An ode to houseplant programming đȘŽ
Recurse Center (RC) peer Ryan recently coined a phrase that I instantly fell in love with: houseplant programming.
In Ryanâs words:
[The tool I built] solves my idiosyncratic problems and may not address yours at all. Thatâs fineâtake it as an ad to write tiny software just for yourself. Houseplant programming đȘŽ[2] !
[2] This isnât an existing phrase as far as I know, but the closest I can think of is âbarefoot developersâ which a) is a little more granola than my vibe and b) is maybe tied up in some AI stuff. I guess this is situated software but even smaller: Iâm not building for dozens of users, Iâm building for one user in particular.
[source]
Houseplant programming: tiny software just for yourself. Perfection.
At the risk of overexplaining and thus cheapening the analogy, I feel the need to wax poetic.đȘŽ
Blomsterfönstret by Carl Larsson, 1895. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
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