Surviving Disillusionment
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Surviving Disillusionment
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Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#2> Develop a routine to keep drudgery away and the romance of technology close
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#3> Develop a routine to keep drudgery away and the romance of technology close
another activity that I found can help is starting a TIL collection similar to the one by @simonw: https://github.com/simonw/til
still early but it is a start: https://github.com/tosh/til
TILs are like little gardens you can visit regularly, great to browse through everything you learned over the years (think skill-trees and backflashes in RPGs)
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#4My family's first computer was an Apple IIGS, and I used to use Apple IIe computers at school. I don't own either model, but I play with an emulator from time to time, and that's enough to remind me of how far we've come. In particular, blind and visually impaired people can use a way larger proportion of programs now than we could with the primitive accessibility solutions available back then.
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#5I struggle with this and I am only two years into my career. I look back on my CS education and miss it so much.
About three months ago, I started a ritual where I would spend 60 minutes before work every morning reading books about the internals of popular software or programming languages, histories of technology, etc. It rekindles my love for computing that brought me to CS in the first place.
Instead of constantly fearing another day of drudgery, I now wake up every morning excited to learn more about something that I know piques my interest. The attitude change has been pretty profound.
Currently reading: The Elements of Programming Style by Kernighan and Plauger (1978)
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#6> Develop a routine to keep drudgery away and the romance of technology close
another activity that I found can help is starting a TIL collection similar to the one by @simonw: https://github.com/simonw/til still early but it is a start: https://github.com/tosh/til TILs are like little gardens you can visit regularly, great to browse through everything you learned over the years (think skill-trees and backflashes in RPGs)
this is a great idea. I've done something similarly for years, but without such a clean and simple format. I'll probably give this a try as well
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#7I struggle with this and I am only two years into my career. I look back on my CS education and miss it so much. About three months ago, I started a ritual where I would spend 60 minutes before work every morning reading books about the internals of popular software or programming languages, histories of technology, etc. It rekindles my love for computing that brought me to CS in the first place. Instead of constantl…
Would you mind sharing some more books from your reading list?
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#8> I've met many engineers with extraordinary talent who decided to stop making software. They wanted to program computers all their lives. They were born for it. After spending six, eight, ten years in the industry, they quit for good. Now they're running breweries and hydroponic farms, with no desire to ever again touch a compiler, let alone get back into the fray.
Are these people who also made a ton of money via RSUs or Stock Options? If so, the answer is clear, right? They simply... don't have to work on things they don't care about. They have the money they need.
Slava mentions doctors later on as a contrasting point, and I think that case is the same. If they became overnight millionaires, lots of them would stop putting up with the daily drudgery.
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#920 years in, I stay because of alimony, not because of heart. This article is sooo spot on. My question is, what can we, the collective, do about it? Do we have to become the leaders we wish we had? Or will we fall into the same traps of illusion? Deep Thoughts for a Monday morning.
Re: Surviving Disillusionment
#10>I've met many engineers with extraordinary talent who decided to stop making software. They wanted to program computers all their lives. They were born for it. After spending six, eight, ten years in the industry, they quit for good. [...] Something had to have gone wrong for them to abandon their first love.
>But sitting at a mandated retrospective or mindlessly gluing APIs together doesn't put me over the moon. It makes me feel the opposite (whatever the opposite of being over the moon is).
I like Slava Akhmechet essays but this theme of disillusionment doesn't resonate with me.
As background, a relevant wikpedia article when thinking of personal change: End-of-history illusion[1]
I used to think I became disillusioned because the industry was "getting worse". But I changed my mind because it's just too convenient that my peak of creative excitement and wonder about technology just happened to coincide with the "good old days".
My opinion changed when the new iPhone came out in 2007 and I noticed I was not excited about it. How can that be? How can I spend all-nighters messing around with less powerful 8-bit and 16-bit toy computers and not also be obsessed with the idea of playing with the new Apple gadget that's 1000x more powerful?!?
I had to dissect this strange contradiction. I finally had to admit that it's because I simply got older. As another extreme example, as a little boy I used to be excited about hopping on escalators and elevators because they were like fun little amusement rides. But now, they're everyday boring. Escalators didn't change; I changed.
I remember being a teen at a loud rock concert and thinking about no old people being there and being confused as "how can anybody ever stop going to concerts?" Well, it turns out I stopped too. I won't blame disillusionment. Instead, I just got bored of it. I still like live music but not enough to go out of my way to buy expensive tickets and deal with the traffic jam to get back home.
I used read lots of fiction. I don't anymore. Fiction author Philip Roth also stopped reading[2] others' fiction when he got older. I'm sure today's fiction is just fine. But my motivation to read it isn't there anymore. I won't blame the book industry and I'm not disillusioned about fiction. I'm just a different person now.
Is it disillusionment or just getting older? There are confounding variables.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-of-history_illusion#:~:tex....
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2011/06/philip-r...