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Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#381
post #229

I don't like the new way of doing things. Kubernetes, node, react, terraform... Everything is more complicated and also more fragile. I feel like the software world is collectively mad and I'm sitting on the outside asking "wtf is going on?" Or maybe I'm the crazy one.

Less than two days ago lerna left-padded out of being FLOSS and since Babel uses lerna we're having this conversation now: https://github.com/babel/babel/issues/8579#issuecomment-4169... I pine for the times when we could just place a few tags here and there and call it a day.

Whoa, this is awesome. (I mean that half-sarcastically in a "you must go and see, you won't believe it" kind of way.)

I'll cherry-pick these comments, which I think have the best signal/flame ratio:

> ...

> this doesn't seem safe anymore. this stack has too many individuals with no oversight in charge

> i really wish the javascript community would start seeing unnecessary tooling as a vulnerability

> this happens so often in this language

IMO you could totally s/the javascript community/everyone/ here, obviously not for universal values of "everyone" but certainly for many.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing because you're on this site, you might have a professional life and/or hobbies that skew towards the introverted and solitary, or at the very least are predominantly male-dominated. Ultimately you have to find activities that allow you to meet a more diverse group of people, and when doing so, project a general air of confidence and sociability. Keep doing it until it becomes natural, it may take years.…

One interesting gotcha, which people frequently find baffling, is that it's possible to take up hobbies which involve a lot of interaction with members of the opposite sex, but don't lend themselves well to actually getting to know them. I mean this in the sense that if you already struggle with connecting with people, just being around a greater volume of people won't fix that problem. I've been doing salsa somewher…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#383

I have a very wide area of interests, and doing things takes time. But while I'm doing thing 'A', I think about the fact that I'm making no progress on 'B', 'C', ... 'n' and it distracts me both from thinking as deeply as I need to on thing 'A' and the enjoyment I get from getting something done. So I struggle with letting go of the desire to get everything done that I can imagine would be fun and interesting to do.

I struggle with this too.

To combat it, I divide my long term, life changing goals into one or more of three categories: healthy, wealthy, wise. It's an idea taken from Time Ferris' book, Tools of Titans.

If a goal I have doesn't fit into one of those categories, it's not worth my effort and is simply a diversion. If it's a diversion, I only look at over the weekend, when I wind down, to ensure I'm not losing focus or procrastinating throughout the (highly focused, productive) working week.

Hopefully you can find some wisdom or knowledge in my approach and either adopt it or craft your own.

Cheers.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#384
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your caloric intake is dangerously low (assuming you're a dude). That's what's slowing down your metabolism. There's tons of research on this. Also, your goal should be to put on lean mass and reduce your bodyfat percentage (with a goal of keeping it under 15%) - it makes staying in good shape a lot easier.

When my caloric intake goes up, my weight also goes up. Trust me, I keep meticulous data. You don't know what you're talking about.

You have to increase your metabolism somehow. Either through exercise or weightlifting. It won't be easy and it will take time but it's not entirely impossible.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#385

I struggle with imagining the second act of my life. In my first act - my 20s - I got more exciting jobs than I could hope for, started two organizations I am proud of, made friends for life, was popular enough that people knew who I was before I knew who they were. For various reasons, I left this first act - both mentally and geographically. Today I have a family, emotional and financial stability, and job prospect…

While I was reading your comment I was reminded of a professor I had in law school (for some reason...), he was almost 70, but he still had a ridiculous amount of energy. He had grown a law firm that I believe he sold when he was in his 40s? And then he used some of the proceeds to buy some sort of mechanical equipment company which he grew and then sold like a decade later. He taught a bunch of different business law subjects and he got so excited about some of the driest technical stuff.

I really admired him but I couldn't figure out exactly why, other than that he was successful (but at a fairly highly ranked law school, you're completely surrounded by successful people all the time). One day, I realized that it was because he was, even at his age, still SUPER interested in his own life. That was what I was most impressed with. He had kids and whole bunch of grandkids that he obviously loved and he still had a few business concerns on the side in addition to teaching a handful of courses at the law school. A lot of people that age, even very successful ones, are just kind of running out the clock, for lack of a better phrase, just puttering around and playing golf and wishing they were still doing something worthwhile, watching the news obsessively. But this guy just did stuff he thought was interesting and he did it really well.

Anyway, I'm not sure it's as important to be constantly eclipsing your past achievements as it is to be really interested in what you're doing now. I'm sure when my professor plotted out his life, he wouldn't have imagined all the random stuff he'd do, but in retrospect it's a life filled with accomplishment and apparent purpose.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#387
I have a learning disability that I overcome by being methodical towards approaching and solving complex problems. As a result, I require more time over the average person for the simple requirement of being organized before I can move on through a process. This has been a challenge that I'm still learning to overcome. Lastly, I have a difficult time accepting and allowing room for failure which is a necessary outcome or experience in engineering disciplines.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#388

I don't like the new way of doing things. Kubernetes, node, react, terraform... Everything is more complicated and also more fragile. I feel like the software world is collectively mad and I'm sitting on the outside asking "wtf is going on?" Or maybe I'm the crazy one.

This is just some MVP java app with an nginx proxy, elastic-search, and mysql? Why is this running in k8s on aws via Kops in conjunction with a cloudformation template for aurora inside of a VPC? With containers separately built via packer +ansible kicked off via jenkins after each pull request merge? The CI pipeline also kicks off a canary deployment in our UAT environment with a prometheus exporter for monitoring o…

I'd prefer to pretend that some of those names are made up, but I know they're not.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just some MVP java app with an nginx proxy, elastic-search, and mysql? Why is this running in k8s on aws via Kops in conjunction with a cloudformation template for aurora inside of a VPC? With containers separately built via packer +ansible kicked off via jenkins after each pull request merge? The CI pipeline also kicks off a canary deployment in our UAT environment with a prometheus exporter for monitoring o…

I'd prefer to pretend that some of those names are made up, but I know they're not.

DevOops Consultant here, all of those technologies are 100 percent on point and heavily used. Also random fun fact, every time a stack includes CloudFormation, it brings the owner of said stack slightly closer to becoming an alcoholic.

Re: Ask HN: What do you struggle with?

#390
post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to really hate the idea of me living an ordinary life, but I think at some point I realized trying to do extraordinary stuff was stressing me out way too much, and now I’m hard at work being as ordinary as possible. I think my goals have shifted from providing the best life for myself in the future to providing the best life for my child in the future, and I seem to be completely at peace with that.

You seem to be equating "extraordinary" life with "providing the best life for oneself" and an "ordinary" life with "providing the best life for one's child". Is that correct? If so, I don't see why that should be.

It need not be. But almost always is. As your ability to take risks diminish you live an "ordinary" life. To provide stability for your family you almost always take that route. Sure there are exceptions, but those are just that.
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