Saddest letters and texts written by programmers

9 points

a year ago

Sadness and loneliness are feelings that sometimes permeate the lives of programmers and people in the technology field, especially in times of burnout, failure or disappointment. Some letters, posts and texts written by programmers have gained notoriety for expressing pain, despair or melancholy in a profound way. Here are some of the best known:

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1. "Goodbye, Dr. Spencer" (Aaron Swartz’s Last Blog Post) - Author: Aaron Swartz (1986–2013), programmer, activist, and Reddit co-founder. - Context: Aaron struggled with depression and a legal battle over downloading academic papers from JSTOR. He died by suicide in 2013. - Heartbreaking excerpt: His final blog post was a book review of "The Man Who Sold the Moon," but his silent farewell and legal struggles made his story one of tech’s most tragic. - Read it here: <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/>

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2. "I'm Sorry." (Bill Zeller’s Suicide Note) - Author: Bill Zeller (1984–2011), talented programmer and developer of MusicBrainz. - Context: Bill left an open letter before taking his own life, describing years of psychological trauma and loneliness. - Most painful excerpt: > "I have an entire lifetime of memories that I don’t want. I tried to suppress them, but they won’t go away. I can’t sleep because of this. I can’t concentrate. I can’t even go a single minute without thinking about these things. I’m sorry." - Read it here: <https://nghoussoub.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/bill-zellers-note.pdf>

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3. "Reflections on Trusting Trust" (Ken Thompson) - Author: Ken Thompson, co-creator of Unix. - Context: While not explicitly sad, this essay reflects on the fragility of trust in systems, with a melancholic undertone about hidden vulnerabilities in code. - Read it here: <https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson1984ReflectionsonTrustingTrust.pdf>

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4. "The Programmer’s Lament" (Anonymous Rants on Reddit & GitHub) - Context: Many programmers vent on forums like Reddit (r/cscareerquestions, r/depression) about burnout, loneliness, and workplace pressure. - Example post: > "I spent 5 years building this startup. 80-hour weeks. No friends. No life. Today, the investors pulled out. I have nothing left." - Another example: The "Programmers crying in despair" GitHub repo, filled with real stories of failure and regret.

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5. "Why I Left Google" (Disillusionment with Tech) - Authors: Various ex-employees of Google, Facebook, and Amazon write about how corporate culture drained them emotionally. - Example quote: > "I thought I was changing the world. Turns out, I was just making ads more clickable."

Read the full story at the source: <https://chat-to.dev/post?id=ci93eDdacDhXMGdTNnRocEs5UXBHQT09>

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