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25 years of coding, and I'm just beginning

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Re: 25 years of coding, and I'm just beginning

#191

Post by claplouder »

ivanhoe wrote: post #164
claplouder wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure that Jordan Peterson didn't come up with that.

I can't claim that he did or did not, I quoted him simply as I first heard it from him in this form. And it's not really important who come up with the idea first, in some way it is really an obvious thing, but we all forget about it too often. With the rise of Internet we stopped comparing ourselves with people around us locally, instead now you compare yourself with the whole damn planet. Instead of competing with…

You actually said he came up with that, so I corrected you.

Re: 25 years of coding, and I'm just beginning

#192

Post by TeMPOraL »

CM30 wrote: post #161
TeMPOraL wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like this. I very much like this. I feel what you described matches the problem almost perfectly. Modern economy seems to be transmuting all kind of work into labor. In particular, in white-collar work is something that abstracts you almost completely away from reality. You come in, do whatever arbitrary thing you're asked to, and get money for it, which you can exchange to services of the modern society. Any contr…

> so there's almost nothing you can point to and say "I made that". Really? I'd hazard a guess that most of Hacker News could point to the websites and apps they made and say they made that. What else would be on a developer or software engineer's CV? Same with many other white collar jobs. Designers and media creators/artists can easily point out what they've worked on, as can writers and journalists, or scientists…

> What else would be on a developer or software engineer's CV?

Job roles and responsibilities.

> most of Hacker News could point to the websites and apps they made and say they made that.

Maybe I'm particularly bad at it. I list some projects I've made on my site, and I notice that they lean heavily towards my earlier days of programming - they're learning artifacts in various states of completion, and represent a small fraction of code I've written. Ever since joining the job market, I've made things I can't show off because they're internal to the workplace, or internal to internal customers, or simply I've contributed pieces of work all around the stack. Most code I write these days builds either something I don't own, can't present, or is just a small piece of the overall whole.

Re: 25 years of coding, and I'm just beginning

#193

Post by gjm11 »

gjm11 wrote: post #183
ambicapter wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Obvious issue of apple not paid the bee farm but no such issue - all paid and in fact have contract what kind of bees etc. What are you trying to say? This sentence is nonsense.

There's a famous economics paper by a guy called Meade that gives some examples of externalities (i.e., situations where what one person does affects another in ways not represented by market transactions); one example is of a region where some people keep bees and some grow apple trees, and the bees get food from the apple trees and/or the apple trees are pollinated by the bees. The beekeepers' productivity may be a…

Oops! I accidentally the last sentence. It should say something like: "It claims (I haven't checked any of its empirical claims or its theoretical analysis) to find the effects I described in the paragraph above: there are contracts, the market does its thing, and the result is efficient resource allocation."

Re: 25 years of coding, and I'm just beginning

#194

Post by LandR »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #130
ndnxhs wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is dev.to the new quora? I haven't looked too much at it but it didn't seem to be the worst.

I wouldn't say it's a home for frustrated redditors, but having hanged around there for a while, it feels to be a place mostly made of junior webdevs teaching junior webdevs.

Yep.

The blind leading the blind.

But that's most blogs regarding development nowadays, most are garbage advice.

Re: 25 years of coding, and I'm just beginning

#196

Post by collyw »

derangedHorse wrote: post #163
justaguyhere wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, we only feel it worth if we produce something truly outstanding By this metric, most of humanity probably feels it worthless, isn't it? I understand this is HN and people here achieve more than the normal crowd - still, I don't get the obsession over being productive every second, the need to "produce something truly outstanding" etc. Whats wrong with just being happy, taking it easy, spreading happin…

Not really. For some people having a child counts as producing "something truly outstanding." What I believe the quoted commentor was trying to get at was that some people have goals for happiness that are harder to achieve, but also can't be replaced for something else.

>For some people having a child counts as producing "something truly outstanding."

Despite the fact that everyone's parents managed to do it.

Each to their own though.

Re: 25 years of coding, and I'm just beginning

#197

Post by normal_man »

xchaotic wrote: post #135
forinti wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've witnessed how one person who couldn't keep it together harmed a family two generations down the line. Life is hard and if you can give your kids a decent childhood, you've done your bit.

Please don't take that as my personal opinion, just a point for a good argument. If you have a nice family, raised and supported kids well into their adulthood, that is all very nice on a personal level, but globally what have you done? I by no means expect everyone to be the next Henry Ford or Edison, but if you're just living your life, you're just consuming planet's limited resources. Animals have lived like that…

I think we'd be a lot better off if some of the people obsessed with doing something "globally" had instead lived a quiet life at home.

Re: 25 years of coding, and I'm just beginning

#198

Post by xchaotic »

UncleEntity wrote: post #46
jacquesm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing Paul Graham has never restored a beat up car to pristine condition. Your pristine condition car that will fetch you less than the new parts you put in when you sell it at what the market will pay for it. Restoring beat up cars to new state is a losing game unless someone pays you to do the work, except for some rare collectibles, which I am assuming are not your personal beat up car. And even then chance…

...unless you just want to drive an older car instead of buying a new replacement for the old clunker. I've never restored a car to pristine condition but have kept quite a few on the road as daily drivers and they were certainly cheaper than buying a new car every three years or so by a huge margin. My current "clunker" is an '87 Goldwing that should be on the road in perfect driving condition with a few hundred inv…

after having seen a few shows, at one point I was sold on the idea of driving around in a restored, older car. But the truth is, my new, tiny run of the mill car has bluetooth, AC, 10 airbags, great fuel economy and is much more quiet and turns off when idle. Oh and starts reliably - I haven't had a single day of downtime in the 5 years that I own it. So much nicer for daily driving.

Re: 25 years of coding, and I'm just beginning

#200

Post by dechamp »

pugworthy wrote: post #28

Speaking from 40 years of programming (not counting before 18), OP needs to move to a life that's not about just programming. The idea that OP has nothing to show from programming is short sighted, in that it's assuming that all one can or should created in life is code. Do you have stories to tell? Tell them. Do you know more about how to create solutions now? Become a better problem solver. Do you know how to talk…

You're right about this. I do have other hobbies and I have a wonderful family. I think I failed to note that this was in the manor of my portfolio, not my life.
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