Digital pollution
You couldn’t just roll down the street leaving huge piles of garbage everywhere you go, making life slower for everyone as they climb over your mountains of junk, just to get on with their life. You’d feel bad about it, right?
That’s how I feel about the digital things we put out into the world: websites, apps, and files.
I prefer coding everything by hand, because I don’t like the huge piles of garbage that the automated generators create. These programs that generate a website, app, or file for you spit out thousands of lines of unnecessary junk when really only 10 lines are needed. Then people wonder why their site is so slow, and they think it’s their phone or connection’s fault.
Yesterday I needed to make a little vector logo. Two lines and two triangles. I tried to use a couple different vector drawing programs but they saved it as hundreds of lines. I knew it could be simpler, so I read up on SVG and made exactly what I wanted:
<svg height="54" width="54">
<defs><style type="text/css"><![CDATA[line,polygon{stroke:black;stroke-width:4} polygon{fill:black}]]></style></defs>
<line x1="2" y1="2" x2="2" y2="52" />
<line x1="52" y1="2" x2="52" y2="52" />
<polygon points="2,2 27,27 2,27" />
<polygon points="52,2 27,27 52,27" />
</svg>
Much better! 95% smaller file size, and the joy of making something by hand instead of having it done for me. But I think my biggest joy is eliminating the digital pollution that the auto-generated one created. It makes everything faster, easier, and cleaner for anyone involved. 95% less junk over the wires.
Same thing with the EPUB file for my new book. Today I spent the day creating the EPUB’s XML and XHTML by hand, instead of using a generator. I love the manual control and again - 90% smaller file size.
This makes me unreasonably happy. It feels like cleaning up the neighborhood. Or at least my yard.
(And I love it when people notice how fast my site loads.)
Programs mirror our state of mind...
I can't speak for digital programs and web templates, but
Speaking of hand-made control, my Toastmasters International (public speaking) club offers templates for planning speeches that I ignore, so I can make my own.
Come to think of it, as an adult I craft my own essay forms, (to put on my blog) ignoring the essay-style taught in school, since I have yet to see a schoolboy style used in any magazines or books.
You're super inspiring , thanks!
That's what I usually am.
"It feels like cleaning up the neighborhood.", very funny.
~~~
I'm just daydreaming right now... about my future.
I got the critical solution for my problem : self control when everything is extremely easy.
The extremely easy, known, and pedictable condition creates extremely laziness.
With huge fund (100% self funding) in hand, I could create almost anything I want.
I remembered when Elon Musk bought the Russian biggest rocket, he said "We are in the money, so...(laughing)."
~~~
Some say, "When you bragging (announcing) your plans or dreams, it would be less likely to happen."
I break all the rules.
I focus on the independent factor, so it is unaffected by anything else.
It's a sole living on its own.
It's a self feeding, growing, and depending.
It's like a living AI... supporting itself.
~~~
Elon Musk once asked by interviewer, "What does the thing keeps you motivated ?"
Elon replied, "I don't believe in such thing like motivation."
This is why I love writing in Markdown compared to using something like Microsoft Word (*shudders*)!
I just noticed how fast your site loads - maybe the fastest one on the internet! :)
Good post as always!
I hit the gym 3 times a week. Plates are always all over the place. I silently clean up everything during my workout. Nobody notices. So when I leave the gym, every plate is back in its place.
Cool! I do that too! — Derek
For more complex SVG cases, some people might find this one useful jakearchibald.github.io/svgomg/
According to him, your svg can go from 196 bytes to 99 bytes.
YES!
If I make a list of digital clutter around me, I'll probably fill up a notebook. If I look back on my digital trail, I do more clutter to justify the time I spend with technology. It feels almost like an obligation.
This is reflected in social, websites, number of apps installed on my phone. Even number of phones (even when I do not ever pick any call other than that of my wife and kids), etc...
This has to end. By any chance, is your book about digital minimalism?
Made me think of link rot...
We could all do better cleaning up broken links. (Myself included)
Am I the only person who deletes her search history every night before I log off?
Search histories are, to me, a form of clutter. Not a fan. Even if I was, I wouldn't want Google in charge of it!
Me too! It's a Firefox setting: erase all cookies and history whenever Firefox closes. And use DuckDuckGo not Google. — Derek
I see the daily writings now. Insightful as usual, and I certainly look forward to visiting your site and reading it. On the other hand, the wide topics you are writing on, is there a sense of faster and faster / better and better? It can quickly reach 'what is the point anyway of all this'. Have you experienced anything like this? I certainly experienced this after completing a major project where i gave my 500% and more. Suddenly, I felt my life purpose was done. After 2 months of thinking and thinking, I decided to reread Man's Search for Meaning. It helped, and I got something for me to strive for again. I think we all work better with boundaries - or goals - whichever way we look at it. What do you think of this relentless drive for excellence? A couple of posts on this will help if not already done.
Completely agree, as I know 99% of my digital work product is littered with excess code. I cringe when I inspect the code of websites I've done, but I'm ok with it for the most part as it does what I need it to do. And in the end I need these tools as I'm not proficient enough to do it myself the way I need it done, nor can I afford the time to learn it or the money to pay someone else to do it. But hopefully one day. :)
In thinking about this though, the same can be applied anything we make, use or consume. The food on your plate created a lot of excess litter (even if just transporting it to your grocery store) rather than if you made or grew it with your own hands. Some excess we just need to accept I guess.
I am grateful for the fast loading!
Thanks, Derek. Now I have no reason to be ashamed of still using the ancient shtml & 'server side includes' in my web, no matter how my I.T. hubby tells me to upgrade.
Having your site load fast is tight!
There is something wonderful about digital minimalism. One of my former employees - a scientist with very little programming background - seemed to do everything useful a couple of powerful Unix tools (sed, grep, awk, ..). He knew those tools inside and out. Instead of sitting there trying to pick the best language, framework and deployment mechanism, my employee (and now friend) would hammer something out using the minimal toolset he had mastered. I had decades more experience as a programmer and I had a waterfall of tools available to me. But I was a bit jealous of his solutions.
They reminded me of my early days in computing. I started out with Commodore computers and I still remember things like POKE 53280,1 and SYS64738 (which rebooted a C64). We had little to work with. We could master our toolset. And then our task was to use it to it's fullest.
Nowadays, there the choices can be overwhelming. But they don't have to be. You can be like Mr. Sivers and handcode some SVG. Or make a simple website yourself...in a simple editor...like VI. You can master a few tools and you'll likely get more done then the people who are spending time mastering frameworks and the latest techniques instead of actually _building_ something.
There is beauty in simplicity. POSIX tools + C + SQL for the win. :)
as a programmer, i can totally understand the unreasonably happy!
I completely agree. I wrote my own crappy CMS because of the bloat in typical offerings (wp, Drupal, et al).
My site loads much faster now and I have a lot more control over the code, and thus it's performance, security, and features.
So for what it's worth I just fired up Illustrator and drew your M.
The SVG it saved was 593 bytes vs your hand-made SVG's 306. But I then ran it through ImageOptim (a Mac app that bundles a lot of little command-line image optimizing programs behind a GUI; its only SVG processor is svgcleaner) and got out an SVG of *279* bytes.
I get a slight win over your version by drawing one five-point polygon instead of two three-pointers. But ImageOptim is also doing some crazy shorthand path description that is not very human-writable.
oops, looks like the actual svg got parsed out, let's try replacing the opening angle brackets with &lt;
<svg viewBox="0 0 54 54" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><path d="m2 54v-54" fill="none" stroke="#000" stroke-miterlimit="10" stroke-width="4"/><path d="m52 54v-54" fill="none" stroke="#000" stroke-miterlimit="10" stroke-width="4"/><path d="m0 27h54v-31l-27 27-27-27z"/></svg>
Sorry about the code parsing, but good point. — Derek
Derek, thanks for the reminder: I keep defaulting back to google, even though, for a search engine, I should be using DuckDuckGo for the freedom from corporate surveillance.
Aleski at #7 and Derek, cleaning up plates at the gymnasium, you two are headed in the same direction as my author-hero, David Gerrold, who does similar things in other venues. Me too.
Gerrold says you can see yourself on this planet as a host, or as a guest. Hosts serve, and being of service is, to me, a higher state of being.
Gerrold's philosophy is in a series of novels, with repeating symbols and themes, about a hero as Earth is fighting off a mysterious alien ecological infestation, The War Against the Chtorr. (pronounced Tor)
I always wish I'd learned to code. I know, I know... It's not too late. :)
Such a great article I have ever seen. Everyone should follow your thoughts. I really appreciate it.
It does load quickly. I like it.
Nice website)
Hi Derek,
I completely agree with you !
I have built a static Web generator with my little hands...(CC BY-SA)
Too many tools (huge and complex tools...), i prefer build my simple own software...
I read too your "now" article, i put this function on my site rapidly.
cordially from France
Didier (dja.one)
Next step is Assembly code. Great post as always!
One of the entertainments of Codewars is that after you submit a working solution you get to see other people's elegant beautiful solutions.
I love the idea!
Though I expected this post to be about digital junk in the form of endless streams of content, both editorially placed and generated on social media platforms.
Now I cannot seem to shake of this thought. We share photos and memes, re-post everything, send our brain farts to the world 24/7. It all piles up, and distracts everybody. These days I am continually thinking about the ratio between signal to noise. There is no better way to be considerate today than to stop producing noise (digital garbage).
Hello Derek I just have read your post about "Digital Pollution". You have written very well. Thank You for sharing such a great information with us.keep doing the good work, If anyone wants to read about Digital Transformation please go through my blog.
http://rohitprabhakar.com/
I read the last line and felt I had to comment that I noticed how fast your site loads. This is the kind of web I want.
I am on a 10+hour flight and your website is the _only_ thing that loads.
Thankfully everything I read is fascinating and keeping me thoroughly engaged :)
Wanna hit a thumb up button so hard, but there aren't any, so here 👍🏻
I'm taking a course by Angela Yu, and in one of the capstone projects, she mentioned that you are a friend of hers. So, I came looking for you in hopes of seeing the cool website she spoke of. At first, I was taken aback by the simple nature of the site, but I realized it does the job with very little distraction. Then came the speed, then I read about digital pollution, and then I felt I should leave a comment. I guess I'll end here.