[…] in 2013, I did not understand that the things I said had meaning. I hate talking about this because it makes me seem more important than I am, but it’s also important to acknowledge. I saw myself at the time as just Steve, some random guy. If I say something on the internet, it’s like I’m talking to a friend in real life, my words are just random words and I’m human and whatever. It is what it is.
But at that time in my life, that wasn’t actually the case. I was on the Rails team, I was speaking at conferences, and people were reading my blog and tweets. I was an “influencer,” for better or worse. But I hadn’t really internalized that change in my life yet. And so I didn’t really understand that if I criticized something, it was something thousands of people would see.
— Steve Klabnik, Choosing Languages
