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Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

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Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#211

Post by rudasn »

kenjackson wrote: post #57

Life: Having a child. The first six months were mad hard. But he's been what gets me up in the morning now... Literally Programming: Not caring about trends. I've realized I can learn pretty much anything on demand. So I find interesting problems and try to solve them, rather than spend alot of time learning frameworks and languages and hope to apply them. And I've found learning on demand for real problems causes me…

> I've realized I can learn pretty much anything on demand. So I find interesting problems and try to solve them, rather than spend alot of time learning frameworks and languages and hope to apply them.

I find this to be a very good approach and it applies to me as well.

Everything I know about "programming" I learned because I needed something done. 10+ years ago I wanted a website, so I learned HTML. Then I wanted a dynamic website, so I learned ASP and SQL. Then I needed some cool interactions, so I learned JavaScript. Then I wanted to create a web app, so I learned Python & Django. When the time comes to build a chat application, I'll learn Node.

This approach enabled me to have much more time to learn new stuff and learn them well enough so as to build production-ready stuff, because that's the goal at the end of day.

The downside is that I rarely have time or energy to just experiment with something new just for the fun of it. It evens out though because I have fun at work learning and doing stuff I actually need to be doing.

Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#212

Post by GFischer »

sivakumar_k wrote: post #210
GFischer wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What language(s) did you leave .NET for? I'm still stuck on .NET (and I like it) but I know I can't build decent web or mobile applications with it.

I use .Net and Java stack, I don't want to start a war here but I never felt held back due to any reason for developing web apps in either of the two. For mobile apps, its a different story, I stick to phonegap.

I'm pretty sure you can make great web apps with .NET, but I don't get the impression that the ecosystem is very supportive.

I found a lot more support online for other stacks.

For example, I wanted to do a tiny webpage, and host it online cheap or for free. The cheapest options were Google App Engine and AWS.

I looked into Azure pricing and ran away. I'm probably ignorant of the best solutions (Rackspace seems to have a startup program, there was a .NET hosting I liked, there's also BizSpark), but most .NET hosting was a lot more expensive than I wanted, and not supportive of "weekend project" types.

Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#213

Post by scottmagdalein »

moutard wrote: post #197
scottmagdalein wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand what you're saying.

You could always look up Trivers' work. Apparently some other people think that they do understand what I'm saying but they don't like it and have consequently downgraded my post! It's the old "nature vs nurture" thing: those who don't like my posting are "nurturists" and believe that we're born as tabulae rasae, empty slates that learn all behavior; I'm seen as the "naturist" who believes that we're totally gene-con…

I mean, what am I overriding in my nature? Maybe you mean forgiveness is overriding my nature to seek revenge or hold a grudge for some wrong doing. If that's the case, then yes I'm going against my nature.

But nature is terrible at defining and shaping human relationships. We confuse "love" with affinity. "Love" is more like a verb that entails sacrifice, acceptance, and patience...along with affinity in a marital relationship, of course.

Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#214

Post by loungin »

scottmagdalein wrote: post #71

Life: forgiving my wife after she had an affair. It was hard, but a single mistake doesn't negate the fact that she is a great mom, we are good together and our son deserves a shot at having his dad in the house. Programming: learning by doing instead of by reading. I started learning Rails when I wanted to build PicDigest and the mistakes I've made have helped me learn faster on a broader foundation.

I am a little dissapointed you are catching some flak. It is your life, do what you think is right.

Kudos to you for your decision. A book was written about marriage, long term monogamy, and (at least for me) showed that maybe sex shouldn't be this huge deal we currently make it out to be. It's called Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha.

Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#215

Post by bcambel »

GFischer wrote: post #208
bcambel wrote: post #69

Life: Moving to Netherlands Programming: Leaving .NET behind after 6 years.

What language(s) did you leave .NET for? I'm still stuck on .NET (and I like it) but I know I can't build decent web or mobile applications with it.

Ruby & Python

Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#216

Post by bcambel »

sivakumar_k wrote: post #210
GFischer wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What language(s) did you leave .NET for? I'm still stuck on .NET (and I like it) but I know I can't build decent web or mobile applications with it.

I use .Net and Java stack, I don't want to start a war here but I never felt held back due to any reason for developing web apps in either of the two. For mobile apps, its a different story, I stick to phonegap.

I don't know that much about Java world, however what I can say about Windows + .NET is you are less productive. Why ? 1. Linux > Windows ( For .NET ) 2. Python + Django/Flask are really powerful. Ruby & Rails as well. 3. You're basically writing and reading more code. Most of them is unnecessary. .NET is designed for enterprises. 4. Especially for startups, time & speed matters a lot. I also think some of the above reasons applies for the Java world as well. Fantastic OS projects though in Java world.

Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#217

Post by scottmagdalein »

loungin wrote: post #214
scottmagdalein wrote: post #71

Life: forgiving my wife after she had an affair. It was hard, but a single mistake doesn't negate the fact that she is a great mom, we are good together and our son deserves a shot at having his dad in the house. Programming: learning by doing instead of by reading. I started learning Rails when I wanted to build PicDigest and the mistakes I've made have helped me learn faster on a broader foundation.

I am a little dissapointed you are catching some flak. It is your life, do what you think is right. Kudos to you for your decision. A book was written about marriage, long term monogamy, and (at least for me) showed that maybe sex shouldn't be this huge deal we currently make it out to be. It's called Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha.

Thanks.

Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#218

Post by zem »

Hard to say what my best life choice was, I tend to live my life as a series of small choices rather than one or two overarching big ones.

But programming - definitely the decision (back in college) to actively commit my hobby and professional life to the linux (and concomitant open source) ecosystem. I can still look around today and marvel at how much it has enriched not just my overall career, but the day-to-day experience of being at work.

Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#219

Post by lazyjones »

rsmaniak wrote: post #202
lazyjones wrote: post #13

Life: leaving the academic world and doing things that actually affect / matter to people. Programming: writing an Atari ST emulator (it landed me a job offer by a prestigious game company)

got any tips/resources for an aspiring emulator programmer? I find emulation fascinating, I've always wanted to write an emulator for my favorite console (neo geo) but I'm mostly a CRUD programmer without a lot of comp architecture knowledge.

You'll need precise and complete documentation of the CPU and other hardware, which is not too hard to find nowdays (17 years ago it was mostly books and they were incomplete/wrong).

You can probably go a long way just by programming by the specifications with some literature on designing interpreters, but good assembly language skills on the emulated system will be extremely useful, because that's what you'll be looking at all the time while debugging.

Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#220

Post by sfo2mnl »

Life: Quitting Google in 2007 after only 7 months of employment to do my first startup. I was 24 years old, I had spent almost one full year applying to Google and while I didn't have my dream job, I was certainly at my dream company. I was approached by a previous colleague to do a startup in the Philippines and I spent a couple weeks thinking about it before deciding that I was going to leave Google and do a startup. I was 24, if I failed at the startup, I could always try to go back.

7 years later, leaving Google was the best choice I've ever made.

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