Identity

Don't attach your identity to the language your program in. If instead of saying you're a "Software Developer", you call yourself a "Java Software Developer", you become upset the minute someone who predominantly codes in Go says Java is rubbish.

The quote above paraphrases something I heard DHH say at a tech conference. It stuck with me for several reasons. First, as someone who has spent a non-trivial part of his adult life creating software solutions, I've observed and (to my shame 😳) participated in a few programming language wars. However, even back when I was avidly defending Java over NodeJS, I would still admit that there was no perfect language. Amazing products have been built on the clunkiest of foundations. And there are countless well-architected projects that went from playground to graveyard. The other reason this quote stuck with me is because identity and its effects on individuals and society is something that I often reflect on. I'll run through the top questions that I (and most people) have to answer when introducing my identity to others.

Simple Questions Deserve Honest Answers

What's your name? I love my name. Particularly my first name. Omoloro. Despite the teasing from primary school classmates who called me "Omo laundry detergent", or the dozens of Spanish-speakers who have mischievously informed me that "Loro" means "parrot". I still love it. I've met perhaps 3 other people with that name. There are some people who aren't fond of their given names, but many of them find some version that resonates and adopt that as their name. Babies appear to recognise their names before almost any other word. And at some point, the sequence of syllables used to address you morphs into perhaps the most fundamental part of your identity.

What do you do? Here's where it starts getting shaky. "I'm a software developer" used to be my default answer. But I also play basketball, and cook, and read books etc. Why do we have the common understanding that when asked what we do, we default to our professions? I've seen "stay-at-home parents" squirm a bit when asked that question. As if they don't "do" anything. Knowing fully well that they experience more action in one day attempting to raise functional little humans than the inquiring email-writing specialist sees in a week. Though perhaps exacerbated by it, this instinct to attach one's identity to actions leading to paid income is older than capitalism. In Yoruba, certain historical names contain pointers to professions. Names prefixed with "Ode" referred to hunters, "Balogun" was likely a soldier. Similarly, in Germanic cultures, the "Schmidt" name or suffix referred to someone who made things. Every town has a Müller because every town had a mill. Like practically everyone, I do many different things. And though it consumes a core part of my waking hours, I refuse to be defined solely by my profession. Writing is one way for me to do something about that.

Where are you from? Though I've lived in Hamburg, Germany for nearly eight years, I'm still not yet woke enough to get offended at this question. That doesn't mean I always know how to answer it. I was born in Ibadan, Nigeria, though my parents lived in Ago-Iwoye then. My dad decided to take the nearly two hour drive with my mum in labour because the University College Hospital in Ibadan was the only hospital he trusted to give birth to his children. Perhaps it was a promise he made to himself as a student of the "Premier University of West Africa". When I was a year old, my family moved to Swaziland, where we lived for eight years before returning to Nigeria. Swaziland has since been renamed Eswatini. Evidently, even whole countries periodically undergo identity reckonings. My childhood growing up on a multicultural university campus in Kwaluseni had such a profound impact on my life. I'll explore this in a different post. Returning to Nigeria for the start of secondary school, means I missed all the games and cultural expressions kids pick up in primary school, but at nine, I was still at an age where I could fit in rather seamlessly while my identity and personality were still relatively malleable. Nevertheless, when asked where I'm from in a real conversation (not some perfunctory small talk), I can't give a one word answer. Making hard resets, once as a child, and again as an adult when I moved to Germany have resulted in my not having strong ties to any one country or city. I personally find this freeing because it means I can quickly settle down into new locations and situations and don't have a longing to be anywhere other than where I am. Yes, I miss people, and of course certain foods (partly why I take my cooking so seriously). But I'm genuinely confused whenever someone asks me if I'm going home for Christmas. What do you mean? I am home.

Mathematical Identity

I studied Computer Science and Mathematics for my Bachelors. The Computer Science part was a no brainer. I had been fascinated by the machines since we were introduced to the Windows 3.1 devices in primary school where we got to play games like JumpStart Adventures 4th Grade. Maths was a bit different. Primary and secondary school maths came naturally to me. I had gone into university thinking secondary school maths was a decent predictor of what university maths would be like. I was wrong, they are worlds apart. I was also lucky because I ended up loving it. There are several concepts of Identities in mathematics. There's the identity of an operation over a set e.g. 5 + 0 = 5 because 0 is the identity of the + operation over the set of real numbers. There's the identity matrix, which acts similarly, but for matrix multiplication. In algebra, an identity is an equation that is true for all values. 2x + 5x = 7x. Regardless of if x is positive, negative, zero, or irrational. I wonder if this could be a reasonable analogy for one's identity as a human being. What's that one property, or set of properties that never change and can be applied in practically any situation? This yields the idea of identity not necessarily as a static state, but as a property that gets expressed depending on the situation and interactions with others. I am an above average amateur dancer is always there, but is less likely to be revealed at a parents-teachers meeting as when the DJ drops some Sean Paul at a Christmas party.

Stories

My identity is a collection of stories that I tell others, but most importantly, the stories I believe and tell myself. My Identity = My Lore. Strangely, the English language doesn't (yet) have a word for someone who creates Lore. So I derived one, Lorist. Okay, I'll admit it's mostly because it's pretty close to my name, so I had to make it work. And this also meant I could get a decent domain name that was still available 😄.

For me and for whoever else may write here, I hope that it becomes a place where the stories and ideas that form our identities can be shared and interacted with and where everyone who drops by learns a little, thinks a little, and laughs a little more.