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What I Worked On

paulgraham.com

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Re: What I Worked On

#331

Post by Zanni »

xirbeosbwo1234 wrote: post #166
nerdponx wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, really? Electric motors and lithium batteries aren't new either. So much for the EV revolution, nothing to see here.

I assume you're being sarcastic, but there actually isn't anything to see. Plug-in hybrids blow any EV out of the water and will do so the foreseeable future. They're cheaper, lighter, just as efficient on short trips, and much more practical on long trips. Hybrid vehicles are the practical option today. Pure gasoline vehicles are outmoded and EVs are all hype.

And I'll assume you've never driven an EV, because almost everyone who has purchased an EV will never go back to an ICE vehicle. An EV purchase is a ratchet. Hybrids make a lot of sense for some people today, but battery electric vehicles are the inevitable future.

Re: What I Worked On

#332

Post by Aloha »

xapata wrote: post #269
nostrademons wrote: post #60

This is a good essay. It's interesting to contrast it with some of the psychological/self-help literature around being your "true self", where the true self is fluid and amorphous and avoids being rigidly defined. Or with Drew Houston's commmencement address [1] - "That little voice in my head was telling me where to go, and the whole time I was telling it to shut up so I could get back to work. Sometimes that little…

> So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. Equally plausible is that we only write quotations from the people whose dots serendipitously connected.

I mean, they have for all of us at some point.

No, not for great wealth perhaps, but using myself as an example - the fact that I'm in my own apartment across the country from where I grew up, with an engineering job, that pays well enough for me to afford an expensive pocket computer cum telephone to write this on - anyone of those things alone would have blown the mind of 18 year old me - all three of them as one combined train is astonishing in hindsight. If I look at all the just that I've done in the last 20 years, I'm ought to be astonished, I've been stupendously lucky.

Now for a moment, look at all the dots connected to get where we are technologically over the last, 20, 40, 80, 120 years. For example just in communications, In 120 years we went from messages for the average person taking months to span the globe, to a situation where the average person in any country, can phone another average person in most any other country at anytime day or night without difficulty - that alone is astonishing to me. Never mind all the other improvements we've watched blink into existence.

The dots connect for everyone, some folks just get more of them.

Re: What I Worked On

#333

Post by dwd »

visarga wrote: post #264
chrisaycock wrote: post #9

> during the first year of grad school I realized that AI, as practiced at the time, was a hoax. I had a similar realization during grad school about a lot of the popular topics at the time (early 2000s). I even used to call them "the hoaxes of computer science". Things like grid computing or formal methods of software engineering had a lot of resources behind them, but nobody was able to use the results. Instead, ve…

> the hoaxes of computer science Without the benefit of hindsight we can't tell which of these building blocks will become the next paradigm. I think your expectation that progress should be a direct line where every step gets you closer is mistaken. It's often guided by a very subjective feeling of interesting-ness which cannot be formalized.

Sounds a lot like evolution.

Lots of random trying things out in various places and times until one of them sticks.

Re: What I Worked On

#334

Post by it »

"""the low end eats the high end: that it's good to be the "entry level" option, even though that will be less prestigious, because if you're not, someone else will be, and will squash you against the ceiling. Which in turn means that prestige is a danger sign."""

Maybe this is usually true, but I can't help thinking Apple is an exception to this rule. They make high end products, but they sure don't seem to be getting squashed against the ceiling.

Re: What I Worked On

#335

Post by abhinav22 »

deckard1 wrote: post #299
abhinav22 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s so much more difficult these days to get significant success (jobs going away to AI, more competition, many of the low hanging discoveries and technologies being completed - I would love to make billions writing a chat app or simple CRUD database like Facebook!) that most of us are predisposed to focus on the luck part of things and not the hard work element. I agree with you - people are missing the fac…

> I would love to make billions writing a chat app In 1998 I wrote an IRC client for Linux/Gtk+. Really the first graphical app that wasn't Tcl/Tk or Motif based. Even back then people were saying "yet another IRC client", due to the fact that there were dozens of them around. I was often embarrassed to talk about my work because it just felt a bit lame and overdone. But in reality, I wasn't thinking big enough. Sinc…

Thanks for your insight. What do you think is the secret sauce for the success of these companies?

Is it marketing and grabbing mindshare? I hear a lot these days that people discount programming aspects or ideas for a product - they say rather it’s the ecosystem to take an idea and push it to the masses.

Is there a common trend in these examples or do they all have their unique particulars (eg Facebook being borne out of Harvard social network)?

Re: What I Worked On

#336

Post by abhinav22 »

gridspy wrote: post #291
abhinav22 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I would have to agree. It reads like a note to self vs an essay for public consumption

Which of course is how the essay ends. He reveals that it was a note to himself.

Yes, I saw that. However is a disclaimer a saving grace? Particularly for an author who’s other work is very highly polished

Re: What I Worked On

#337

Post by opportune »

abhinav22 wrote: post #195
dang wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we see what we're predisposed to see in these things. When I read the essay, what stood out to me was how long he got by with almost no money. Living on $7 a day etc. If there's privilege here (and if we're using that word in something other than a Twitter putdown sense), it seems to me more more intellectual than financial. pg has clearly always been single-minded about doing what he wanted to do / was inter…

I think it’s so much more difficult these days to get significant success (jobs going away to AI, more competition, many of the low hanging discoveries and technologies being completed - I would love to make billions writing a chat app or simple CRUD database like Facebook!) that most of us are predisposed to focus on the luck part of things and not the hard work element. I agree with you - people are missing the fac…

Even when facebook came out there plenty of other apps like it. Same with Instagram and whatsapp. Same with the myriad delivery companies. The success comes from users rather than a revolutionary idea

Re: What I Worked On

#338

Post by mizzao »

xapata wrote: post #269
nostrademons wrote: post #60

This is a good essay. It's interesting to contrast it with some of the psychological/self-help literature around being your "true self", where the true self is fluid and amorphous and avoids being rigidly defined. Or with Drew Houston's commmencement address [1] - "That little voice in my head was telling me where to go, and the whole time I was telling it to shut up so I could get back to work. Sometimes that little…

> So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. Equally plausible is that we only write quotations from the people whose dots serendipitously connected.

Here's a good argument why the dots will connect eventually as long as you keep doing interesting things. One of my favorite books: https://davidepstein.com/the-range/

Re: What I Worked On

#339

Post by username90 »

deedubaya wrote: post #227

What struck me most about this essay is the privilege required to make it all possible. From educational institution to educational institution changing focus and whimsically studying other fields without much care for how to make a living or how it all would be paid for. Perhaps just omitted from the story because it wasn't relevant or doesn't need explaining. Kids these days sure don't have it so lucky, and if they…

Quotes from the essay:

> I had some money saved from consulting work I'd done in grad school; there was probably enough to last a year if I lived cheaply.

> The good part was that I got paid huge amounts of money, especially by art student standards. In Florence, after paying my part of the rent, my budget for everything else had been $7 a day. Now I was getting paid more than 4 times that every hour, even when I was just sitting in a meeting. By living cheaply I not only managed to save enough to go back to RISD, but also paid off my college loans.

He earned his own money and paid his own bills. You can do that today as an software engineer if you choose to live like in worse conditions than a working class, like he did.

The biggest difference is how quick you could pay off a college loan compared to now.

Re: What I Worked On

#340

Post by meheleventyone »

xapata wrote: post #269
nostrademons wrote: post #60

This is a good essay. It's interesting to contrast it with some of the psychological/self-help literature around being your "true self", where the true self is fluid and amorphous and avoids being rigidly defined. Or with Drew Houston's commmencement address [1] - "That little voice in my head was telling me where to go, and the whole time I was telling it to shut up so I could get back to work. Sometimes that little…

> So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. Equally plausible is that we only write quotations from the people whose dots serendipitously connected.

Yeah we had a very emotional essay this week from Chris Crawford whose life work failed to materialise.
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