open-source software
Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
641–650 of 839 posts
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#642This might be super basic, but... assume positive intent. Your parent is not your enemy. Your teacher is not your enemy. Your boss is not your enemy. The other team at work is not your enemy. The corporation is not your enemy. The other political party is not your enemy. Or, more accurately, YOU are not THEIR enemy. At best, you're an NPC in their game. Many of them probably even want to help you, because you are ano…
> assume positive intent. I feel like this is somewhat related to Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." Maybe the guy driving like an asshole and making a sudden lane change is actually unfamiliar with the area and noticed a bit late that their lane ends or is becoming an exit/turn-only lane.
Sometimes I have the feeling that, at the very extreme ends of each spectrum, stupidity and malice converge and become indistinguishable.
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#643No one is thinking about you. That stupid thing you said in the meeting, the thing you did in middle school, that pimple on your face that feels huge. It's entirely in our mind and everyone else is too focused on themselves to ever see or think about the silly things you're embarassed about.
>No one is thinking about you
That hurts
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#644Favor interrogative-led questions over leading questions. A leading question attempts to get the listener to agree or disagree with a premise you feed to them. An interrogative-led question often begins with the words: who; where; what; when; why. Imagine the responses to these two questions: - "Did you like the movie?" (Leading) - "What did you think about the movie?" (Interrogative-led) How do each of these questio…
This is well said. This reminds me of this wonderful dialogue from `Yes, Prime Minister`:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#645"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…
This is good when you have infinite time. The converse is putting an end date on all of your tasks.
Building a body of evidence to support a standard, but never building the standard because there's always more to do and everything has decayed into a mess of different forks by the time the deadline appears.
Spending time to investigate the use case and requirements change. You're further down the road with no infrastructure to show for it, a changing deadline will take you out.
Building tools as you need them works fine if you have an infinite project.
Planning work with a limited time-frame means you are required to 'prematurely optimize' everything. With perfect understanding you don't hit those problems. You're trading a lack of understanding that comes from revelation and analysis with spending time on process to compensate. Neither understanding or spending time are perfect, it's unsolvable, they are separate categories.
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#646From my father: No matter how correct you are, you won't get anywhere by making the other person feel stupid. He gave me this after we went together to a conference on communication and I found the presenter to be making some rather doubtful statements. I asked questions and tried to break the presenter in the QnA session and when I didn't get what I wanted, I left. I was 15 at the time. So, I forgive myself but stil…
It's been a few years since I read it but one of the early topics in How To Win Friends And Influence People is on a similar track to this:
You can't make people do something. They have to want to do it (unless you're the big boss ruling through fear).
I've found it's much more productive to present information or an argument so that the other party is not made to feel stupid and is willing to accept it.
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#647Favor interrogative-led questions over leading questions. A leading question attempts to get the listener to agree or disagree with a premise you feed to them. An interrogative-led question often begins with the words: who; where; what; when; why. Imagine the responses to these two questions: - "Did you like the movie?" (Leading) - "What did you think about the movie?" (Interrogative-led) How do each of these questio…
I hear suggestions like this occasionally, and I don't get it. Apparently sentences like "Did you like the movie?", which sound to me like perfectly neutral questions, actually have a slant. Which way is this question leading me to answer? How can I tell? "Yes" and "No" seem equally acceptable answers here. I don't see how either one would "displease the asker", without knowing more about the situation.
"Did you like the movie?"
"Did you hate the movie?"
The idea is that people are more comfortable answering yes to a yes/no question.
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#648"Let's have a child!"
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#649From my father: No matter how correct you are, you won't get anywhere by making the other person feel stupid. He gave me this after we went together to a conference on communication and I found the presenter to be making some rather doubtful statements. I asked questions and tried to break the presenter in the QnA session and when I didn't get what I wanted, I left. I was 15 at the time. So, I forgive myself but stil…
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
— Maya Angelou
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#650Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The master has failed more times than the beginner has even attempted."
"A beginner practices until they get it right, a master practices until they can't get it wrong."
Although there is a sort of dual "… until they can make their errors beautiful" or something. If you're good enough, it doesn't matter if you make mistakes, because you can turn those mistakes into good things just as quickly as you could have constructed the original correctly.