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Coffee Is Hard

stilldrinking.org

61–70 of 232 posts

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#61

Waiting for a Haskell programmer to explain why this is an artifact of procedural languages and that making coffee should be abstracted as the death of coffee caused by hot water.

Coffee is just a fixpoint of the coffee-maker state transition monad; what's the problem?

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#62
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to sound too much like a hippie, either, but I learned (actually after having a kid as well) that when people talked about enjoying the ride, that's what they were talking about - the tedious stuff. I always assumed it meant travel more and look for adventure, but I have come to understand that 'enjoying the ride' in your life, not always just pursuing some next thing is about enjoying the tedium. Some of my favo…

Are we using the same definition of "tedious"? This is what I get: Tedious: too long, slow, or dull; tiresome or monotonous. "Too" long as in "longer than I'd like." Tiresome. Monotonous. Those sound like the opposite of enjoying the ride to me!

The point is you learn to appreciate the substance of everyday life and it ceases to feel tedious. Perhaps mundanity would have been a better word. This idea, by the way, is called "mindfulness" and is the essence of Buddhism.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#63
post #6

As a geek and a fan of 80s-90s PC games (not just Sierra but also LucasArts adventure games and so on), this was a super entertaining read on its own; but I also enjoyed some of these insights about life in general from it: > Living is mostly a series of repetitive and unrelated tasks. It makes sense that the most tedious things to code are the tedious things that just have to be done. There are no life lessons or gy…

> The hard parts of of life are driving to work, eating properly, flossing, .... I disagree. Those are simple rituals that makes life enjoyable too. For instance, I know that after flossing, I'm good to go to bed. Or I know when I'm driving my car that I won't get interrupted and I can wander with my thoughts.

You say "makes life enjoyable", but I read "Stockholm syndrome". To me, it's a kind of mind hacking that I'm both unable to do and, deep inside, feel is somehow "wrong".

> I know that after flossing, I'm good to go to bed.

I know that when I'm tired and done for the day, I'm good to go to bed. Flossing is a maintenance chore that's needed only because our teeth aren't good enough (and can't be made good enough, yet) to not need it.

> I know when I'm driving my car that I won't get interrupted and I can wander with my thoughts.

If I were in that situation, I'd prefer to stop driving to work (by e.g. going remote, or relocating), but I'd also want to have an uninterrupted time for being with my thoughts anyway, perhaps explicitly scheduled and negotiated with my S.O.

Etc. Now, I'm not really criticizing you as much as I envy you - my life would be happier if I could hack my brain to see the tedium as something worthwhile, instead of doing my best to minimize its amount and impact on my life.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we using the same definition of "tedious"? This is what I get: Tedious: too long, slow, or dull; tiresome or monotonous. "Too" long as in "longer than I'd like." Tiresome. Monotonous. Those sound like the opposite of enjoying the ride to me!

The point is you learn to appreciate the substance of everyday life and it ceases to feel tedious. Perhaps mundanity would have been a better word. This idea, by the way, is called "mindfulness" and is the essence of Buddhism.

I think English translation of Buddhism could use some more distinct words, because "mindfulness" is also a part of "insight meditation", and - as far as I understand - these concepts are rather different from each other.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like JavaScript to me. Yes, these games are usually coded in scripting languages like JS or Python, even back in the day they were programmed in custom scripting languages running on the engines of yore. Finally, yes, these kinds of games are a great way to learn programming because they map very well on to basic control flow constructs (if, else, while) and don't usually require additional computer science…

For python, check out pygame. It's outdated and only works with 2.7, but I think it can be installed with apt on Ubuntu and will teach the basics like rendering loops, frames, etc.

It works with Python 3.7 now, and has for sometime.

`sudo pip install pygame`

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#66
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of sounding hippie, "tedious" and "boring" are emotional reactions to the chores, and not attributable to the chores themselves. We don't have to do that. "Everything in life is miraculous. It rests within the power of each of us to awaken from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfuln…

"But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just ye…

She may also be a deranged and unrepentant child abuser who uses whatever societal approval is thrown her way to justify and escalate her abuse. There’s simply no way to know.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#67
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But most days, if you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently at this fat, dead-eyed, over-made-up lady who just screamed at her kid in the checkout line. Maybe she’s not usually like this. Maybe she’s been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer. Or maybe this very lady is the low-wage clerk at the motor vehicle department, who just ye…

She may also be a deranged and unrepentant child abuser who uses whatever societal approval is thrown her way to justify and escalate her abuse. There’s simply no way to know.

You've missed the point.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hard parts of of life are driving to work, eating properly, flossing, .... I disagree. Those are simple rituals that makes life enjoyable too. For instance, I know that after flossing, I'm good to go to bed. Or I know when I'm driving my car that I won't get interrupted and I can wander with my thoughts.

You say "makes life enjoyable", but I read "Stockholm syndrome". To me, it's a kind of mind hacking that I'm both unable to do and, deep inside, feel is somehow "wrong". > I know that after flossing, I'm good to go to bed. I know that when I'm tired and done for the day, I'm good to go to bed. Flossing is a maintenance chore that's needed only because our teeth aren't good enough (and can't be made good enough, yet)…

A dental technician once asked me what I did for my job, and upon hearing my reply said, "Well, as an engineer, you really should have a better concept of how to floss than you apparently do."

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#69
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to sound too much like a hippie, either, but I learned (actually after having a kid as well) that when people talked about enjoying the ride, that's what they were talking about - the tedious stuff. I always assumed it meant travel more and look for adventure, but I have come to understand that 'enjoying the ride' in your life, not always just pursuing some next thing is about enjoying the tedium. Some of my favo…

Sisyphus may disagree. :) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sisyphus

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Re: Coffee Is Hard

#70
> I like Git commit messages. Used well, I think they’re one of the most powerful tools available to document a codebase over its lifetime.

1000000% agree!

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