There’s a sentiment in the tech world that newer is inherently better. There are also many people and companies that re-release something, proudly claiming they “started all over and wrote the code from scratch.” When I see such statements, I usually sigh and shake my head.
I’m not a programmer. We’ll get that out of the way. Most of what I know comes from discussions with programmers or reading articles on the topic (such as this excellent one).
When a programmer is working on an old, established project, he quite frequently gets frustrated trying to figure out someone else’s code. There are a ton of things in there that he just doesn’t understand. Some of the functions may be obsolete, bug fixes are inserted throughout, and some things are just written poorly. Rather than taking the time to understand years of prior work, it’s much more fun and easy for a programmer to try to write his own code. In our hubris, we often think that whatever we set our hand to will be better than what others were able to do before us.
But do you know what happens? That new-from-scratch program now has lots of bugs in it that the old one had fixed over the years; also, the shiny new one now has lots of bugs that the old one never had.
That’s why I generally avoid new things in the tech world.
I get that some people love to be on the bleeding edge of new technology. I’m glad such people exist, and may God bless them! They’re the ones who adopt something first, find bugs, and help developers to get their product ready for a much larger audience.
But I’m a dad, a husband, and I have full time pastoral work. I don’t want the maintenance of my computer to have to be a hobby. While it is sometimes fun to tinker with things, most days, I just want my operating system to quietly do its thing in the background while I get work done.
For that reason, when I’m looking around for an operating system (OS) and a desktop environment (DE), I want something that is user friendly and has been around for several years. Excellent OS’s that fall into that category are Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, and Debian (though the latter takes some tweaking for beginners). And excellent DE’s include Gnome, Cinnamon, and KDE’s Plasma. All of them have been around for well over a decade and are used by millions of people.
The Life Lessons
There are some life lessons here, and I beg your pardon for moving my focus off tech. But as the slogan for this website says, this site is a place for me to offer reflections on both life and technology.
Most people have bought into the myth of progress. Just as we see phones and computers evolving and advancing, so we as humans are told we also are somehow progressing. New ideas are better than old ones. That of course begs the question: progressing towards what? What is the standard that we are using to evaluate “better”? Change is not always better – especially when it’s change for the sake of change. In evolutionary biology, mutations are far often more harmful than beneficial. The albino field mouse is the first to get caught by the hungry hawk.
Because we’ve bought into this lie of progress, that we must put the past behind us to push humanity forward, we can be easily duped by trendy ideas. But there’s great value in taking the time to understand why people did things a certain way (just like with the programming examples above). While our predecessors certainly made mistakes, we can’t learn from them unless we’re willing to spend time examining the good and the bad. Real progress happens when we carefully take the wisdom of the past and adapt it to the challenges of today.
Politics
I see this push toward a vague sense of progress in politics. While I’ve been fed up with various aspects of the US government for many years, I also know that revolutions are almost always bloody and almost never produce the results people were hoping for. One corrupt regime is replaced by another one that is corrupt in some of the old ways as well as new ways. But we are often tempted to think that if we can just scrap the old system and replace it with something new, it will be better. Because newer is inherently better, right? And certainly we would never fall into past mistakes when we finally get to seize power, right?
Relationships
Another area I see this desire to scrap the old for something new is in relationships. One of the hardest yet rewarding things is getting married and sticking with your spouse “till death do us part.” But to do so we have to have the determination that we’re going to make this work – no matter what. Granted, it takes two for that to happen. But when we think jumping ship on one relationship will fix our problems, we forget that we bring our baggage with us. Plus, the new person is going to bring new problems that we can’t possibly foresee – that even they can’t foresee. However, if two people decide they want to make a marriage work, and they get help when they need it, just about any marriage can last a lifetime.
The Religious Application
When I was a Protestant Christian, I noticed that every few years a new bestselling book would hit the market. Someone finally had Christianity figured out. It only took 2,000 years, but lucky us, we’ve got it now! Not surprisingly, those new ideas would stick around for a little while, then the excitement would fade, and the search would restart.
Eventually, I discovered the Eastern Orthodox Church, which claims to be – not just like the New Testament era church – but to actually be that church. I poured through hundreds of pages of early Christian writings from the first centuries and came away convinced that the claims of the Orthodox Church were true.
Like an old software program with its large code base, not everything in Orthodoxy makes sense to me. I look at the history and practices of the Orthodox Church, and I sometimes can’t help but think, “Wow, that’s messy,” or “I’m really not sure why we do things this way or that way.”
But I know these practices have developed over many centuries though the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and that there is more value in studying them closely than throwing it all away. I also know that occasionally the Church comes together in a council and makes some tweaks to the “code” to adapt to the challenges that we face today. Some people view tradition as something rigid and unchanging, but in reality, it is something living that can experience growth and adaptability when it doesn’t betray the original intention.
Because my faith radically shapes my worldview, I’ve been able to let go of the myth of progress. I see that Truth is here and has been here in its fullness for many centuries. Truth is something we not only meditate upon, but actively participate in. Truth has personhood and can be communed with. Truth and Wisdom are one. And with that information, I can face the challenges of today while standing on the shoulders of giants. The view is much better up here, and not having to reinvent the wheel every few years frees me up to do more meaningful things with my life.