we have a bit of an issue.

highlighted recently was some advice i was given, tying in with things i've come to appreciate and understand about myself and what i'm capable of.

to say that i have the classic symptoms of asperger's is missing the point. a wired magazine article i read on autism and aspergers describes the people in it as being "above-average-speed". the article mentioned that the "classic" IQ test is one of "reasoning and articulation" - the focus being on "being able to articulate" - communicate, if you will.

when people with asperger's syndrome and high-functioning autism are tested with the standard IQ test, they typically score very low. this was a serious problem resulting in many people being placed in "remedial schools" etc.

when tested with the more comprehensive, more thorough and less biased IQ test, people with asperger's and high-functioning autism score _extremely_ high.

the reason: their brains are running at much faster speeds than the average person. they are able to think things through far faster.

that's where the reasoning and scope of the wired magazine article ended.

my guess is that the faster "speed" of an asperger's syndrom or high-functioning autistic individual applies to their entire nervous system (and this was borne out by some interesting equipment costing $25,000 i was allowed access to for a couple of hours).

the problem with a faster nervous system is that many parts of the human body - including bits of brain - simply aren't geared to _run_ at the speeds at which other bits can run.

like a radio, mis-tuned ever so slightly, the asperger's individual's psyche cannot run "at full power" due to this mis-match.

thus you get "symptoms" such as "inability to communicate". why? because such individuals find the "average person" so frustrating to communicate with - not just because that person doesn't "get" their ideas, but also because the asperger's individual's own mouth won't respond fast enough.

thus, as with all humans, the ability to communicate .... atrophies. skills that are damn difficult enough to utilise in the first place simply... don't get practiced, don't get developed...

with the emergence of the internet, however, many people with asperger's and high-functioning autism who would otherwise find it difficult to interact with the world around them let alone other people have an alternative communications outlet.

(i type at 170 words per minute, peak, for periods of up to 40 minutes if i really push my luck.)

the machine i had access to for a few hours measures the "speed" of a person's nervous system. the average person is around 5,000 to 10,000, with exceptional individuals coming in at 20,000. a high-functioning autistic will typically be around 40,000. i came in at 54,000.

in many ways, i find this quite upsetting.

the reason is quite straightforward: not only have i known that i think much faster than most people - solving complex problems that other people just don't have the will-power to stick at for months or years - but now i get actual confirmation of _why_ that's the case.

ability to solve significant technical challenges well beyond the capability of most people doesn't leave you with very many friends.

it's like i'm staring across an immense glass wall, seeing people getting on with their lives - enjoying the comfort of well-paid stable jobs to which they are suited, enjoying the banter of communicating with friends and colleagues.

(this time - from the relative comfort of the home that i don't own, eating the food that i didn't pay for, using the internet service that isn't mine...) i watch the interactions and the challenges they and many others face; i see a particular block which, if opened, would benefit vast numbers of people, and i offer my help and advice. some people find it "cool" and interesting to help out - those people i've always cherished and appreciated. others are bewildered by the absolute non-stop approach of eleven to twelve hour near 100% focus days, and the results it gets; the speed at which i acquire new skills, knowledge, information - and they feel lost, belittled and threatened.

the first time this happened was on a successful commercial project - SpecManager, for Pi Technology. eighteen months of work that resulted in a vehicle simulator that was accurate (bar one known bug which was fixed by my successor) to within something like... 0.5% to 1% of real-world fuel economy figures. the client had asked for .... i think... 2.5% accuracy or something.

as you do, i needed to articulate ideas. however, after about a year, i learned to remain silent. the project leader (there were 2.5 of us on the project - me, the project leader and a contractor in visual basic who designed the initial GUI) would respond with the classic question which i now know means "run away so fast you burn your shoes out" - "surely it doesn't have to be as complicated as all that?".

the second time was the samba project. that was three years, spent delving into machine code and disassembly at times (90 days to produce 60 lines of c code), to get the information needed. the end-result was about 100,000 lines of extraordinarily comprehensive code, and it broke the back of the microsoft monopoly; bridged the gap between unix and windows; helped linux "tick the boxes" in absolutely critical areas for acceptance in corporate and civil service adoption criteria; gave the samba team, the DoJ and the EU anti-trust case the critical ammunition they needed to get the IDL files and other documentation out of microsoft.

but... what happened under linuxcare's watch, in 2000 was, by any standards, absolutely disgraceful. (by not actually bothering to pay me - to the extent that i was working for a company but wasn't on a payroll - for nearly three months didn't help matters, either).

the core of what happened is that - again, i came up with the goods, yet, because i had done so, it could not be "believed". because i found it difficult to communicate what i had done. surely the code stood on its own merit? no - because the key samba developers actually wouldn't even look at it, finding literally any excuse possible to not look at it. because they might have found something that proved that i actually had skills that they didn't have.

sadly, i greatly respected those people and the skills that they had. i learned a great deal from them, by being silent, by listening quietly to their descriptions of c systems programming and other topics on which they _were_ experts.

it's a great pity that they did not return the compliment, instead, treating me like a second class unskilled programmer, aged 17.

this fits the classic description i gave at the beginning of this diary entry: ability to comprehend; lack of ability to articulate...

now, we roll forward to today and yesterday. i want the webkit bindings to succeed. to be _useful_ and useable. to put webkit on the map it deserves to be on.

that means taking a different approach - in particular, it means i have to stop - and let people "catch up". i've gone far enough ahead to know what needs to be done - now it's time for other people to follow, to find out that yes, it _can_ be done.

the webkit glib bindings are _so_ significant a strategic free software project, i can't begin to tell you or describe it. without those bindings, webkit remains "just another web browser" - sure, one that can be customised, but... so what? _with_ the bindings, webkit becomes a vast and powerful applications library and toolkit for the next generation of rich media desktop applications - for _every programming language_, not just the c++ in which webkit is written.

so - how do we get from here to there?