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A Project of One’s Own

paulgraham.com

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Re: A Project of One’s Own

#191

Post by crispyambulance »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #107
crispyambulance wrote: post #78

Read also a much better essay by a vastly more skilled writer with quite a different view, Bertrand Russell, "In Praise of Idleness." https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/ Russell would say that people of the age to be tech start-up fodder should instead DO NOTHING. It's better for them and for society. > I hope that after reading the following pages the leaders of the YMCA will start a campaign…

Russell had the benefit of being born into the highest classes of English society and succeeding at everything he undertook. I don't think his advice is generally applicable, and he didn't seem to follow it himself.

I think BR's advice is more generally applicable than PG's.

PG has always been about the grind: the enormous work and outsized rewards of tech startups. Very few people are or ever will be successful startup founders using PG's definition of success (which ends with a billion dollars minus whatever the VC's take). I admit it's interesting to read sometimes, but it will not resonate fully unless you're all about the business.

BR is more about the individual, their potential, and the life of the mind. None of his ideas valorize about money and status.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#192

Post by idiotsecant »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #54
andreyk wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I found this weird: "We treat "playing" and "hobbies" as qualitatively different from "work". It's not clear to a kid building a treehouse that there's a direct (though long) route from that to architecture or engineering. " There is not really a route from such playing to engineering except for the general kinds of reasoning involved. It's a cute idea, but does not seem very useful.

I disagree. I'd say there is a pretty direct route. The kid is trying to construct a building. They face great many object-level challenges: what materials to use, where to get them, how to connect them, how to make the structure stable, how to reduce work, etc. Behind each challenge is a field of study for the kid to dabble in, in order to overcome the problem. "Real" architecture and civil engineering, as done by a…

I disagree with your disagreement!

Anyone who has built a personal project and a real-world professionally engineered project knows that the actual tasks involved are wildly different. What you think the correct solution is becomes a tertiary consideration. You need to consider the desires of stakeholders, money people, regulators, and quite a few others. Designing a treehouse for fun and designing a professional solution to a list of sometimes contradictory constraints and optimizations scratch some very different itches.

One is very clearly play and one is very clearly work.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#193

Post by phkahler »

>> There turn out to be two senses in which work can be one's own: 1) that you're doing it voluntarily, rather than merely because someone told you to, and 2) that you're doing it by yourself.

Maybe that's why I sometimes get more involved in helping other people at work than doing my own. Helping someone else is voluntary, while doing my own work is a bit more of an obligation. Helping out is also more transient and not a constant daily thing, so it serves as a break from work even though its still work. So now that I've said all that, it's obvious that people are more motivated to do something they choose vs something they're told to do. Sounds like a discipline problem when phrased that way.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#194

Post by asadlionpk »

idiotsecant wrote: post #184
asadlionpk wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait so how do I 'not-force' my kid into programming these days? Our generation didn't have roblox, youtube and minecraft to distract us much.

Boredom is the mother of curiosity. Take away the dopamine factories and let your kid be bored enough to be interested in learning things.

That's pretty hard to do imo, specially when other kids in school have all kinds of devices and are hooked to youtube 24/7.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#195

Post by yatz »

brhsagain wrote: post #131

Good essay overall, but this footnote in particular stood out to me: > [2] Tiger parents, as parents so often do, are fighting the last war. Grades mattered more in the old days when the route to success was to acquire credentials while ascending some predefined ladder. But it's just as well that their tactics are focused on grades. How awful it would be if they invaded the territory of projects, and thereby gave the…

Very true, I opened up all electronics or electrical or mechanical things at home, from wrist watches to air conditioners just to see how they work - some I could not put back together like my watch, my parents never bought me a wrist watch ever again - haha

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#196

Post by grahamburger »

asadlionpk wrote: post #175
brhsagain wrote: post #131

Good essay overall, but this footnote in particular stood out to me: > [2] Tiger parents, as parents so often do, are fighting the last war. Grades mattered more in the old days when the route to success was to acquire credentials while ascending some predefined ladder. But it's just as well that their tactics are focused on grades. How awful it would be if they invaded the territory of projects, and thereby gave the…

Wait so how do I 'not-force' my kid into programming these days? Our generation didn't have roblox, youtube and minecraft to distract us much.

Our generation had distractions, too. TV, for example. I don't know the direct answer to your question but at least part of it is that 'not-forcing' your kid in to programming means they might just never be in to programming. My oldest is at least kind of in to programming (and also plays a lot of Minecraft and watches a lot of YouTube) my youngest two have shown zero interest in programing, but have interests of their own.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#197

Post by philsnow »

spacedcowboy wrote: post #151
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #10

> It's a bit sad to think of all the high school kids turning their backs on building treehouses and sitting in class dutifully learning about Darwin or Newton to pass some exam, when the work that made Darwin and Newton famous was actually closer in spirit to building treehouses than studying for exams. The current educational system seems to turn off high school kids (anecdotal evidence being my own) from pursuing…

I have a 9-year-old, and he's pretty much into his "iPad time" where he gets 30 minutes per day. He's got a soccer team which demands a certain amount of time per week, but like most kids he has a lot of free time... We did two main things: 1) From the age of about 7, we started him on something called "Beast Academy", which is basically a maths course for kids, using examples in a cartoon-like style. He did simultan…

You mention in the epilogue that you would use plastic sheeting instead of directly waterproofing the 8'x4' plywood sheets -- that would also make the plywood somewhat more re-purposeable.

How loud were all the pumps combined? You mention there was a bounce house, were the pumps quieter than that?

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#198

Post by splithalf »

brhsagain wrote: post #131

Good essay overall, but this footnote in particular stood out to me: > [2] Tiger parents, as parents so often do, are fighting the last war. Grades mattered more in the old days when the route to success was to acquire credentials while ascending some predefined ladder. But it's just as well that their tactics are focused on grades. How awful it would be if they invaded the territory of projects, and thereby gave the…

Immigrant parents, being more likely to be overachiever on average, are very different than normal parents in this regard. I didn’t know anybody growing up who had to drill on school work. Some dads were into sports and would pressure their kids to be the next babe Ruth or oj Simpson, but school work not so much. The education arms race is very much a function of globalization and international competition, which has added a lot of stress to childhood for today’s middle class American adolescent.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#199

Post by grahamburger »

idiotsecant wrote: post #192
TeMPOraL wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. I'd say there is a pretty direct route. The kid is trying to construct a building. They face great many object-level challenges: what materials to use, where to get them, how to connect them, how to make the structure stable, how to reduce work, etc. Behind each challenge is a field of study for the kid to dabble in, in order to overcome the problem. "Real" architecture and civil engineering, as done by a…

I disagree with your disagreement! Anyone who has built a personal project and a real-world professionally engineered project knows that the actual tasks involved are wildly different. What you think the correct solution is becomes a tertiary consideration. You need to consider the desires of stakeholders, money people, regulators, and quite a few others. Designing a treehouse for fun and designing a professional sol…

I mean, that's also true of hacking game mods as a kid vs. actual programming for money as an adult. But many professional programmers got their start by just playing around with computers as a kid.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#200

Post by ruthvik947 »

Needed to read this, thank you Paul! Was on the edge about a summer project -- deterred mostly by high-expectations, the project being likely non-monetisable, and a fear of failure. I see now none of those are valid excuses!
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