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Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

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Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#351

Post by gonzo41 »

movedx wrote: post #176
abetusk wrote: post #137

"Premature optimization is the root of all evil" More and more, I'm realizing this applies more broadly than just for code. Abstraction is a form of optimization and shouldn't be done before the space has been properly explored to know what abstractions should be built. Standardization is a form of optimization and shouldn't be proposed until there's a body of evidence to support what's being standardized. Failure to…

> Build infrastructure without understanding the use case? Premature optimization. Hence my issues with micro services and Kubernetes/containerisation (by default.) I've always hated the fact people simply jump onto these technologies and methodologies as if they're automatically the right solution because everyone is talking about them. What they don't understand is that they're optimisations. You build a monolith a…

Why people start at the K8 end state is twofold, fashion and a lot of younger people don't look at highways and see they started out as either single lane tarmac or dirt roads that were remade in place. There's a lot more talk these days about refactoring complex systems. But its really a job for senior engineers or young folk who have time for it (Like the new grads who complain about being dumped on legacy systems :) ). When you're jumping from framework to framework and shipping features, sitting back and considering things is really tricky, and the inertia to build from scratch but also have 20 years of refactored improvements delivered makes jumping on K8's and the magic that brings seem like a no brainer.

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#352

Post by pizzicato »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #199
Envec83 wrote: post #155

Intermittent fasting. These days I only have one meal a day

How has it affected you? Are you doing it for weight loss, or for other reasons? I had a month off work recently (unrelated to the pandemic), which I spent learning programming. During this time I never ate lunch, only a small breakfast and a normal supper. But now that I'm back at work and I'm on my feet all day, I have to eat, otherwise I get super hungry, lightheaded and generally lethargic. But I've discovered th…

Not the person you replied to, but you might find this comprehensive and plainly worded summary from the NIH interesting: https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/calorie-restriction-and-fasti...

An important caveat to bear in mind is that not all fasting diets entail calorie restriction (though many often do); it is calorie restriction that is linked to reduced inflammation and possible benefits to lifespan.

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#354

Post by admiral33 »

ignoramous wrote: post #292

I am going to cheat a bit and give you three things that have had a lasting impact on me: First is this quote from Lincoln, "I hate that man. I must get to know him better". This has helped me shed biases and prejudices that stop me from liking someone on the first few interactions. Instead of shunning them, I seek to know them better, in the hope that I see past the veil and reach out to the actual human on the othe…

Thank you for that Lincoln quote. I went to a very diverse University (Upstream, Red Team) and one of the hunches I've walked away with is that at the core of prejudice is a missing friend on the other side.

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#355

Post by dmitshur »

For me, the most life-changing idea I've been exposed to continues to be from Bret Victor's¹ 2012 talk titled "Inventing on Principle"². The idea is that in addition to the two well-known paths to live one's life, there is also a third, less well-known path.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bret_Victor

[2] https://vimeo.com/36579366

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#356

Post by arunbahl »

Everything is temporary.

This is a central tenet in a variety of approaches and philosophies, from religions (it's one of the Marks of Existence in Buddhism) to cognitive behavioral therapy — but few ideas have changed my thinking, resilience, self-control, and happiness as much as this one.

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#357

Post by mwfunk »

One thing that’s been super meaningful for me is the notion that if you don’t put something into words, either in speech or in your head or on paper, you don’t know anything about it, even if it’s a feeling or a belief or an intuition deep within you that you’ve held for as long as you can remember.

The act of simply putting a thought into words makes it immediately obvious to you if you really understand it or not, and if not, where your blind spots are.

If the thing you’re concerned with is an unresolved problem or a question, simply articulating the problem or the question can make the solution or the answer obvious. Just going through the process of putting it into words, one way or another, and being sure you’ve settled on the most concise and accurate description of it you can muster, will often make so many things that were hazy obvious, and can reveal to you areas of haziness in your own thinking that you may not have been aware of.

Rubber duck debugging is one result of this. Rubber duck debugging is based on the observation that by the time you’ve explained your bug to someone, often times you figure out your next steps before they even respond. Just articulating your problem in the form of a question asked to someone else will sometimes reveal the answer to you.

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#358

Post by suls »

rtx wrote: post #177
tvanantwerp wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of Sam Harris's guided meditation app. One of the common questions raised in the guided meditations is whether or not you can observe the part of your mind that is generating your thoughts. His suggestion is that you can't--the thoughts come into consciousness on their own; you can observe the thoughts as they come and go, but you can't observe where thoughts come from. Like the sensation of breathing…

Its like we don't have access to all the conscious regions of our brains. Who knows, what evolutionary pressure might have locked us out of there, who know

The other side of the coin being we haven't developed access to it yet. Either way, an interesting perspective, thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life

#359

Post by advertising »

I was raising money and met this zen style investor for lunch to talk about some issues we were having, basically complaining and blaming and things like that, he interrupted me and said -

“Be careful the stories you tell yourself because they will eventually become true”

It hit me that I really was telling these stories of how the company was or where the business was going in a negative light and things were simply becoming more and more negative because of me. So be careful!

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