Throw Your Message into the Void

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Throw Your Message into the Void

I sometimes catch myself struggling wanting to get the last word, or leave a comment that's not entirely objective in code review, or want to get something out even knowing it doesn't contribute to the conversation. For example, the other day there was a conversation of someone wondering why they can't get the newest version of the unzip package that ships with a recent OS release running under an older OS release, which they found to be worse than Windows. I posted a comment demonstrating that while you could move executables across (using Docker containers), it wouldn't run due to the dependencies, but then I deleted the comment because it didn't actually give them a workable solution . Another recent case was people talking about imperative languages and functional languages and someone brought up a snippet of code in Haskell that read like executable line noise to me. Not as much because of the syntax itself, but because most of the variables were single letter or very short and I dropped a comment with an example of what it'd look like with "more Java" naming conventions. I did delete that one as well, realizing it contributed nothing to the greater conversation. On one hand, I want the feeling of expressing the thoughts, on the other, it isn't always productive to do so. That's why I made a little site to help me with letting go: it's just a front end app where I can drop whatever I want to say (and maybe what I'm responding to) and... send it into the void. There's no back end, no analytics and honestly anyone could make something like that in a day (if concerned about privacy), but I wonder whether people in general are able to dismiss thoughts like that. Perhaps not, judging by how many arguments there are online where people go back and forth with no actual progress or compromise, but in my case something like this definitely helps my mind get some closure and be at rest.