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Any suggestions for someone who has never taken/read philosophy but would like to dip their toe into it?
I'd suggest the Philosophize This podcast.
Not quite startup or hobby project material, but some of the most gratifying work is making non-critical, easy to implement changes in your business's workflow! Sometimes users will have minor (or major) issues with the way a tool works - database takes 30 seconds to retrieve a certain type of information, there's no clear path from point A to point B in a frequently used business tool, certain jobs take 2x as long a…
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I very much agree. I ditto your sentiments. I've had a few people ask me lately why I've spent so much time long-term (an hour or two a day, for at least 2 years) studying philosophy. It's very difficult to convey the feeling you get when really approaching philiosophical thought in the way Descartes challenged via apple baskets: > “Suppose [a person] had a basket full of apples and, being worried that some of the ap…
Any suggestions for someone who has never taken/read philosophy but would like to dip their toe into it?
1. This website: https://www.philosophybasics.com/
2. The "Philosophize This" podcast (start at the beginning)
3. The "Philosophers in 90 minutes" series (I recommend going in chronological order since most philosophers build on the work of previous philosophers)
4. "The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained": https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0756668611/
1. The HoPWaG (History of Philosophy Without any Gaps) podcast: https://historyofphilosophy.net/
1. Introduction to Greek Philosophy (yes it's an "intro" course but it's amazing and pretty deep. Highly recommended even if you are mostly interested in modern philosophy):
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/introduction-to-greek-philosophy.html
2. The Modern Intellectual Tradition - Descartes to Derrida: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/modern-intellectual-tradition-from-descartes-to-derrida.html
3. The Modern Political Tradition - Hobbes to Habermas: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/the-modern-political-tradition-hobbes-to-habermas.html
4. A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell: https://smile.amazon.com/History-Western-Philosophy-Bertrand-Russell/dp/0671201581
5. European Thought & Culture in the {19,20}th Century: https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/european-thought-and-culture-in-the-19th-century.html and https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/european-thought-and-culture-in-the-20th-century.html
6. Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition (honestly not my favorite, but it covers a lot of ground): https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/great-minds-of-the-western-intellectual-tradition-3rd-edition.html
7. Original Sources! Especially:
A. John Locke's Second Treatise of Government
B. Descartes First Meditation (this will blow your mind)
C. Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
D. Kant's Metaphysics of Morals
E. If you are into politics and/or economics (if you really try to understand these books, you may come away having no idea what your political leanings are):
1. Karl Marx - Communist Manifesto, and Das Kapital
2. Ludwig von Mises - Socialism, and Human Action
3. Hayek - Road to Serfdom
There are quite a few additional books and Great Courses that I can also recommend if you're interested.
NOTE: Don't pay full price for a Great Courses course. They go on sale a couple times a year, so just keep an eye on them until they are 70-90% off. Also if you buy through their website they are DRM free.
So, I spent 2 months repairing features, rebuilding a few, refactoring quite a bit and on launch day of my updates I received an email from an end user that said:
"You are the best and this is the smoothest it's ever been"
I printed that email and hung it above my whiteboard. Felt AWESOME.
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I am with you. Comments like this indicate nothing but a demonstration of the ad hockery defense of familialism, which is increasingly becoming common here in HN for some reason.
I've noticed the same trend. As someone who never wants a family it's extremely tiring that the family-first norm is pushed so hard here. It's the last place I would expect it so I'm really curious why that is.
To answer your question, if you're looking for a cool business so you can do what you want that is great and if you're looking for "meaning" that might be something else. There is no way that I would presume to tell anyone else what they should find meaning in. If a family is not what you find meaningful, then you're a person and that's your entirely legit decision.
So:
A) the question is what projects I personally find most rewarding (not what projects I think other people would find rewarding),
B) the echo chamber response is resoundingly "my tech side project that I make little money on" (good for those folks, I sincerely am sure they love their families too, even if they feel like it's better to serve them through employment... heck, playing music with my buddies is very similar),
C) the OP's favorite part of being a developer is "when you solve the problem and make their life easier, even if it was easy to solve. I'd love to find something where every day was like that!" and I don't feel like something along the lines of "perhaps directly caring for the humans around you" is a crazy, out of context, hippy dippy answer.
I hope that doesn't sound like either a "defense of familism" or wear you out... it's just my own lived experience and I am sharing it because it's been helpful to me. I don't expect you to agree.
Developed an application assisting State Revenue Office customers to produce correct Pay-roll Annual Adjustment forms and thereby reducing the high rate of errors that SRO customers experienced in filling out these forms. I was responsible for the technical design and development of an MS-Windows (3.1x, Win95, WinNT) application with a "wizard-like" interface. The application was developed in Delphi to ensure reliability on thousands of different computers around the state and nationally. Diskettes were distributed to 16,000 SRO customers and 3,000 CPAs. The SRO received numerous letters of praise for providing a service that greatly simplified a complex process.
Security auditor in 2009/2010. In that job I was traveling the countryside of Afghanistan and visited the major US Army bases to provide information security assessments and write reports. I got to see some of the exotic landscape and talk to many different interesting people. I also got to go on flying adventures that aren't allowed by passenger carriers in the US. This was incredibly rewarding for the reasons not r…
"So now I just tell people to read the book and take the test from a management perspective and people look at me like I am crazy, because the test is so hard." Can you elaborate more on that? I'm interested.
In short the CISSP is the most respected certification for information security management even though the ISC2 organization offers more advanced certifications above the CISSP. I believe the SANS certifications are more respected technician certifications now, but they cost something like $4000 and you have to travel to their location to certify (or so the rumors claim).
The CISSP exam is vendor agnostic. You have to apply and be approved to take the exam and it costs just shy of $700. Even with that price tag it only has about a 60% pass rate.
When I took the test back in 2010 it was 250 questions and you had up to 6 hours to take it. Many of the questions had more than one correct answer so you had to read it carefully to pick the most correct answer. Many of the people who failed it, those that I knew, failed it for tactical reasons. It is a senior management test so I always tell people to remember on each and every question managers document and then they delegate. They don't do the real work, so if you answer any question with putting fingers on a keyboard you are likely wrong.
The test wore me out as I took 5.5 out of the 6 available hours. Some of the questions were rather long like a page out of a textbook.
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I've noticed the same trend. As someone who never wants a family it's extremely tiring that the family-first norm is pushed so hard here. It's the last place I would expect it so I'm really curious why that is.
Well, I certainly didn't mean to imply that I am advocating that everyone should put their "family-first" any more than I am advocating everyone start playing music with my buddies or studying philosophy. To answer your question, if you're looking for a cool business so you can do what you want that is great and if you're looking for "meaning" that might be something else. There is no way that I would presume to tell…