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Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

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Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#41

Post by moron4hire »

japhyr wrote: post #34

Writing programs that people actually use. I was a hobbyist programmer for a long time. Then my father passed away, and I went through his computer and saw all these projects that would never see the light of day. That gave me the motivation to choose one project and see it through until it was good enough to have actual users. Programming is much more satisfying and meaningful now.

Do not overlook this comment. Between a flood destroying all of my physical property, a minor health-scare, a few far-too-early deaths in my friends and family, and having a kid, the concept of my own mortality is now firmly established. I started thinking about the few things I did have, and who would take them. I realized the vast majority of my "stuff" is parts and code for nascent projects. There are a lot of them. And they will get thrown away. They are valueless to anyone else.

So to me that means that I need to focus and do one thing at a time.

We are a sum of our parts and I probably wouldn't have as great of an appreciation for the time I have left if I hadn't wasted so much time. I still get a lot of time to code, but damn, my single 20s were a whole different world.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#42

Post by ninkendo »

jacobkranz wrote: post #10

For me it was psychotherapy / dealing with both my physical & mental health. I now meditate 2x a day, run, and lift weights.

Any advice on how to seek it out? I'm at the point where I want to try it but I don't know exactly what to seek out. Should I talk to a general practitioner and get a referral? Just google some stuff and pick somebody close to me? Any kind of "yelp for therapists"?

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#43

Post by phillc73 »

Leave London.

I moved there when I was 26 and left when I was 40. I should have left at least 5 years earlier. It took a marriage and imminent birth of a child to finally push me into leaving.

I now live in a small city (250k-300k people) in a great environment with plenty of outdoor space, mountains, rivers, lakes etc.

I am not paid nearly as much as I was in London, and it took me a good 12 months to establish myself. However, I don't need London rates of pay to live here comfortably.

I feel my quality of life has drastically improved in the last two years since leaving London.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#44

Post by carlesfe »

Exercise, though others have said that.

Personally, I'd say that the thing that changed my life for the best has been Not Giving Tech Support.

When I was a teenager I was kinda miserable because some people abused me for tech support. You know, it's nice to give favors, but at some point you're fed up of reinstalling every computer in your block every 6 months. People stop you on the streets and the first thing they say is "you know I think my computer has a virus...". Yeah, f* you.

I guess not many people in HN do this anymore, probably because we're kinda old, however, if that's your case, learn to say no. It's fine. You can still oblige for some people. However, never do it for free. With close family and some friends, they probably have had more deferences towards you than you can ever repay. For others, just say "I do this for a living, it'll be $XX, at friend's price"

Once I started charging, only a few people took me up on it, and they've always been happy with the result. Those who want tech support for free should give something in return besides a beer "for your inconveniences".

I could expand but I'm afraid it would be an ugly rant. If anybody wants any help on how to say NO, just ask :)

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#46

Post by moron4hire »

exceptione wrote: post #36
patio11 wrote: post #9

Every time I start seriously exercising this hits in about week ~4. Sadly, I only generally keep it up for 6 months before falling back to old habits. Professionally: email lists. If you have any reason to have a blog, you should have an email list. It surfaces the identities of the people who are actually interested in what you have to say, and ties people to you much, much tighter than "Oh yeah, that thing you wrot…

« Relatedly: answer common objections once, offline. Cache the answers. Repeat back from the cache, not from "best halfway decent thing you can remember to say in real time."» Can you elaborate on that? I'm wondering to what situation you are referring to and what kind of objections you mean here?

Surely you've seen it here on HN. People will find a way to bitch about anything. Criticism is a signal that people care about the issue you're trying to address, but you've just failed to communicate your values correctly. Turn that criticism into an opportunity to correct that failing.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#47

Post by jbb555 »

phillc73 wrote: post #43

Leave London. I moved there when I was 26 and left when I was 40. I should have left at least 5 years earlier. It took a marriage and imminent birth of a child to finally push me into leaving. I now live in a small city (250k-300k people) in a great environment with plenty of outdoor space, mountains, rivers, lakes etc. I am not paid nearly as much as I was in London, and it took me a good 12 months to establish myse…

Move to London.

I moved there when I was 44 and wish I'd done so earlier.

much more to do, pay is better. I feel my quality of life has drastically improved in the last two years since moving to London.

(But probably I'll want to move away some time too!)

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#49

Post by kzisme »

swalsh wrote: post #31

Learning Python! I've been a C#/Windows developer for years. I then switched to Ruby, which for some reason inevitably means you switch to a shiny mac, and then your work paradigm changes revolving around the command line. One day a quick task came up, and I decided to hack it out. The only library I could find was a python library, so that's what I used... and it was so quick to get something. 10 lines later my bori…

This is good to hear - I recently graduated and took a C#/.NET job (which I enjoy)...but Python and CLI work always is more enjoyable for me than the MS stack. A big worry of mine is not being able to switch between languages, and getting ~stuck~ with one.

Re: Ask HN: What was your “why didn't I start doing this sooner” moment?

#50

Post by _iyrr »

zzalpha wrote: post #25
_iyrr wrote: post #17

Using screen in daemon mode. screen -dmS myservice /blah/start.sh Fit that line somewhere in a properly constructed init.d file and you're good to go. And if you need to execute a safe stop from that program through some interactivity: screen -S myservice -X stuff "stop\n" And voila. It sends a line of text over followed by an enter key. Elegant, useful. You can reattach session to see what's happening at any time. L…

Not to start a flamewar, but have you looked at tmux for this kind of thing? "Daemon mode" is the mode for tmux, and the whole stack is designed to be extremely scriptable. "tmux send-keys" does what you're referring to, here, but essentially anything you can do interactively, you can do via the command-line. Not to say you shouldn't just keep doing what works for you! But figured I'd at least make mention of tmux as…

Many ways to accomplish the same thing in Linux, starting with a popen() call. ;) so thanks for pointing out tmux.

Since I use screen fairly often, it had never occurred to me (until fairly recently) that you can rely on it to start with a machine reboot -- and yet have the very familiar interface available to you when you want to intervene. Something to be said about muscle memory.

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