The Butt Ugly Weblog

An unlikely meeting

Met my neighbour this morning. Those who live in Helsinki know how unlikely it actually is. Even more unlikely, we actually started a conversation in the elevator. She asked me if I still hang in IRC, and that she had seen me on the #jspwiki channel.

"Oh? What were you doing there?"

"I was going to ask some things, as JSPWiki sucks ass."

"Really? How's that?"

So she goes on ranting how JSPWiki is inflexible: how you can't do this, and how you can't do that, and how the whole thing is so broken. I listen and patiently explain the ins and outs of wiki technology, tell her that you can do whatever layout you want by embedding HTML directly on the JSPWiki pages, you just need to turn that feature on, because it's off by default for security purposes.

Finally, just before we arrive at the metro station, she asks me: "How do you know so much about this shit?"

"I'm the lead developer of JSPWiki. About 95% of the code is written by me."

"... Oh." she says, as comprehension sinks in.

(What are the odds that your neighbour uses your software? If you aren't Linus Torvalds, that is... :-D)