I am not an ubergeek

This past weekend, I wrote a little IRC bot that posts to a Socialtext Workspace (wiki/blog).
I wrote the bot because we needed it. The Socialtext crew frequently discussses things on IRC, and we often come up with ideas we want to remember, categorize, work more on later. Every so often, Ed Vielmetti changes his nick to STBot, and promises to post an item.
Coding to scratch an itch is classic geekery, but in other aspects, I fall short of the macho ideal.
* I like making something for people to use, and I’m not in love with infrastructure. I am quite glad that co-conspirators and colleagues get their jollies developing meta-levels of abstraction, achieving mathematical elegance, and solving knotty performance problems.
* I’m thrilled to use tools and models from others. The bot uses the Net::IRC framework, an API widget from Pete Kaminski, and models from jibot and elsewhere. I learned enough about how the tools work to use them.
* I like assembling things from piece parts. The ubergeek ideal is building a system from the ground up; reuse is a pragmatic necessity, but a fall from the ideal.
Surrounded by masters of the art, it is a small thing to be pleased by, but it makes me happy anyway. It wanted to exist, and I was able to make it, rather than casting the idea to the lazyweb and waiting.