251–260 of 319 posts
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> Hardly anyone has ever succeeded by pouring it into their jobs This might be the most relevant part of the discussion
It certainly is a conundrum for startups, where after the founders, you're asking someone to commit career suicide by working hard for you.
Very nice. Congrats. Keep on going. I remember that I started with my side project back in 2011. A small app. It made like 1 dollar a month. I spend like 8 hours on it every day and night next to my normal day job. People were thinking I was insane. After 1 year, it made like 1 dollar per day. Then few months later I got 20 dollars in one single day. Another few months later it made for the first time 100 dollars a d…
I love these stories also but I am genuinely curious how you were able to work 8 hours a day on it and also work your regular job. I assume you don't work a full time job, otherwise it seems unhealthy. I put a lot of time into my side projects but that is mostly the whole saturday and sunday, but even then I obviously don't feel so well rested on monday.
Easy!
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Unfortunately for some of us, passions fade. I still love coding, but it's not the kind of thing I'm likely to enjoy spending 16 hours a day doing anymore. I've been there, done that, seen it all (server, web, mobile, firmware, games). It's routine now, but not something I can lose myself into like I used to be able to. I get bored far faster.
It's interesting. I'm still in a state where I enjoy it most of the time and I could certainly spend an entire day coding... But I'm running super low on good ideas. Ideas used to pop into mind all the time, now it's like once a year and I quickly abandon it.
When I first began programming it was like my mind was a nuclear reactor. I LOVED it. New ideas were popping into my head all the time, and solutions to problems were quick.
I'll never forget when I was in the first few months, and learned about POLYMORPHISM. At the time, it utterly blew my mind, and I found so many sweet use cases for it and felt like a GOD of programming.
Fast forward 10 years and yea, it gives me a chuckle to remember those days. I miss how excited my mind was, and how eager to code I was. Now, I'm critical of code, less open to learning new things, and new ideas are few and far between.
It sucks but as far as I can tell, that's just life. We aren't programmed to constantly lose ourselves in any one thing. If we did, our ancestors may not have survived. Our primitive brain found great utility in "moving on" to the next thing, the next opportunity, etc.
Very nice. Congrats. Keep on going. I remember that I started with my side project back in 2011. A small app. It made like 1 dollar a month. I spend like 8 hours on it every day and night next to my normal day job. People were thinking I was insane. After 1 year, it made like 1 dollar per day. Then few months later I got 20 dollars in one single day. Another few months later it made for the first time 100 dollars a d…
One other suggestion - it needs to be something you want yourself. It's hard to be passionate about something you personally don't want.
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This is what real experience sounds like.
I have 20 years+ experience. It doesn't have to be like this. I know exactly what happened. Changing languages and domains every few years can wear you out. If you were lucky enough to pick one language that madw it 20 years you can spend your time deep diving different domains. Bonus if the language becomes unpopular with developers but still need with business. Bonus points for picking a fun language you like. A re…
I would certainly agree that your best shot at maintaining your passion would be to stick with 1 or 2 languages and get really good at them. Constantly context switching does wear on a person.
With that said, there are some caveats...
1) Businesses need to find that language useful and important. In other words, there must be opportunities to make money using that language.
2) The language must support great depth of work. For instance, learning Objective-C or Swift could become dry over the years as you master the iOS SDK. There's a lot there to cover, for sure, but I imagine after 10 years you might arrive at the same endpoint: Somewhat deflated, certainly less passionate.
3) The language must resonate with you. Everybody has a language or a programming style they enjoy. Personally, I love classic, imperative, low level stuff. C, C++, even Java. Not really a big fan - despite years of professional work - of declarative UI, or functional programming.
I'm curious since you have 20 years - what language / domain have you been focussed on? How did it work for you?
Very nice. Congrats. Keep on going. I remember that I started with my side project back in 2011. A small app. It made like 1 dollar a month. I spend like 8 hours on it every day and night next to my normal day job. People were thinking I was insane. After 1 year, it made like 1 dollar per day. Then few months later I got 20 dollars in one single day. Another few months later it made for the first time 100 dollars a d…
Linus of Linus Tech Tips talks about this. His old employer wasn't interested in his YouTube channel because it was raking in somewhere in the neighborhood of $1, but it was 1000% growth over the previous year or something like that.
Growth is growth.
And congrats, your success story is awesome to read. I've got a similar long road ahead of me.
I'm always curious how do people come up with these ideas. I assume that to be in a position to make something like this you need to have a very good understanding of the problem space. As tech people i often feel that while we may have an advantage in being able to execute, finding a problem can be quite tricky if all you know is IT!
thats a self limiting belief. it is not true that "all you know is IT". all of us have interests beyond tech. if that's not enough, all of us have close relatives or friends with problems we can solve. they are representative of people who are like them, all of whom have problems that need solving. make sure you're not merely making excuses for not trying when you say "all you know is IT"
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This is such an ignorant comment. 1) actually paying attention to an advanced academic lecture requires serious mental effort, so by your definition it is work. It is also not useless, unless purely academic work is useless to you 2) I don’t know what kind of experience in academia you have (my guess is not much) but grad school can be very intense in terms of work. Sure you can slack off, but if you want to do well…
No it is not an ignorant comment. 1) If you missed my quotes around "work" it is because some people describe certain tasks as work equivalent to other tasks. The effort of digesting vs. producing material is about 2 orders of magnitudes for me. I took 60 hours of lectures (time spent in class) during one of my semesters of undergrad. 12 hours of lecture everyday. That is completely sustainable because all you have t…
I also don’t believe for a second that a mere mortal can pay attention to lectures or read papers for 12 hours. Personally after 5 hours of lectures I can’t pay attention anymore, and it’s a similar for paper reading. Most people I know are like that, and frankly I don’t believe you can actually attend 60 hours of lectures a week in university given the scheduling constraints.