Re: Biographies (was: OT: Beauty of programming languages)

[David Bellows]

Hey David, I saw this about work you've done on the emacs Lilypond
mode. Is the new code base available anywhere and is it usable?

On Fri, Sep 18, 2015 at 7:37 AM, David Kastrup <address@hidden> wrote:
>
>     Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse
>     oculis meis vidi in ampulle pendere, et cum
>     illi pueri dicerent: Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις;
>     respondebat illa: άποθανεΐν θέλω.
>
> [I saw myself with my own eyes the Cumaean Sibyl hanging in a bottle,
> and when the boys said to her "Sibyl, what's your desire?" she answered
> them "to die is my desire", a quote from the Satyricon most well-known
> from the starting lines of T.S.Eliot's poem "The Waste Land"]
>
> When granted a wish by Apollon, the Sibyl of Cumis, one of his
> priestesses and seers, asked for eternal life.  Not having asked for
> eternal youth or health as well, she eventually withered and shrank
> until she would fit in a bottle, never able to die.
>
> Age: 50
>
> Blessed with great analytical talents but without the matching stamina
> to engage them with anything that does not interest me, I haven't been
> able to do any serious mental work that isn't fun.  An early attempt to
> escape the problems from depending on unreliable gifts by doing an
> apprenticeship in a bakery was shortlived since my body engaged in its
> own version of obsessive compulsiveness by turning allergic against most
> of anything to be found in a bakery within half a year, a fate that the
> physicians predicted to be rather likely for most work of my hands.  So
> I took up Electrical Engineering and managed to finish a diploma with
> the help of coeds (which consisted in dragging me to practice sessions
> where I "helped" them figure out the stuff from lectures that flummoxed
> them, and with organizing call services so that I would not miss
> deadlines and exams).  A later PhD never saw the completion of the
> thesis, actually sort of a pity as the work was pretty novel.
>
> The ability to pull through and complete stuff tends to be rather
> important in programming jobs, so my career ended up very spotty.  The
> last few years, I have spent living off the donations of various
> LilyPond users and programmers, a somewhat embarrassing endeavor as I
> often get locked up in less productive phases and don't communicate well
> (it turns out that medication making me more productive at the same time
> makes me completely unbearable and the other way round, and the vitally
> necessary blood pressure medication makes stuff more difficult, so I
> just stay off the psychopharmaceutics as there is no direction in which
> they would be unilaterally helpful).  Since I haven't properly
> maintained "customer relations" for the last few years (another
> "tedious" task), at the current point of time my "income" does not cover
> the costs of living in spite of several high-profile LilyPond figures
> supporting me with sums that do not reflect our relative merits.
>
> Living in a small town in Germany on the premises of my girl friend's
> riding school (another venture that's not particularly good at matching
> the bills), I spend most of my time at the computer, most of the time
> working on something LilyPond related.
>
> With a computing background starting with punched cards, a computer with
> various self-built extensions and programs (I could only start using
> CP/M after I've written my own boot loader and BIOS), I am pretty good
> at understanding low-level programming problems.
>
> At the same time, it offends my sense of design when implementation
> details leak into a system such as LilyPond, so much of my work is
> invested in making programming models work out cleanly and transparently
> and making "naive expectations" match the actual behavior by changing
> the behavior rather than the expectations where it makes sense.
>
> I've been playing violin from young age, added guitar to the mix, have
> sung in various choirs (a natural bass-baritone, I've sung either alto
> or high tenor in the last years as my falsetto is the best developed
> part of my voice and I prefer staying mostly above the break) and have
> taken up accordion a few years ago (as finger-style guitar was a
> mismatch in carrying power for chansonette performances).
>
> I've recently made Emacs understand Midi input but found that I just
> don't have the time and focus to work on bringing LilyPond's Emacs mode
> into the 21st century.  Which is a real pity as the current code base
> (not yet generally available) is quite nice for entering material but
> then breaks down in usability for doing line-wrapping, quick entering of
> durations and other editing stuff.
>
> So the number of unfinished projects and loose ends is constantly
> growing for me in spite of doing LilyPond full time already, and
> consequently my bad conscience on not getting stuff done is also a
> pretty constant fixture, making every moment equally bad for asking for
> support of my work.
>
> I probably share the problem of a lot of programmers of free software:
> the time working on the program does not leave a lot of time for working
> _with_ the program, so it's still important to get feedback from other
> more arduous users.  Preferably without scaring them away forever.
>
> --
> David Kastrup
>
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