---
title: The Gears and The Gods
date: 2019-11-14
tags:
 - wasm
 - philosophy
 - gods
---

# The Gears and The Gods

If there are any gods in computing, they are the authors of compilers. The
output of compilers is treated as a Heavenly Decree, sometimes used for many
sprints or even years after the output has been last emitted.

People trust this output to be Correct. To tell the machine what to do and by
its will it be done. The compiler is itself a factory of servitors, each bound
by the unholy runes inscribed into it in order to make the endless sequence of
lights change colors in the right patterns.

The output of the work of the Gods is stored for later use when their might is
needed. The work of the Gods however is a very fickle beast. Their words of
power only make the gears turn when they are built with very specific gearing.

This means that people who rely on these sacred runes have to chain themselves
to gearing patterns. Each year new ways of tricking the gears to run faster are
developed. The ways the gears turn can be learned to be abused however to spill
the secrets other gears are crunching on. These gearing patterns haven’t seen
any real fundamental design changes in decades, because you never know when the
output of the Old Gods is needed.

This means that the gears themselves are the chains that bind people to the
past. The gears of computation. The gears made of sand we tricked into thinking
with lightning.

But now the gears show their age. The gearing on the side of the gearing on the
side of the gearing on the side of the gearing shows its ugly head.

But the Masses never question it. Even though they take hit after hit to
performance of the gears.

What there needs to be is some kind of Apocalypse, a revealing of the faults in
the gears. Maybe then the Masses will start to question their blind loyalty and
chains binding them to the gears. Maybe they would be able to even try other
gear patterns. 

But this is just fantasy, nobody would WILLINGLY change the gearing patterns. 

Would they?

But what about the experience they’ve come to expect from their old gears? Where
they could swap out inputs to the gears with ease. Where the Output of the Gods
of old still functions.

There needs to be a Better Way to switch gearings. But this kind of solution
isn’t conducive to how people use the gears. People use the gears they do
because they don’t care. They just want things to work “like they expect it to”
and ignore things that don’t feed this addiction.

And THIS is why I’m such a big advocate for WebAssembly on the server. This lets
you take the output of the Gods and store it in a way that it can be
transparently upgraded to new sets of gearing. So that the future and the past
can work in unison instead of being enemies. 

Now, all that's left is to build a bridge. A bridge that will help to unite the
past, the present and the future into a woven masterpiece of collaborative
cocreation. Where the output of the gods is a weaker chain to the gears of old
and can easily be adapted to the gears of new. Even the gears that nobody's even
dreamed of yet.
