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Ask HN: What has the past 12 months taught you?

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Re: Ask HN: What has the past 12 months taught you?

#271

Post by reitanqild »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #189
firefoxd wrote: post #114

* Five co-founders are too many. * If you are working on someone else's crappy idea, think about working on your own crappy idea. * Call people you might need later when you don't need them. Or they tend to disappear when you do need them. * Learn about the stock market and invest right away. You'll make money, lose money, then understand money. * Build as many projects as time allows. It's nice to have the option to…

> "I'll end with this. If you are bored, create something. Make a clay pot, a drawing on paper, a JavaScript file, a wooden structure, a shoe rack, a sand castle, a matchstick home, a story. Make something you can look at the end result and you'll never get bored again..." This might be the best single sentence I've read on the internet so far this year. Kudos. In short: Boredom is a function of creativity / creating…

> Boredom is a function of creativity / creating.

Often it is the other way around.

Re: Ask HN: What has the past 12 months taught you?

#272

Post by sophacles »

skipthemeat wrote: post #233
adventured wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly agree with the stray luck / good fortune factor. I'll add that I think there is the considerable potential to enhance the access to lucky outcomes and or the rate at which you can run into good luck events. Simple, rather obvious things like doing (do a thing, take action) and asking (if you never ask...), dramatically improve your odds of causing and or colliding with good luck outcomes. They often take v…

Great story and agreed. If you can handle any perceived psychic/ego damage from being rejected, then asking for things is essentially "free luck". Other ways to put things in your favor over the long term: - Keep increasing your capacity to do things. Learn ubiquitous skills such as sales, basic accounting, negotiation, speaking, etc. - Keep increasing your network. Asking is a huge part of this. - Improve your signa…

I'd add:

Unless you have a good reason to say "No" [1] to stuff, say "Yes". Doubly so in outside of a "work task" context[2]. More experiences/involvements means more opportunities for fortune to look your way.

[1] Good reasons to say "No" - already committed, the ask will hurt you, I need rest, i can't afford that. Bad reasons - this is odd/out of my comfort zone/not interesting, it violates a routine, "I'm waiting for..."

[2] I really really mean "outside of work tasks" because just saying yes to every little request at work can result in work overload and the inability to do life. The point of work is to enable life, not to spend the entirety of it staring at $IDE.

Re: Ask HN: What has the past 12 months taught you?

#273

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

danielbarla wrote: post #209
rntrg wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't ask people what they think about your idea. They'll either be supportive or mean to you. None of these are about your idea. While I agree that some people will be blindly supportive or mean (or will lie as another comment pointed out), it sounds to me that you might be asking the wrong people or you might be allowing ego to taint your perception of their responses. In my experience, there are plenty of though…

On the topic of asking people about your idea, I was once having a bit of a problem with this topic. Everyone seemed to "love" what we were busy with, and they'd throw in some suggestions on what else we could do to make our product more suited to their needs. I thought this was great; we're on to something, right? A little bit later, I relayed these situations to someone who was giving advice on where to take the pr…

I think this advice was also in 4HWW. When you have something to sell, the difference is:

> Hey, what do you think of this product?

> Oh! This product looks great! I would definitely buy this!

vs.

> Hey, I have 10 copies of this product available. Would you like to buy one?

> Oh! Umm… Well…

Re: Ask HN: What has the past 12 months taught you?

#274

Post by Klathmon »

DoubleGlazing wrote: post #207

For me I have learned that there comes a point when you need to work differently in order to protect your health and family well being. Big salaries are great, but when the price for that is massive amounts of overtime that takes you away from your family it just isn't worth it. Now I work for myself and I love it. Hobbies are vitally important to keeping you happy and healthy, don't neglect them. When you get a spee…

As someone who was diagnosed with ADHD at a fairly young age, my parents were extremely relieved, and I'm extremely happy that I was able to learn how to manage it from a young age.

There are days where it's really hard, and there are absolutely days that I forget my medicine and basically the entire day is shot, but in all honesty I really truly believe that I owe a good portion of what I have to the fact that I have ADHD.

I learned a ton of methods and skills for dealing with depression, forgetfulness, anger, impulsivity, and motivation from a really young age. And those skills have helped me significantly more than my ADHD has ever pulled me down. Going into highschool and college already knowing how to manage myself and how I learn, tricks and ways of working to ensure I stay on task meant that I had a big leg up over a lot of my peers.

Re: Ask HN: What has the past 12 months taught you?

#275

Post by DoubleGlazing »

tudelo wrote: post #250
DoubleGlazing wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. I brought in maps from three different mapping sources and loads of research papers on the subject of GPS, but the judge said it was irrelevant and found guilty. This is despite the fact that the prosecuting Garda could not produce the calibration certificate for the van. For challenging and losing my wife got 5 points instead of 3 for just paying the fine without a fuss. This situation hit me hard, mad…

Wow, I feel for you man. That's crazy. You should do a write up on the process. Maybe submit it to a paper, local or otherwise?

I have tried, but the opinion of everyone I speak to locally about the affair is "what did you expect?" The process for speeding fines is pretty much a production line in the states favour. The law was changed a few years back so that the speed camera data is not the primary evidence in a speeding case, now the Garda swears that he/she believes a driver was speeding using the speed camera data only as advice. This was to stop people demanding the source code for the equipment. A bad law that favours the state IMO since you can cast legitimate doubt on the accuracy of the equipment, but if the Garda insists you were speeding then its up to the judge and whatever mood they are in to decide who wins.

When my wife stated her defence the prosecuting Garda sergeant said, under oath, "We don't use that American GPS we have our own GPS!". My wife though she had him at that point, but the judge believed the Garda.

I have kept all the documentation in case we can do something about it in the future, but that's unlikely. What is really grating is that the lady before my wife admitted to doing 120kph in an 80kph zone, the judge dismissed the case because of her "honesty and frankness".

Currently An Garda Siochana (Irish police) is undergoing huge turmoil and a number of public inquiries due to corruption and bad management. When the police are found to have faked 1 million breath tests in order to hit targets our little issue becomes very low hanging fruit.

Re: Ask HN: What has the past 12 months taught you?

#276

Post by gargravarr »

groby_b wrote: post #238
gargravarr wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For every problem, there is an engineering solution. The inverse is not necessarily true :)

The statement itself isn't true, either. And our industry suffers through it time and again, thinking that a social problem can be solved with engineering. It never can, but you can sure burn a lot of money trying.

I used the term 'solution' loosely and somewhat ironically, because it's usually put forward by people who think it is a solution, but in fact it just makes the problem worse :)

Re: Ask HN: What has the past 12 months taught you?

#277

Post by firefoxd »

gerland wrote: post #247
firefoxd wrote: post #114

* Five co-founders are too many. * If you are working on someone else's crappy idea, think about working on your own crappy idea. * Call people you might need later when you don't need them. Or they tend to disappear when you do need them. * Learn about the stock market and invest right away. You'll make money, lose money, then understand money. * Build as many projects as time allows. It's nice to have the option to…

Do you have any no-bs sources to learn about stock investments? Right now it would be gambling for me.

I took a paid in person course with Income Trader. Before that, i read all of investopedia. And now I just follow Mr Teroso's advice: Invest once a month, market up or down.

Re: Ask HN: What has the past 12 months taught you?

#278

Post by sus_007 »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #208
sus_007 wrote: post #101

Stay with a single programming language, a single framework, a single library, a single tech stack, a single version control system until you extract the last drop out of it. Also, I am done with T.V & Social Media. World Cup 2018 is going on ATM, we have Cricket World Cup next, then we have another Sports Tournament, and another, and another one... The entire entertainment industry is one infinite `loop` of baloney…

You don't find value in enjoying a 90 minute game with friends? I'm all for limiting TV but World Cup 2018 is not really an endless cycle, they only do it once every 4 years and it's far less content than the Olympics.

I firmly stood by this opinion during the last World Cup of 2014 when I was still a high-schooler. From that tournament to this, I deeply regret the choices I've made for myself. Due to the influence of T.V & Social Media, I participated in high-school sports while my friends took part in International Olympiads competition. I won medals with my football team while my peers won medals on Physics, Maths, etc. Thus, I'm not gonna let them influence the rest of my life. Now, I strictly live my life following so called Death-bed philosophy[0].

I spend quality time with my friends & family to discuss about our day-to-day incidents and others, not to debate on a third person's performance on the pitch. Also, I don't find much difference among Olympics or Fifa World Cup or any other world sporting leagues, regardless of their popularity or duration, I find all of them to serve NIL for my prosperity- just a frequent hit of dopamine, that's all.

[0]https://learningunlimited.com/deathbed-philosophy/

Re: Ask HN: What has the past 12 months taught you?

#280

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

spidey1 wrote: post #188
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of what's said in that community is uninteresting and nonsensical. I was super interested in this "movement" for some years and joined many of those events. The trouble is, so much of it is programmers patting themselves on the back for being more "disciplined" than your average working programmer. Before Google, business listing websites competed by being the most disciplined in listing business data — they had…

So how do you go about it? I've only been in this field for about 18 months and I'm so overwhelmed by all these conflicting ideas and have no idea where to turn. Do you have any advice for juniors on how to internalise good engineering principles and how to avoid dogma?

- Become proficient in Vim or Emacs

- Get comfortable on the command line — it's almost a running joke now that modern tools are often outperformed by awk/sed/grep/cut/etc

- Go through the book 'Seven Languages in Seven Weeks' — You won't thoroughly learn those seven languages, but you will learn how to learn programming languages

- Get good at recognising hype and reducing marketing language to their core ideas. This seems especially applicable in the JavaScript world (though this may just be my confirmation bias speaking)

- Get good at accurately defining the problem you intend to solve. This would seem so fundamental that it isn't worth mentioning, but you'd be surprised how often people jump to "Ah! An excuse to play with shiny new framework/tool/languge/whatever" before knowing what it is they're solving

Most of these seem quite fundamental, but you go an awful long way in this industry on fundamentals.

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