Joel 2.0 — Release Notes

Changelog

All dates approximate. Time tracking was not a feature in Joel 1.

Added

Second version of Joel. This is the main change. Everything else is downstream of this. The version increment was not triggered by a significant event. It was triggered by the availability of a domain name, which is not a good reason to re-version a human but is the reason that was used.
Domain name. The domain was not strictly "added" so much as "the only one available after joel.com, joel1.com, and inexplicably joel3.com were all taken." joel4.com was then registered weeks later by someone else, suggesting either a Joelfrication event or a copycat with even less going on. joel47.com is still available if you're interested in entering the market.
Website to justify the domain name. You are currently inside this feature. The website was not planned. It was the inevitable consequence of registering a domain and then needing something to put on it. Previous drafts included a single HTML file containing the word "hello," a holding page with a clipart image of a number 2, and a redirect to joel.com, which felt dishonest. The current version — a changelog for a person — is the least embarrassing option that was considered.
An email address. Joel 1 did not have a public email address. Joel 2 does. This was either a step forward in accessibility or a mistake that will result in spam. Early indicators suggest the latter.
Facial hair. Joel 1 did not have this. Whether it is an improvement is actively debated. Joel 2 considers it an improvement. His barber has described it as "there." The facial hair is versioned independently and is currently at v0.3, with no major release planned.
A Linux distribution. Selected not for practical reasons but because watching people mispronounce it brought a quiet, sustaining joy.
A tolerance for CSS that Joel 1 described as "concerning." Joel 2 can now center a div without questioning his life choices. This represents significant personal growth.
This changelog. The changelog is one of the things that was added. It is describing itself right now. This is not a bug. This is the most honest thing on the internet.

Changed

Overall architecture. Joel 2 is not a rewrite. It is more of a refactoring where you delete three files, break something in prod, and call it a "migration."
Hairline API. Previously available across the full frontal plane. Now gradually being deprecated. See Deprecated Features.
Sleep schedule. Migrated from "regular" to "whatever this is." No rollback path available. The previous implementation was deprecated without notice and the new one does not pass tests.
Coffee preparation method. Previously: instant. Now: a process involving a grinder, a kettle with a temperature display, and a duration that no one who drinks instant coffee would consider reasonable. The coffee is not noticeably better. The process is the point.
Opinions about tabs vs spaces. Joel 1 did not have opinions about this. Joel 2 wishes he didn't either.
The way he says "GNU." It's gotten worse.

Deprecated

Knees. Still functional but no longer under active support. Feature requests will not be accepted. Knees are in maintenance mode and will receive no further updates after 2026. A popping sound was introduced in v2.0.3 and has since been promoted to a permanent feature.
Metabolism. Previously processed food at a reasonable rate. Now hangs for several seconds on simple carbohydrates. A fix is not planned. The recommended workaround is to eat fewer simple carbohydrates, which has been acknowledged as a fix that will not be implemented.
Patience for meetings that could have been emails. Warning threshold reached. Will be fully removed in Joel 3.
The ability to read a book in one sitting. This feature was quietly removed in a patch. The changelog entry was accidentally omitted. We apologise for any inconvenience. The book is still there. The sitting is the problem.
Knowing what day it is. Marked as deprecated but keeps re-registering itself. The engineering team is looking into it. The engineering team is Joel. Joel is looking into it. Joel does not know what day it is.

Breaking Changes

Not to be confused with Joel 1. Joel 1 and Joel 2 are not interchangeable. Attempting to use Joel 2 in a context that expects Joel 1 will result in undefined behaviour, mild confusion, or a conversation about Linux that you did not ask for.
joel.com is a different person. He is a sculptor named Joel who makes peace poles out of stainless steel, copper, and limestone. He has placed hundreds in parks, on campuses, and in church yards. His hands wore out from making monuments. He now makes paintless paintings using fire, acid, plating, and shaping. He got there first. If you came here looking for joel.com, you are in the wrong place, and you should probably stay there because his work sounds genuinely quite good. If you came here looking for joel1.com, that is the owner of joel1.com, who is also not this Joel. There is no Joel consortium. The Joels do not have a group chat.
Humour API. Joel 2 ships with a different sense of humour. Some callbacks to Joel 1 jokes may return null. New jokes may not be backwards compatible. No migration tool is provided. You simply have to be there.
Location services. Joel 2 operates from a different timezone than Joel 1. Scheduling logic may need to be updated.

Removed

The belief that this website needed to be a movie. It did not. It has been refactored into a changelog. This is more honest.
The ability to eat an entire pizza without consequences. Removed without notice. No deprecation warning was issued. This was felt.
A pair of shoes. Not relevant to the software. But they were removed and it felt important to log.
The dream of learning the piano. Residual config files remain but the feature has been uninstalled. A keyboard was purchased. The keyboard is now a shelf.
The phase where going outside on a Saturday felt optional. This was not deprecated. This was patched without approval. The patch is irreversible.

Fixed

Nothing. Joel 2 ships with all known issues from Joel 1 intact. This is not a bug, it is a design philosophy called "if it's not broken, don't fix it, and if it is broken, also don't fix it."

Dependency	Version	Status
Tea	Yorkshire Tea, ≥3 cups/day	Required
KDE Plasma	6.x	Hard dependency, non-negotiable
Chair by the window	The specific one	Must be available
Sunday afternoons	Weekly	Critical for maintenance
Spotify	Premium	Required for development. Playlist called "concentrate" contains no songs that help concentration.
Browser tabs	≥47 at all times	Performance degrades below 30. Joel 2 is aware. Joel 2 is not changing it.
A walk	Daily, weather permitting	Recommended
The belief that this website is a good idea	Pinned	Do not update. Newer versions cause uncertainty.

Component	Conflict
joel.com	Namespace collision. Different person. Makes peace poles. Do not attempt to merge.
joel1.com	Registered to someone else. No known conflicts. Appears to be minding his own business. Respect.
joel3.com	Registered but dormant. Potential future namespace dispute. Monitor. Do not engage.
joel4.com	Registered weeks after joel2.com. Circumstances suspicious. No action planned. No action possible.
Morning people	Partial incompatibility. Joel 2 does not perform optimally before 9am. Before 8am, do not engage. Before 7am, assume he is still compiling.
Phone calls	Will be redirected to voicemail. Voicemail will not be checked. This is by design. Use email. Or don't. Both outcomes are acceptable.
Meetings	Joel 2 will attend. Joel 2 will be present. Joel 2 will contribute nothing that could not have been an email. This is not a conflict. This is a prophecy.

Known Issues

Joel 2 may spontaneously begin explaining why he uses KDE Plasma. This is not a bug. There is no fix. The only workaround is to leave the room.
Search results for "Joel" do not return this Joel. They return several other Joels, none of whom have a website this unnecessary. Workaround: be more specific. Or less specific. Honestly either way.
The "motivation" subsystem occasionally drops to zero with no warning. This is working as intended.
Joel 2 will spend forty minutes configuring a tool he will use once. This is a feature, not a bug. The feature is the problem.
Under certain conditions, Joel 2 will refer to himself in the third person. This is not a personality trait. It is a regression introduced by writing too many changelogs.
If you ask Joel 2 what he does, the response time is approximately 6 seconds, which is 5.5 seconds longer than it should be. The response itself is also longer than it should be.
joel.com ranks higher in search results for "joel" than joel2.com. This is not a known issue for joel.com. It is a known issue for joel2.com. There are no plans to address it. joel.com has earned his ranking through years of actual sculpture. He deserves to be there.
The "what should we have for dinner" process sometimes enters an infinite loop. The only known termination condition is "I don't mind, you choose," which does not resolve the loop but passes it to a different subsystem that also cannot resolve it.

Issue Tracker

#12 Motivation subsystem drops to zero wontfix

The motivation subsystem intermittently drops to zero, usually on Monday mornings, Sunday evenings, and any day that contains the letter "d." There is no pattern. There is no fix. The subsystem recovers on its own, usually after a cup of tea, a walk, or an email from someone with a deadline. The email from someone with a deadline is the most reliable recovery mechanism, which suggests the subsystem is not actually broken so much as it is externalising its dependency management.

#7 Spontaneous KDE advocacy in social contexts bug

Joel 2 will, in certain social contexts, begin explaining why he uses KDE Plasma. The trigger is unclear. It may be the word "desktop," the word "environment," or silence. Once the process starts, it cannot be interrupted. The only workaround is to leave the room before the sentence "have you tried KDE Connect" is fully formed. If the sentence is already formed, you are too late. You are now in a conversation about KDE. The conversation has a minimum duration of twelve minutes. There is no maximum duration. There have been reports of the conversation continuing into the following day.

#23 Incorrect response to "what do you do?" performance

When asked "what do you do," the response time is approximately 6 seconds, which is 5.5 seconds longer than it should be. The response itself is also longer than it should be. The response contains the words "sort of" at least twice and never arrives at a clear answer. This is not a bug in the traditional sense. This is a bug in the existential sense. The recommended fix is to not ask this question.

#31 Third-person reference regression meta

Joel 2 occasionally refers to himself in the third person, particularly in changelogs, issue trackers, and other documents that no one asked him to write. This regression was introduced by the existence of this page. The page you are reading caused the bug it describes. This issue is self-referential and cannot be resolved without deleting the page, which is not going to happen because the page is the point.

#44 "What should we have for dinner" enters infinite loop wontfix

The "what should we have for dinner" process sometimes enters an infinite loop. The only known termination condition is "I don't mind, you choose," which does not resolve the loop but passes it to a different subsystem that also cannot resolve it. The recommended workaround is to just decide. No one has successfully implemented this workaround. The issue remains open.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Joel 2 better than Joel 1?: No comment. The changelog is neutral. The changelog does not take sides. The changelog is aware that both versions are the same person and finds the question structurally odd.
What happened to Joel 1?: Nothing. Joel 1 is fine. He is just no longer versioned. He continues to exist without a version number, which is either liberating or existential, depending on your perspective.
Why is this website at joel2.com?: Because joel.com was taken. By a sculptor named Joel who makes large stainless steel monuments to peace and places them in institutions. He has placed hundreds. He also sears tomatoes briefly on one side with salt and sugar for a more robust flavour, which is not relevant to domain registration but is on his website and felt worth noting. He got there first. joel1.com was taken by someone else. joel3.com was taken by someone whose identity has not been investigated. joel2.com was the one that was left. This is not a ranking. This is an availability report.
Who are the other Joels?: joel.com is a sculptor in Ohio who makes peace poles, stainless disks that look three-dimensional, and the rare figurative silhouette (sometimes on aluminum). His WordPress site includes a section called "Book of Joel, KJV," which is either a biblical reference or evidence of something the changelog is not qualified to evaluate. joel1.com is registered to someone else. joel3.com is registered to a person or entity that has not been identified. None of these Joels are this Joel. None of them have changelogs. One of them has strong opinions about off-season tomatoes.
Will there be a Joel 3?: No. joel3.com was taken in 2023 by someone who has not yet used it. joel4.com was registered weeks after joel2.com, suggesting either a Joelfrication event or someone with even less going on. joel47.com remains available if you wish to enter the market.
Who is this for?: The changelog is for anyone who finds it. Joel 2 is for anyone who is still reading this sentence. If you have reached this point, you are the target audience. We apologise for the lack of a better target audience.
Is any of this real?: The domain name is real. The email address is real. The changelog describes events that are real in the sense that they happened, but not real in the sense that anyone should be writing them down. You are currently reading a document that took longer to write than the thing it is documenting.

Feature	Joel 1	Joel 2
Domain name	Not available	Registered
Website	Did not have one	You are on it
Changelog	No changelog	You are in it
Linux opinions	Mild	Severe
Knees	Supported	Deprecated
Pizza tolerance	Full	Removed
Facial hair	Not included	Included
Peace poles placed	0	0
Knows what day it is	Usually	Unreliable
Piano ambition	Present	Uninstalled
Version number	Unversioned	2.0.0
Shoes	Had a pair	Removed
Still here	Yes	Yes

JOEL 2

Changelog

JOEL 3