Differential

October 11, 2025

This isn’t complicated.

Software is a collection of ideas and decisions that a person has turned into a machine.

It is an expression of its creators’ understanding of the needs, priorities and context of its audience, their goals and values, and how to best allocate scarce resources like time, space and effort to meet them.

When it turns out that a developer has repulsive, odious and dehumanizing ideas, when they’ve revealed a long, noxious history of repeating those repulsive, odious, dehumanizing ideas, it is entirely reasonable to not want the machines that person has made in your life, or the decisions they’ve made affecting your life.

It is entirely reasonable to object to their being part of communities you’re part of and refuse them access to people you care about. It is entirely reasonable to object to their ideas and decisions being normalized or valorized or amplified.

It is entirely reasonable to decide, however much work it takes, that the code should be salvaged and the person be shunned.

Nothing about this is complicated.