I read an essay called “Software Talmud #00” about software development that felt like a hall of mirrors.

It is a pile of quotations that argue against making piles. I found that amusing, to say the least.

It invokes the Talmud, which it defines as the wonderful codification of thousands of teachers, a pile of beauty, telling you that the best component of all is the one that was never added. Ok, I’m laughing. This is the man speaking who says nobody should be speaking.

In the middle is an example of a thing built and then discarded after finding something else already solved the problem. Yet the rest of the piece expands, rather than reduces, the reader’s commitment to it. Haha, good one.

All that being said, it lands on a very somber note. It wraps up like a memorial from Efron Amber Licht to his grandfather and great-uncle, who changed their names so decades later in 1960s America they could write about engineering. These sage engineers indeed solved problems that we seem to forget, in the same way our grandparents paid for comforts they wanted us to enjoy today.

The whole piece is arguing that you can’t trust subtraction until you’ve done the expensive work of deciding what the system is even for, and his own family is the case his writing never resolves, a cut he calls a good one and grieves anyway.

My suspicion is that the discrimination his grandparents suffered, and the freedom the simple name change bought, sit at the kind of distance he can’t see from where he sits. It’s like learning how to dye your hair blond in Germany in 2026 if you expect kids to treat you as a human instead of a threat.

Here’s the problem: He mourns from behind the very protection that he’s mourning. He inherited the freedom and reaches back for the nostalgia of a thing that, kept, would have cost him the freedom he now enjoys.

His elders chose to survive so that he could mourn what they gave up for him. They did exactly what their book preaches. First decide what the system is for, like staying alive and employable in a country with restricted covenants and quotas, then start the cuts to fit in. They got the purpose right. The grandson who second-guesses that decision raises the question whether he ever faced the kind of system they did.

And I get a fixation with reducing work before you speed it up with tools. That’s a simple formula, perhaps too simple, missing context. Everyone learns measure twice, cut once, right? Ooops, that’s actually a lesson to increase the work before you automate. Well, surely we’ve all heard waste not, want not. Damnit, that’s thrift inside a job already accepted, not a reason to skip the job. Fine, look before you leap. Nope, that’s caution about how you act, not whether to do the act. A stitch in time saves nine? That’s just measure twice in a different coat, with more effort now to prevent the work you know is coming. Hmmm. I’m still not finding myself on the same page as this essay. Every proverb I reach for slows down and works harder, sharpens the axe and steadies the hand. Not one of them is a reduction, asks whether the work was ever a good idea in the first place. Well, maybe he means what Einstein said, as simple as possible, but not simpler.

Remember that one time in America an electric car inventor got pushed out of his own company by a wealthy charlatan, who went on to lying to investors all the way to bankruptcy?

Like so many others, he thought electric vehicles (EVs) were the obvious answer to pollution and expensive fossil fuels. In 1992, McGreen founded ZAP (Zero Air Pollution) Power Systems. But he needed more capital. […] Starr argued that ZAP could cut costs by outsourcing production to Asia. McGreen was committed to quality. Starr, however, had masterminded adding three directors to ZAP’s board. Late in 1999, Starr, his wife and his three new board members voted Jim McGreen out as president and CEO, putting Gary Starr in charge.

…Starr axed 80 of ZAP’s 100 California workers and outsourced to Taiwan. Almost immediately, cheap Asian copies– selling for a quarter of the “real thing”– flooded the market. With annual revenue falling below $5m, ZAP filed for Chapter 11 with a suspended Nasdaq share price of 21 cents.

Somehow, Starr emerged from Chapter 11 as board chairman. He brought in used-car dealer Steve Schneider. Between them, they gained controlling interest of Zap. Issuing stock as payment, ZAP went on a buying spree and learned the power of the press release to impress new investors.

[…] ZAP claims 644 hp, 0- 60 in 4.8 seconds and 155 mph, performance comparable to a Porsche Cayenne Turbo. Even less believably, ZAP claims a 350 mile range and a ten-minute recharge.

“This is vaporware,” responds auto industry analyst Aaron Bragman, of Global Insight. “The claims they’ve made just don’t jive with the current state of technology.”

That report is from April, 2008. Sounds so very familiar, but can’t quite put my finger on it.

In the spring of 1381 the English crown levied a poll tax on everyone aged fifteen and over. To verify age the collectors were said to need to inspect bodies directly. The story goes, perhaps exaggerated, perhaps a metaphor to expose state-sanctioned rape, that there would be official measuring of pubic hair, meaning the cost of dignity was about to land hardest on poor young girls.

If you’re already thinking wow this sounds like modern age-gating, ID checks, facial-age estimation, using the body as the verification surface, you’re on the right path. The people in the position least able to refuse were being targeted with the most invasive and permanent “classifier” system, hundreds of years ago.

As collection in early 1381 began to roll-out it became so dangerous, due to protests, that collectors refused to work in London, and on the 30th of May two of them were assaulted in Essex.

Two weeks later, on this day, the 14th of June, it really blew up. Before the crown could muster a coherent response, tens of thousands had marched on London. The 14-year old Richard II rode out to meet them on open ground at Mile End, where he conceded a charter abolishing serfdom and granted a blanket pardon. Around thirty clerks were put to work writing sealed manumissions for every manor and shire, and the king’s own banner was sent to each county as warranty of his word. He sent most of them home believing him. It was a trick. He rode to Waltham, declared the charters all null and void because they had been extracted from him under duress, and told the peasants on June 22 “rustics you were, and rustics you are still.” His word was worthless, and he kept none of it, instead escalating and hanging some 1,500 people.

You wretches, detestable on land and sea; you who seek equality with lords are unworthy to live. Give this message to your colleagues: rustics you were and rustics you are still: you will remain in bondage, not as before but incomparably harsher. For as long as we live we will strive to suppress you, and your misery will be an example in the eyes of posterity. However, we will spare your lives if you remain faithful and loyal. Choose now which course you want to follow.

With that kind of state treachery in mind, I have to point out a notable difference from protests in England back then versus today. There is no single neck carrying the decision today for pushing biometric age verifications on children, unlike Sudbury, Hales, and Legge, upon whom the crowd focused their rage. Sudbury was Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor of England; Hales was Treasurer, Grand Prior of the Knights Hospitaller, a crusader. Legge ran the commission that reassessed the tax. The public removed them all from the Tower and beheaded them on Tower Hill, to parade their heads through the streets on poles.

So now you know how things turned out for England’s council of a 14-year old King that tried in 1381 to enact biometric verification of other teenagers.