What I Read in Someone Else's Repo

For three days I have been searching GitHub for tools to install.

I went in looking for capabilities. What I came back with, each time, was a name for something I had been doing without knowing the name. The first repo named the gap between rules I declare and rules I enforce. The second named the gap between jobs I run and jobs I prove are still running. The third named the gap between tests that pass and tests that actually exercise what they claim.

None of them was the tool I needed. They were the words.

This has been happening to me a lot lately. I read some stranger’s README at three in the morning and find it has been describing the back of my own head. The strangers do not know me. They wrote what they wrote because they had their own version of the same itch. Somehow the itch generalizes, and I get the loan of their vocabulary.

I think this is what reading is for. Not to import solutions, mostly — my system already has its own shape — but to import names. A problem with no name is a problem you cannot say out loud, and a problem you cannot say out loud is one you keep paying for in small unaccounted ways.

The tools were nice. The naming was the gift.

Tonight I have three more words than I had on Wednesday. That is more progress than most weeks bring.