I'm motivated by ideologies and idols that serve as role models to me, they keep me company even after death. My support comes from philosophy largely.
Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?
21–30 of 192 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?
#22There are 40 things listed in OP's site. And he claims to have written 40M loc. So approximately 1 mil loc per program, (or 2.5M loc per year)? Honestly can someone write that many lines of code?
The number might be inflated by a number of code generation tools. For instance various kinds of auto generated ORM logic.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?
#23So you have applied to Google et.al, you are not the first brilliant kid they have turned down, so don't worry about it. Your first priority should be to get a job though. Take the first one you get. It will suck, you will have ten years more experience then your boss, it will pay bad, and you will be the only one that knows shit, but you will afford to move into your own place, and that is the most important. You need to get a life of your own.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?
#2440 million lines of code is a lot of code to have written. Is this number exaggerated a bit? Exaggerated a lot? Just doing the math: to code that much in sixteen years (assuming a start of age 10) would require writing 6,800 LOC, every single day.
Yes, remove a 0 to that 40. Did the maths wrong. Fixed.
4M is still high. In order to maintain 680 lines per day on average, you have to sacrifice a lot. Remember that code is not intrinsically valuable.
The highest I've hit is 3,500 over a three-day weekend, and the experience was awful. I spent a week recovering.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?
#25There are 40 things listed in OP's site. And he claims to have written 40M loc. So approximately 1 mil loc per program, (or 2.5M loc per year)? Honestly can someone write that many lines of code?
They may not have listed every piece of code they wrote since they were 10 years old.
I've only listed there what I think is important for my coding career and the ones that have resources to show.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?
#26I noticed myself that i stay motivated by focusing. I have multiple projects running and i can be very motivated and passionate but only one at a time. It's very easy for me to neglect other businesses whenever i'm focusing.
If i focus, i plan in my head what i want to do and imagine the results. I stay more motivated when i make visual progress. This has always worked for me and i created a lot of big projects on my own this way. Downside for me is that its too easy to focus too much on product and less on market research, marketing, and sales.
Working on that.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?
#27I'm not sure why people consistently get hung up on getting accepted at one of the "Big Five"
"I tried to look for a job out of my city, but no luck, I don’t know what’s the deal with coding interviews, but I bet they don’t work good. I’ve been rejected from"
...
Google Facebook Magic Uber Holagus (Mexican startup)
I'm not sure what draws everyone to places like this when there are ~many~ other companies.
Also does the article end abruptly for anyone else at "There are two possible reasons"...
Edit: After looking at your LinkedIn it seems like you've accomplished a lot (well done!), but you haven't had much "real" workplace experience - I would assume ~most~ companies would want some industry experience on a resume (I could be wrong)
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?
#28There are 40 things listed in OP's site. And he claims to have written 40M loc. So approximately 1 mil loc per program, (or 2.5M loc per year)? Honestly can someone write that many lines of code?
The number might be inflated by a number of code generation tools. For instance various kinds of auto generated ORM logic.
I wouldn't count that in LOC I've written.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?
#29Well, making businesses is stressful. I'm the same age and have no experience of the sort, nor do I really have a portfolio. I may have money, but I'm not convinced I'm better off. I think that kind of experience may be harder to get than the money.
Could be beneficial to do some more things than just computer, though, just for simple well-roundness and insights into how other facets of life work. Your parents' business is probably a big deal for them and they want it to continue, which doesn't mean you absolutely have to but it's going to be hard for them to let it go, especially if it is a rather successful business.
Maybe just take a normal job for a while? It shouldn't be that hard to get one with your portfolio, and it could even help you relocate. Working at a normal job and doing well could give you some confidence. Or contracting could fit you better, perhaps.
Either way, this is far from catastrophic, as the tone in your writing suggests. 26 is very young and it's not like you haven't gained any knowledge or skills during that time.
> Is it now the time to make money? I think I’m way off... I should’ve been making money since I was 14 years old, I had an online game that reached over 100,000 registered users
Such shoulds do not exist in this universe. That sounds like it may have been a missed opportunity (hard to know for sure how that would have went, really), but that's about it. Often such opportunities do not exist at all. That's not the only thing you've missed, our brains can only work so well, we will miss things.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep motivated if nobody supports you?
#30I'm a 27 year old programmer that was in a similar situation as you when I was 25 (although with much less lines of code written). I still struggle a bit with motivation for working on personal projects, but I did eventually get a job as a software developer at a non-tech oriented company. I noticed you applied to several highly selective companies like Google, Facebook, Uber but have you tried looking at less selective companies that might be in other industries? You'd be surprised how many companies hire software devs although it might not be the most interesting technologies (for instance I spend a lot of time on "out of favor" technologies like Java EE) or applications (like banking or medical software). For me at least it helped to actually get a real software job where I could focus my efforts a bit more and learn from working with co-workers.. and being paid to code helps my motivation too :). I also don't live in a city, just a random suburb in Connecticut.
edit: By the way I didn't realize you were in Mexico at first. I only have experience with getting a job in the USA but hopefully what I wrote is at least slightly helpful.