Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What I Worked On

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 421 posts

Re: What I Worked On

#351

Post by chubot »

What I love about this is that he went from

AI -> Writing Lisp Books -> First Startup -> Designing Arc -> YC -> Designing Bel (for 4+ years)

That is, he was interested in Lisp before he made a lot of money, and also after he made a lot of money (twice). The money didn't change his interests.

Writing your own Lisp isn't very likely to lead to "concrete" results, but that's the point (or the lesson). Someone trying to do only "practical" things wouldn't have created a valuable startup or YC in the first place.

There are a few commenters here who missed that point, assuming that everyone must be doing things to get rich (because that's likely their own motivation).

Re: What I Worked On

#352

Post by ZephyrBlu »

quacked wrote: post #237
desireco42 wrote: post #130

So a weird thing is happening today. When I was a kid, like Paul, I had to beg my parents to get me a computer ie. spend money on it. Once I got it, I couldn't stop using it and hacking and figuring things out. Kids these days... :) have everything, I made sure my kids have all good equipment, they have good instruction but they are kind of not interested it all. If they do something, this is more to please me, as th…

Another commenter already identified the meat of the problem; you were restricted access to computers, whereas your children are not. Here is an article about that exact conundrum, on the concept of "antagonistic learning": https://medium.com/@ThingMaker/educ-103-antagonistic-learnin... If you DM me, I will be happy to send you a list of similar essays that explore the concept of learning and teaching and why it's do…

What the hell. That antagonistic learning article is amazing!

Even having a peer hold me accountable like he describes in the article would be amazing, let alone a teacher.

Reading that article made me sad that I've never had someone else challenge me like that. I've always had to do it myself.

Re: What I Worked On

#353

Post by visarga »

dwd wrote: post #333
visarga wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yes, it's exactly what I was getting at. It's memetic evolution, it is extreme openendedness at work. Planning is only good when you get close to the solution and you can see the path ahead.

Re: What I Worked On

#355

Post by vxNsr »

breck wrote: post #196
theunixbeard wrote: post #171

Great article, especially the ending sentence cracked me up. pg is such an inspiring person. Walking away from $2M per month at Yahoo. To now most likely being a billionaire from personally funding the YC LLC. And then spending 6 years just painting, coding, writing and raising a family. Living the dream. Sure Elon Musk is a “cool billionaire”, but in my book pg is even cooler.

> $2M per month at Yahoo I had to reread this like 3 times. "per month", "per month"! PG, pay me $100K and I will install some secret video game room somewhere on Yahoo's campus for you to hang out a little longer.

It was all paper money, he made the right call most likely because if he stuck around there’s no saying when he would’ve gotten out and it’s possible he woulda been bitten by the bubble imploding.

Re: What I Worked On

#356

Post by oblio »

alberth wrote: post #38

How does PG recall so much about college. I was a computer science major as well. I made good grades. I went to university similar to PGs. I’m younger than PG and it wouldn’t surprise me if I’ve forgotten that I even took a particular class, let alone recall the professor and certainly don’t recall the small details described by PG. Just curious if I’m the only person who can’t recall as vividly courses as PG can.

It depends on how fondly you look back at that time and if you have academic inclinations/had strong academic inclinations before you went to college (especially if your family has them).

Plus I'd imagine it depends a lot on the intensity of the college studies. I'd imagine folks going to MIT would remember more stuff than people at a random community college.

Besides what the other folks are saying regarding jogging your memory.

Re: What I Worked On

#357

Post by simonebrunozzi »

trwhite wrote: post #143
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #118

> How should I choose what to do? But this long essay does not really answer that.

I thought it was pretty obvious: Work on what you're interested in. You'll work hard on things you care about.

Oh, yes. What I meant was: what is he going to work on next?

Re: What I Worked On

#358

Post by IkmoIkmo »

Aloha wrote: post #332
xapata wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

Now you're talking about technological change and about how we're all living potentially richer and more interesting lives because of it. But that's a separate point to the one being discussed: Jobs was referring to personal life choices and how they work out if you connect the dots looking back.

Point being that there's plenty of people for whom personal life choices didn't see their dots connect looking back, and that we only get quotations from the people who do like Jobs, i.e. his point perhaps isn't universal, but rather only particular to (the lucky) few.

Another poster just commented: meheleventyone 3 hours ago - Yeah we had a very emotional essay this week from Chris Crawford whose life work failed to materialise.

He looked back and found that his dots never connected for the past decades and that 'he blew it'. The fact he now has an iPhone and can make cheap calls to a person in India doesn't change that story.

Re: What I Worked On

#359

Post by hoseja »

benrbray wrote: post #321
oivey wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say, with your voice, “who won the Super Bowl last year?” to a device that fits in your pocket and it responds with its own voice with the correct answer. That’s pretty accessible.

Most of these systems are so far behind any real understanding of your words, though. They behave like Text-to-Speech followed by a Google Search, whether that's how they're implemented or not.

And Google Search is, of course, merely a natural phenomenon that is mined somewhere in Siberia and exploited without anybody truly knowing what's going on.

Re: What I Worked On

#360

Post by oblio »

lovecg wrote: post #328
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…

Have we read the same essay? Like half of the time he’s running on zero or negative dollars in the story. Some people just value different things in life.

Didn't he have his (rather rich) family as a safety net? That's got to cause wonders for your mental health and emotional stability, even at 0 income.
Post reply on HN