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Ask HN: After almost 30 years the romance is over - What now?

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101–110 of 121 posts

Re: Ask HN: After almost 30 years the romance is over - What now?

#101
post #93

Happens to everybody. Take a timeout. In the 12 years of my career, I have taken a total of 3 years off - and I am certain that in the 9 remaining years I achieved more and better things than what I would have had I worked the 12 years straight through. It is like when you have been staring at a computer screen for long hours at a stretch trying to solve a problem. You stand up and move away from your desk and within…

Interesting.. Could you elaborate at which stage in your career did you take 3 years off? How did you deal with family/relationships? So, if your kid comes along and says he does not want to go to school,what do you tell him?

Re: Ask HN: After almost 30 years the romance is over - What now?

#102
post #88
post #26

I've been doing this for 30 years and I'm more jazzed than ever. Wanna know the biggest difference between you and me? I'm pulled. You're pushed. Let me explain... I love building stuff. Nothing gives me a bigger rush than getting something working the first time (well almost nothing). But I couldn't care less about the technology. If an abacus, two tin cans on a string, or some BASIC code on a Kaypro II did the job,…

[edw519] What I really care about is how my software is used. And who uses it [heliodorj] The main motivator and source of satisfaction for software developers is the human aspect, not the technology itself. Is your product making a difference in someone's life? I think these two statements show a profound misunderstanding of what motivates a lot (if not most) hackers. What gets a lot of people into this field in the…

I think bioengineering is one field where real advances are being made. If I could go back in time, I might tell myself to get into developing software and hardware for abiogenesis and genetic engineering research. I'd say to myself, "There's a lot more to learn than cloning a sheep." I expect to see some exciting discoveries in this area over the next decade, like artificial lifeforms, using base life-related chemicals to produce alternative fuels, etc.

Re: Ask HN: After almost 30 years the romance is over - What now?

#103
post #77

I was born in China and all my first memory is about little me saying "I'm going to join the red army and become a scientist and save the world". The world, which is China. And then, I've moved to Europe in the early 90s. I've discovered something new: my dad's mac. First, I was only playing Go and dark castle on it but then, I've started asking myself how to make my own games. My parents are all engineers and they t…

+1 for patching save games :)

I hex-edited my Commander Keen save games to get effectively unlimited lives and ammo. I'm glad to see at least one other person was motivated by the same concept.

Re: Ask HN: After almost 30 years the romance is over - What now?

#104
Sounds more like burn-out at this point. Try a related, but different job if you can get it.

I moved from straight up developer to a technology analyst to sales to product management (with some minor development) roles and this kind of movement has really helped keep things fresh. It also didn't hurt that I cycled between huge mega-corps and small companies -- each have radically different environments with their own pluses and minuses. Stay until you get tired of the minuses of one, then jump to the other.

One nice thing about my particular moves is that I've dragged along entire skillsets from my previous guises that most people in that field don't have while learning new ones from that job that I can then carry forward. It's amazing what kinds of old skills I never thought I'd use anywhere else come up again and again, except nobody else sees the application in their domain because almost nobody who grew their entire career in that particular field has had any exposure to it.

(I remember the first time I taught regular expressions and production rules to a fellow analyst co-worker, once he "got it" his jaw just hit the floor. He now has carried that forward into another analyst job where, just by knowing that one simple thing, has revolutionized operations at his current employer for a large analysis program he works on.)

Re: Ask HN: After almost 30 years the romance is over - What now?

#105
post #93

Happens to everybody. Take a timeout. In the 12 years of my career, I have taken a total of 3 years off - and I am certain that in the 9 remaining years I achieved more and better things than what I would have had I worked the 12 years straight through. It is like when you have been staring at a computer screen for long hours at a stretch trying to solve a problem. You stand up and move away from your desk and within…

Interesting.. Could you elaborate at which stage in your career did you take 3 years off? How did you deal with family/relationships? So, if your kid comes along and says he does not want to go to school,what do you tell him?

I took it in 3 blocks of around a year each. After 2.5 years of working, after 5 years of working and then after around 7-8 years of working. Completely changed my life.

I am a dropout, so if my own child doesn't want to go to school I would support him/her just as my parents did with me.

Re: Ask HN: After almost 30 years the romance is over - What now?

#106
post #8

Instead of being motivated only by technology have you considered trying to create a product or starting a company? (this is HN after all). Lots of people using (and maybe even liking) something you built can be pretty compelling.

Starting a company: Yes, I tried that during my freelancing time. The plan was to freelance on the side to keep myself afloat until the company could carry itself. Except things didn't work out: not only did the company not find any clients, as a freelancer I didn't get enough contracts to actually keep myself afloat. The timing of me trying that was incredibly stupid in retrospect; 2002/3 would have to be the worst…

Or go to a small company where you actually can see people using your work.

As others have suggested, instead of being driven by tools/technology maybe focussing on the product can be satisfying.

Re: Ask HN: After almost 30 years the romance is over - What now?

#107
post #22
post #7

"The Open Source revolution seems to be over" http://github.com

> The Open Source revolution seems to be over; [...] And it seems that the children of the revolution turned the gold to chrome, scrambling to squeeze a buck out of anything a buck can be squeezed out of. Instead of the free sharing of ideas I grew up with, I'm encountering more and more the attitude of a guarded sharing of general topics, but the real knowledge and experience seems to be held back because it has to…

Yeah, exactly right.

I've been having that though lately that opensource software has been killed by Apple and its appstore.

Before the appstore, open source software was the future, and the appstore killed that dream. Now, everybody is coding apps to make money on the app-stores.

IMHO the Open Source revolution _is_ over.

Re: Ask HN: After almost 30 years the romance is over - What now?

#108
post #19

Welcome to the law of Diminishing returns. Your choices fundamentally boils down to the following: -Take the blue pill. Stay in wonderland. Pick a technology, any technology. Drive yourself into it deeper. The rabbit hole goes much, much further, than you can imagine. -Take the red pill, and wake up: the rabbit hole goes the other way, too. On first basis, you have the ever-exploding number of scientific disciplines…

I'd toss in another piece of media, Elizabeth Gilbert's short (20-minute) TED talk on creativity and "genius":

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

(I tend to re-watch that one whenever I feel like I'm stuck in a creative rut, have run out of ideas, or just aren't talented enough to achieve my current artistic goals.)

Also useful advice: Find ways to hang out with a peer group. Try browsing meetup.com in your areas of interest.

Re: Ask HN: After almost 30 years the romance is over - What now?

#109
post #33

Open source still makes a big difference, especially in 3rd world country. I went once to an open source conference in India, it really opened my eyes to a whole new way of looking at the movement. Maybe that's what you may want to look at: software which really makes a difference today for many people.

it really opened my eyes to a whole new way of looking at the movement Interesting. Can you share more details on the new perspective you got from being there?

Most projects I have been involved with were related to my PhD at that time, numerical computing kind of stuff in python. Going to the conferences in Europe or the US, it is already quite exciting because you see a lot of people, in academics and otherwise, using the softwares you contributed to. You make some tasks more enjoyable because the tools are more powerful, etc...

Now, in India, the dynamics are really different. You don't just do something that make people life simpler. You really enable people to do things they may not have been able to before. When the de-facto standard software costs one year of a post doc in India, having open source alternatives do make a difference.

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