79 • The Computer is a Feeling by Tim Hwang & Omar Rizwan

2026-01-14

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We’ve renamed the podcast and community — we are now the Feeling of Computing! Here are some thoughts about the motivation to rename and the choice of new name. It’s a small change, but it feels meaningful and clarifying. The new name better fits what we’ve been doing all along, and sets us up for the next decade of this community.

The new name reminded us of The Computer is a Feeling, a document (of some definition) by Tim Hwang and Omar Rizwan. Unlike our usual selections, which are crouton-dry and tiring, this one is basically a 1-pager, quick and fun — you should totally give it a glance and see what you make of it, before Jimmy and I tease it apart and lawyer over the many nuances.

This piece makes us question what the computer means in our lives, and how that may have changed over time. Light on specifics and arguably steeped in nostalgic yearning, its series of declarative statements come out more like broadly probing questions. Is the computer feeling possessed only by those who remember the time before the internet? Are computers even required? What does feeling this feeling elicit one to do?

We answer at least one of these questions. “But you can’t trust them, they’re podcasters,” said everyone ever, “you’ve got to feel it for yourself.”

Links⚓︎

$ While these main Feeling of Computing episodes are, in a word, infrequent, the bonus episodes over on our Patreon — Feeling Off — arrive at a dependable regularity! Why, in the time since we recorded this here episode, we’ve released two (2) bonus episodes. The first was an unruly, deep tangent Jimmy and I fell upon right smack in the middle of this very episode, and then excised out — That’s Shakespeare — about code.org, whether the “everyone should learn to code” movement is actually about literacy, the backlash to this movement, and our personal feelings on it all. Then in December we shared our annual end-of-the-year spectacular with games, awards, music, spelling, men who are spiders, and our predictions about the near and distant future — All of the False Ones — free free free for download, no patronage required.

• The old name is cursed.
• The old name might have been inspired by Bret Victor’s talk The Future of Programming, but the vibe of the community is probably closer to Inventing on Principle.
• The new name invites us to reflect on the way our tools make us feel. For instance, Kid Pix was a quirky, playful drawing program designed for younger users which had its heyday in the 1990s when Ivan was a younger user, and it gave him some pretty specific feelings at the time. (Also, in the time since recording this episode, Ivan dug up a Snow Leopard iMac from the sedimentary rock and installed KidPix Studio 4, and his 6 year-old daughter has been having a blast with it.)
• One Piece is a manga and anime that’s pretty popular, but perhaps off-topic for our community.
• Did you know about our virtual meetups? Every month we have people showing off their work, and it’s been fantastic to see the wild variety of creative programming projects built by members of our community. We share the details of upcoming meetups in the #announcements channel on our Slack, and publish them in this Luma calendar. You should come!
• The feeling is still present, in your time, as it was in ours
• You can build computers out of water, if you want
• SimCity 3000 was released in 1999, and gave Jimmy the computer feeling. (Ivan played Sim City 2000 back in 1997-ish, and got pretty good at typing the word “FUND”, before learning that this didn’t actually give you free money and instead gave you a bond.)
• When Ivan says “go to six or seven bookmarks”, that’s a reference to this app from 2024, not the mid 2025 meme.
• The two folks in our sphere — Folk Computer by Omar (et al), and FolkJS by Chris Shank and Orion Reed. Folk Computer is similar to Dynamicland, which Omar did some interesting work on.
• Back in 1997, Ivan taught himself to edit videos using Avid Cinema, a Mac-only video editing tool that predates iMovie but served similar goals. (It came bundled with the infamous Power Macintosh G3 All-In-One, aka the “Molar Mac”, which was Ivan’s second home computer.)
• The Programmable Ink gang at Ink & Switch have spent the past few years on this one project, and it sometimes gives Ivan the computer feeling.
• The Bazaar and the… The Whatever… Yeah, Yeah.
• MetaCreations was the company behind Bryce 3D and Poser 3, which Ivan used quite extensively when he was a young’un. Here’s a photo of Ivan, midlife crisis rapidly approaching, holding his original Bryce 3D box.

Wormholes used in this episode:

• One wormhole to/from the Feeling Off bonus episode That’s Shakespeare
• No secret wormholes.

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