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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

#821

Post by Nevermark »

jakequade wrote: post #404
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…

> Failure to validate a product before building it? Premature optimization. I largely agree with your comment, minus this. Unless everything after the initial idea for a product is an "optimisation" - which is quite a claim - building something shouldn't be lumped together with optimising it. My point is that it seems like you're attributing more to this idea than is fair.

Its a stretch of the original meaning, but a good one I think.

Building a product before a good indication it is the right thing to build is prematurely optimizing a business.

At any level of a project, it is important to do things in the right order, to avoid wasting unrecoverable time and effort on work that never needed to be done.

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

#822

Post by jv22222 »

Hyper Iteration

This concept changed my life and career in a big way!

I first heard about hyper iteration (my name for it) in a story[1] about Paul MacCready, a guy who built the first human-powered airplane.

He achieved this goal by changing how he attacked the problem. Rather than focusing on the larger goal, he built a machine that enabled him to test new human-powered flight theories on a daily basis. This enabled him to run hundreds of tests. The other teams trying to achieve this goal took 6-12 months for each iteration.

With regard to startups our entire startup journey consists of a loop of asking one single question:

If I do this, will it work?

As we build we ask that one question over and over again:

- Will this new feature help me get more customers?

- Will advertising on Facebook help me make more sales?

- Etc.

The faster we can iterate each answer to that question, the faster we can achieve great things!

So basically, just always think abut any task you have to do and work out is there a faster way to get the answer?

i.e Spend 9 months building a mobile on demand platform to deliver coffee and see if people want the service? Or spend a week printing up business cards with "we deliver coffee" and hand them out in the street. See if anyone calls.

9 months vs 1 week to start learning about that particular product ;)

But really it works in many contexts, just spend some thinking time to find the absolute fastest way to iterate at all times.

[1] https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2861-how-nature-and-naivet-he...

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

#823

Post by Envec83 »

pizzicato wrote: post #352
frosted-flakes wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Agreed. I should have been more precise stating that I adopt both fasting and calorie restriction.

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

#824

Post by Envec83 »

hnick wrote: post #415
Envec83 wrote: post #155

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

Were you a breakfast eater before you started? The thought of food usually makes me queasy before around noon. So I naturally slipped into intermittent fasting before I knew what it was.

Yes, I loved breakfasts and used to eat a lot. But you get used to it.

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

#825

Post by abnry »

hi41 wrote: post #807
abnry wrote: post #384

Focus on the theorem and its proof, not the name of the theorem. My background in mathematics and there is an unhealthy adulation of genius. Granted, praise of genius is warranted, but it becomes too much. One symptom of this is that almost every theorem is named for whoever discovered it. Gauss this or Euler that. Shannon this or Nyquist that. What can happen is you begin to think of mathematics in terms of making a…

Do you how to overcome the need for adulation. I for one constantly seek adulation. For the good of one's career, some say one has to constantly repeat their achievements. Evolutionarily we may do it because some will fall for it and support us thereby enhancing our chances of survival. But, I think I love adulation to the point of being mentally sick.

It is quite possible your career will suffer if you don't value adulation highly. It is a strong motivator to do well. It is sort of necessary to get adulation in order to get promoted.

That said, the costs of valuing adulation are too high and I've observed an even pathological need to seek praise in myself. It wasn't overt praise seeking but it was buried in there.

The way I fight my need for adulation is with my Christian faith. There is a higher purpose and higher goal than success in my life.

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

#826

Post by godDLL »

That's easy.

You're actually tripping all of the time. Except when you're not.

And you know when you're not. But you don't know when you are.

You can stop tripping for a moment, any time you like. I find it easy to do with Wim Hof breathing, but I'm sure there are other ways of getting that. Point is, then you find out that you were tripping. Or you were being led.

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

#827

Post by bananamerica »

dorkwood wrote: post #71
bananamerica wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot fathom how this metaphysics would help me at all. And I’m both religious and a film major/screenwriter.

Maybe the flowery words obscured the message for you. If it helps, I first came across the quote in a blog post by Austin Kleon[0], an author, talking about people who say they have a book in them. "I never feel like I have a book in me. I always feel like there’s a book around me. It’s like I’m a planet and there’s all this space junk orbiting me, and all the junk starts smashing together and forming book chapters.…

That does make sense thank you.

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

#828

Post by bananamerica »

dang wrote: post #118
bananamerica wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot fathom how this metaphysics would help me at all. And I’m both religious and a film major/screenwriter.

It might be more helpful to call it a metaphor. Metaphors can be powerful for reframing one's thinking, dropping limiting assumptions, even reorienting how the body relates to a habitual activity.

Thank you for conveying the power of metaphors. You did that very well. I’m familiar with this line of reasoning. I also happen to be autistic so, while I have no trouble with the semantics, these kinds of metaphors usually have little effect on me.

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

#829

Post by mihirchronicles »

colourgarden wrote: post #646
nstart wrote: post #575

From 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.

I just finished this book and it has a profound impact on me. I have taken detailed notes so I have an easy access to it. https://themihirchronicles.com/bookshelf/how-to-win-friends-...

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

#830

Post by mleonhard »

remmargorp64 wrote: post #336
movedx wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

With many apps, you can completely bypass kubernetes entirely and just use something like elastic beanstalk or heroku for scaling (just by adding more nodes behind a load balancer).

I invested several days setting up my product's backend on Elastic Beanstalk. After several weeks, I learned that Elastic Beanstalk is not reliable.

Then I spent several days learning Kubernetes and gave up when I learned that it is overly complex and mostly undocumented.

Then I wasted a week using Packer to build EC2 AMIs and deploy with terraform and run with supervisord. I learned that Packer is slow and Linux package repositories are unreliable. Both of these things could prevent me from deploying an emergency patch. Also, there are no reliable tools to clean up old AMIs generated by Packer.

Then I spent several weeks learning Docker and migrating my product's backend to that. Docker's APIs and tooling are hard to use but at least they're reliable. And I can run the same binaries in production and on my dev machine.

Throughout this process, I frequently looked at Heroku and then remembered how much they charge. I just can't bring myself to spend $500/mo for their ops automation. Perhaps I'm being penny-wise and pound-foolish.

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