should we be evangelizing the way we do
Verb
evangelize (third-person singular simple present evangelizes, present participle evangelizing, simple past and past participle evangelized)— evanglize - Wiktionary
- To tell people about (a particular branch of) Christianity, especially in order to convert them; to preach the gospel to.
- To preach any ideology to those who have not yet been converted to it.
- To be enthusiastic about something, and to attempt to share that enthusiasm with others; to promote.
I was just thinking about Tech Evangelism. As a technologist, I am often to subject to the opinions of my peers. I have some opinions of myself. Here:
- Editor: Either Helix or Zed right now. I switch between them based on context.
- Programming Language: Rust.
- OS: currently macOS, but my second pick would be NixOS. Probably.
I have formed these opinions from life experience. I have used a lot of editors, so I can somewhat confidently say that these editors fit me most. I have spent a lot of time with Rust and mostly enjoy working with it. I tolerate macOS the most out of the current options right now.
If you have been in programmer circles a lot, you will hear endless debate about programming language, or editor, or sometimes OS. I would like to question what purpose this serves in these spaces.
Why we might evangelize
People like sharing their opinions
I think this is a big one. People share opinions because its fun to share opinions, and engage in some sort of dialogue about the things you use. Uh. I'm not sure really why though.
Searching for connection?
We are a social species. If we share the same opinions about something, maybe it says something about a shared personality trait. For example, maybe if we both use Vim, we share some sort of hacker spirit.
Sharing joy?
Maybe we just remember the good times of using a tool, and want to spread that with others. I think the core of this is that using good tools makes us excited (or enthusiatic, like in the above definition) and we want to share how that made us feel with our peers.
What's wrong with evangelizing?
I think a lot of communities in tech are based on exclusion. Take, for example, the ideal of an Arch Linux user. If I were to describe the "popular culture" stereotype of an Arch Linux user, it would be that they are annoying and want to force their opinions onto you. This is a reductive way to talk about people who use a tool, but this was born from exclusion.
Mindful evangelism
This is why I try to practice being mindful when evangelizing to others.
- Try and lead with why your tool is better, but not needlessly disparaging their tool.
- Argue your point in good faith. This means listening to the concerns of the other person.
- Offer some vulnerability in your argument. If you have used a tool a lot, you know it has downsides, so present them too.
- Try and learn something from the other person too. You don't need to do the exact same things they do to connect with them. They likely know something about their tool that you don't, as well.
These should be pretty obvious, I think.
I suck at ending blog posts, sorry! Just remember that making friends and having fun together is better than winning any online turf war.
Also, this post felt a bit less professional than the other ones, so that's why I'm not using Title Case in my headings.
Also also, wow, my <blockquote> styling is not that great. I should change it up. Plus, it doesn't even work with <cite>!