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Everything is a wrapper apparently

Oct 15, 2025•
#Erraric Thought

I saw this interesting tweet (it has been reposted and stolen a bunch of times already so I don’t know who originally wrote it), basically it said this:

modern tech is crazy.

  • cursor is a wrapper over vscode.
  • vscode is a wrapper over electron.
  • electron is a wrapper over chromium.
  • chromium is a wrapper over c++
  • c++ is a wrapper over assembly.
  • assembly is a wrapper over 1s and 0s.

And then in some exchange, one of the famous solo entrepreneur levelsio wrote:

Everything is a wrapper

A restaurant is a wrapper of a butcher which is a wrapper of a cow which is a wrapper of grass which is a wrapper of photosynthesis which is a wrapper of the sun

Now that I thought about it, I personally think that, as human beings, and to some degree, we are nothing but mere wrappers of our influences.

Whether you like it or not, these kinds of arguments will occur eventually.

Say you’re a singer, you make good songs and people like it. But eventually, someone will come out and say something like “yeah it’s like the {local artist’s country}’s version of {internationally known artist}”

I use to feel annoyed by these kinds of arguments. But nowadays it felt more like… just a statement rather than an opinion let alone criticisms.

Back to the restaurant analogy, we can buy our own rice, chicken, salt, pepper, vegetables, and so on. But the way restaurants assemble, cook, and “wrap” them usually what makes people fill the seats.

Even when I’m in the mood to cook something, say, a fried rice, you can buy a “wrapper” of seasonings like salt, pepper, tumeric, coriander, all wrap into a single packet that you can simply pour to your rice.

Just like in music, I probably have almost the same access to the sounds and instruments as Grammy-winning artists (at least on a software level). But there’s a reason people tune in to thousands of “wrappers” on streaming platforms.

This realization really took me to the classic “There’s nothing new under the sun” bit every public speaking mentors used to say.

Even this wrapper thing-y is a “wrapper” to “there’s nothing new under the sun”, isn’t it? Who knows. Even our ideas were a remix of existing ideas from other people, who got it from other people as well.

So, yeah, I guess it’s time to wrap good things and “resell” them. Whether it’s ideas, music, food, or anything else. Life’s fun, no?