Upgrading Node Broke My Build but Saved My Marriage
Disclaimer: Some details have been changed to protect the anonymity of my employer.
“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
― Marcus Aurelius
I was working on my latest freelance project, something a bit out of my comfort zone: An Electron wrapper around Microsoft Excel with 3D space battles rendered with Rust.
It allows you to conquer the galaxy and create pivot tables at the same time.
The project was oddly unfulfilling, so I started making pointless infrastructure optimizations to pass the time.
After some small fixes, I went for the big one: Monkey-patching Electron from “Node LTS” to “Node Current.” The excitement ran through my veins as I pushed the code, but my freemium CI PaaS crashed.
I opened the JavaScript console and saw “AssertionError: This should not happen in production. Talk to the Raccoon Team.”
I decided to use AWS in the future; In my experience, cutesy internal names are inversely proportional to code quality.
Then another message popped up. This time with a console.warn() logging level, so I just couldn’t ignore it. “Congratulations! You have been chosen to join the prestigious Rust Foundation.”
It went on: “We've been observing you. Your Node skills are impressive, but they might be better applied to Rust. You don’t need package.json, we Rustaceans keep all packages in our mind’s eye.”
Suddenly, my phone vibrated. Email from wife. “We need to talk.”
You see, my marriage had been on the rocks for quite some time, and I had been seeking solace in my tech skills and my Vim motions. As it turns out, my wife had also found comfort elsewhere — in the arms of the CEO of a major tech company. That’s right: Sundar Gigachad Pichai.
The email detailed their whirlwind romance. To make matters worse, Sundar introduced my wife to his friend Tim Cook. They had quickly formed a love quadrangle, which also included Zuckerberg.
I was worried, but also skeptical. “Is this some sort of practical joke?” My doubts went away when I saw the MP4 attachment.
“Oh Zuck, spank me!”
“Quiet, schlampe. This is not even my final form. My real cock is in the metaverse.”
I stopped the video. I felt betrayed, and a bit of arousement. I dismissed the latter, as a bit of cuckoldry is par for the course for any dedicated GNU/Linux user such as myself.
After what felt like a lifetime, I heard a knock on the door.
“Rust Foundation, open up!”
I cursed the Rust Foundation for going so far as doxing Node developers. They must be desperate for fresh blood after all the drama.
I opened the door. A suave-looking guy with a thick mustache, 5 o’clock shadow, and a white lab coat walked in.
“Gottem! Just kidding, I don’t work for the Rust Foundation… not anymore at least. I’m just a solo Rustacean who ssh’d into your network. Take better care of your nftables next time, Ok buddy?” He spoke taking a lot of personal space and moving his arms dramatically. “Anyway, I’m really sorry about your wife, but we Rust people need to take care of each other. Here’s the deal: you help me and I help you, capisce?”
Fascinated by his own choice of words, he went into a slightly racist Italian ad-lib which made progressively less and less sense: “Capisce, cappelletti, pasta e mozzarella! Barapotti! Polobitti!”
He calmed down and continued in a low-pitched voice, “We don’t have much time. Drink this and get in the car.”
I usually don’t follow strangers, but I needed something to distract me that night. Plus there are a lot of freaky girls in the Rust scene, so this could lead me to some of that zero-cost asstraction.
“What’s this drink?” I asked as I got into his purple Porsche with a “NEOVIM” license plate.
“Flat white — Arabica beans from Malawi. Deluxe batch. Hand dried. Double toasted. Exotic. Few people in the Valley know about this bad boy. Only the best of the best for you — We need your brain at its best for this mission, sharper than C#. Drink fast!”
I drank and felt my coding brain activate. Meanwhile the mustache guy complained about his oil light being on for no reason at all.
“Damn, we’re too late.” He stopped the car. “It’s the chroot.”
A grid of neon green lasers stood before us blocking the road. The silent landscape was only disturbed by quantum fluctuations as speckles of dust collided with the singularity. I asked what’s the chroot.
“What’s the chroot?” He said sarcastically. “Oh look at you. Don’t act like you don’t know about the chroot. If you know Rust you must have been aware of the chroot before. Do you want me to explain what the chroot is? Well, the chroot is the thing, it’s the goddamn thing. It’s out there, and it’s coming. Maybe it’s not that thing, but you know very well what I’m talking about. This is not how things used to be. Oh God, why does it seek me?”
“Can’t we just turn around?”
“Well no, we can’t just turn around because the chroot is literally everywhere. It is the most everywhere thing ever. We done goofed, buddy. It has come, it chose to reveal itself and it’s not pretty. This is actually how it ends, it ends with a chroot. Oh God, why did you put the chroot so close to us? It burns. How are we supposed to get anything done with this chroot, what’s the point now? Why is there something instead of nothing? Why does existence precede essence? Are you not entertained?”
I ordered a chili cheeseburger with chopped lettuce, tomato, pickles, bacon (of course), caramelized onions, jalapeños, barbecue sauce and a touch of green pesto which really sealed the deal.
The mustache guy ordered a single bun, a bottle of olive oil, and a hard boiled egg in a glass of ice water. “Paleo diet,” he explained.
“Thanks for your help back there,” he said. “I almost got consumed by the void. Let’s forget about the entire thing and never speak of it again. Anyway, promises are promises, I’m gonna help you with your marital issue. Here’s everything you need to know.”
I was skeptical at first, but his advice was solid:
“First, you need to hit the gym and get some protein drinks! Many women like thick bodies and abdominal muscles. And don’t skip leg day because — and this is the key part — the legs are connected to the ass. Did you know that humans are the animals with the largest ass-to-body ratio?” He winked. “Ok, third advice, and this is the most important one: Pray to Jesus, because he is the omnipotent Lord. We know that the Bible tells the truth because it predicted everything, it even predicted Minecraft, check Job 28 if you don’t believe me.”
Later he took the bottle of oil and drove me home.
That night set me on a path of self-discovery. I am now a Rust Evangelist/Scrum Mainer and happier than ever. I sold the space app to Bezos for a quarter million; he also arranged the virtual nuking of Zuck’s metaverse dungeon.
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