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 it. 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.
A domain name. Not so much added as inherited — the one left over after a sculptor, a stranger, and several visionaries had taken the rest. See Breaking Changes.
A website. The domain required something to occupy it. Previous drafts included a single HTML file containing the word "hello," a holding page with a clipart number 2, and a redirect to joel.com, which felt dishonest. A changelog for a person was what remained.
A Linux distribution. Selected not for practical reasons but because watching people mispronounce it brought a quiet, sustaining joy.
Facial hair. Joel 1 did not have this. Whether it is an improvement is actively debated. Joel 2 considers it one. His barber has described it as "there." Versioned independently at v0.3, with no major release planned.
A chair, by a window. Not a notable chair. A chair that has acquired, through no obvious merit, the status of load-bearing infrastructure. The documentation does not cover this. Do not move the chair.

Changed

Coffee. Joel 1 drank instant. Joel 2 grinds beans, heats water to a specific temperature, and waits a duration no one who drinks instant would consider reasonable. The coffee is not noticeably better. Joel 2 will not be returning to instant, on grounds he has declined to articulate.
Sleep schedule. Migrated from "regular" to "this." No rollback path available.
The walk to the shops. Previously a round trip. Now includes a bench.
The Sunday afternoon. Previously part of the weekend. Now a protected resource. Interruptions to the Sunday afternoon will be logged, reviewed, and resented.

Deprecated

Reading a book in one sitting. Quietly removed in a patch. The changelog entry was accidentally omitted. The book is still there. The sitting is the problem.
The piano. Deprecated. A keyboard was purchased in good faith. The keyboard is now a shelf. The sheet music remains in case the feature is reinstated, which it will not be.
Knowing what day it is. Marked deprecated but keeps re-registering itself. Joel is looking into it. Joel does not know what day it is.

Breaking Changes

joel.com is a different person. A sculptor. Particulars are recorded under “Who are the other Joels?” below.
joel1.com is also a different person. He appears to be minding his own business. Respect.
joel3.com and joel4.com are registered. joel3.com has been dormant since 2023. joel4.com was registered weeks after joel2.com, under circumstances Joel 2 considers suspicious and is in no position to investigate. No action planned. No action possible.
Humour API. Joel 2 ships with a different sense of humour. Some callbacks to Joel 1 jokes may return null. No migration tool is provided.
Sense of direction. Unchanged. Still broken. Included here only because the documentation required a fifth entry and this was the least dishonest available.

Removed

The phase where going outside on a Saturday felt optional. Not deprecated. Patched without approval. Irreversible.
The willingness to attend a wedding without first calculating the escape cost. Removed quietly in a minor patch. Users have not complained, which suggests they noticed before the changelog did.

Fixed

Nothing. Joel 2 ships with all known issues from Joel 1 intact.

Component	Conflict
Phone calls	Redirected to voicemail. Voicemail will not be checked. This is by design.
Morning people	Partial incompatibility. Before 9am, Joel 2 does not perform optimally. Before 7am, assume he is still compiling.
The question "what do you do?"	Causes a six-second pause followed by an answer containing the words "sort of" and no useful information. Do not invoke.
Small talk, sustained	Under prolonged eye contact, Joel 2 deploys the phrase "right, yeah" up to nine times in a single response. There is no patch. There is no dignity.

Issue Tracker

#7 Spontaneous KDE advocacy in social contexts bug

In certain social contexts, Joel 2 begins 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. Minimum duration: twelve minutes. No maximum duration has been recorded. There are reports of the conversation continuing into the following day.

#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, and last night it was pasta.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the other Joels?: joel.com is a sculptor in Ohio whose work includes stainless disks that appear three-dimensional and the occasional figurative silhouette. His WordPress site features a section called "Book of Joel, KJV," which is either a biblical reference or something this changelog is not qualified to evaluate. He also sears tomatoes briefly on one side with salt and sugar, which is not relevant to domain registration but felt worth preserving. He got there first. joel1.com belongs to someone else. joel3.com is registered to an unidentified party. joel2.com was the one that was left. This is not a ranking. This is an availability report. None of the other Joels have changelogs.
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.
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. It took longer to write than the thing it documents.

JOEL 2

Changelog