21–30 of 178 posts
Perhaps I’m missing something, but he moves past “learn deeply” as it doesn’t help with breaking in, but then offers “tool master”, and a tool master seems to me like someone that has done a fair bit of learning deeply for a specific thing.
Slightly unrelated: I love that Carmack uses backslash (\) to escape 'EOL' and signify that this will be a thread and not a standalone tweet. Much more programmerly than "1/n" and "Thread".
Slightly unrelated: I love that Carmack uses backslash (\) to escape 'EOL' and signify that this will be a thread and not a standalone tweet. Much more programmerly than "1/n" and "Thread".
Interesting. It's programmerly, but at the same time I can see it catching up with non-devs the way @ and # did.
It's neat how fast a good convention spreads.
Tools change, fundamentals don't. I disagree that you should modify what you should learn in order to start contributing as fast as possible to a team. I think that the advice that he gave was a bad one.
Can anyone elaborate on what Carmack is suggesting here? To specialise in some tool early in your career? Or something else? I don't quite get it. (Or at least I don't get why it would be such a good idea.) Carmack is usually great to listen to, by the way; check out some of his interviews or talks if you haven't before.
I think his argument is fairly simple: 1. Learning (fundamental) stuff deeply is the way to become great. 2. But knowing how stuff works fundamentally at an abstract level (e.g. being able to write your own toy OS) is not directly economically useful (and/or very time consuming to get to that stage). So it won't get you a job. 3. So for starters learn just one thing that people actually use (say git) deeply at a conc…
I just need a relationship, being alone for this many decades is poison... I can learn anything but when the profs at my grad program openly didn't care about me WTF was I supposed to do? How do I meet someone to build a relationship now that buoweapons have made it illegal where I live? WTF AM I SUPPOSSED TO DO WITH MY LIFE'S SENSORY INPUT!?!?!
I noticed some of your other comments, like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23737849. If you're 20-something, just remember that life is pretty much supposed to feel listless. No one really knows what they're doing until they figure out what they want. And figuring out what you want is often very hard.
To be honest, getting career advice from John Carmack is just like getting career advice from a lotto winner, not everyone has the luck/genius.
He's actually giving decent advice which is make yourself a source of knowledge on something within your chosen field.
Most people who are just starting out are not going to create the next amazing thing, but it's within reach for them to become a subject-matter-expert (or at least start that journey) so that they can use that knowledge to help them make things (and in the process support their peers and benefit from knowledge sharing).
I just need a relationship, being alone for this many decades is poison... I can learn anything but when the profs at my grad program openly didn't care about me WTF was I supposed to do? How do I meet someone to build a relationship now that buoweapons have made it illegal where I live? WTF AM I SUPPOSSED TO DO WITH MY LIFE'S SENSORY INPUT!?!?!
Can anyone elaborate on what Carmack is suggesting here? To specialise in some tool early in your career? Or something else? I don't quite get it. (Or at least I don't get why it would be such a good idea.) Carmack is usually great to listen to, by the way; check out some of his interviews or talks if you haven't before.