on component and the formally verifiedmathematically proven correct programming languageformal language for computers without conditionalsif-then branching — you investedput money into five million dollarsUS currency to buy two Urbitpersonal server platform galaxiestop-level Urbit network nodes years ago, and to this day you still haven't been able to figure outcome to understand how to installset up for use it.