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A Project of One’s Own

paulgraham.com

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Re: A Project of One’s Own

#211

Post by shoto_io »

rossdavidh wrote: post #41

Jared Diamond, in his book "The Day Before Yesterday", talks about how children in Papua New Guinea when he was an anthropologist there would play at making a garden or raising pigs. The kid would have a toy, wooden pig, and then eventually be given a piglet, and then gradually their "play" would become more realistic until it shaded into adult work. My daughter, as a youngun', wanted to play "coffeeshop" where she w…

Very interesting. However, there is also the other camp that says let children stay children as long as possible. I wonder if that's conflicting with your line of thought.

PS: This is one of the best discussion I have ever read on HN. This article is inspiring in many ways.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#212

Post by the_only_law »

celrod wrote: post #208
grahamburger wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

Growing up, what my late father probably wanted most from me is for me to find a project of my own. When I was in high school, he once threatened me with "get a life, or I will get you one". Engines, and especially motorcycles, were always a passion of his. He grew up on a farm, and "was rebuilding tractor engines when the other kids were learning to ride bicycles." He still holds a few land speed records he set with…

I got my start around 11 but kinda squandered it. Spent most of my time reading about random obscure languages/technologies/frameworks I wouldn’t understand until years later (though it’s great because I can hold a conversation on a topic for a little bit while being completely incompetent) and swearing I was going to make games until I realized I couldn’t do asset design worth shit. To this day I don’t think I’ve ever made (graphical) game.

I was around 14 when I first heard about Haskell, I didn’t know anything about it, functional programming, type theory, lambda calculus or anything related. I just knew it was a programming language. Nowadays I see people around that age programming relatively fluently with it.

All the actual programming I ever did as a kid was make terrible websites, console apps that did nothing useful in particular and a few desktop app shells that did the same. I was probably around 17 before I did anything “serious” and even at that point it wasn’t great.

Now I’m not very old, so I’m not sure if it was simply the environment I was in, but I didn’t know that many other people that were into programming when I was a teenager, even with the internet and all I was normally the youngest guy in every chat/forum/site/group I was on. Nowadays though, I know several teenagers that could code circles around me.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#213

Post by emteycz »

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.

Half the junior programmers I worked with during the last 10 years got into programming because of Minecraft with no other motivation at all until much later.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#214

Post by approxim8ion »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #137
truetraveller wrote: post #126

As an aside, PG is a fantastic writer. Truly one of my favorites reads. His writing reminds me of Joel Spolsky's writings in some ways, Joel also being a gifted writer. PG's writing is not pretentious; it employs "easy" words and grammar on purpose. And his writing genuinely provides a tremendous amount of new insight.

Yes, one must wonder at the way he effortlessly expresses his largely half-baked ideas.

Glad someone mentioned it. The man is pretty much unanimously worshipped around here but his writing just doesn't resonate with me. It's not just that I don't agree, I think it's possible to appreciate someone's talent without agreeing with it, but it just doesn't feel particularly thought-provoking or insightful to me. That might say more about me than him but it is how it is.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#215

Post by 99_00 »

sbierwagen wrote: post #210
99_00 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tiger parents A largely Chinese-American concept, the term draws parallels to strict parenting styles ostensibly common to households in East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. (wikipedia) The idea behind tiger parents is that Asians earn more money. And it's true, but not the whole store. But the problem is that average Asian incomes are pulled up by Indian-Americans. Chinese-Americans earn less than many Europea…

>Chinese-Americans earn less than many European-Americans. On the page you link, Chinese-Americans have a lower per-capita income than Americans of Macedonian, Russian, Latvian, British (not otherwise specified), Lithuanian, Slovene, Australian, and Austrian ancestry. They have a higher per-capita income than Americans of Scottish, Czechoslovakian, Croatian, Romanian, Hungarian, Slovak, Belgian, Swiss, Welsh, Danish,…

>I am curious to hear how you define "many".

I define 'many' as a number, such that it is sufficient to disprove the thesis that "Chinese parenting" (if that is even a thing, China is very diverse) results in higher incomes.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#216

Post by jdmoreira »

opportune wrote: post #141
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…

Grades still matter for the vast majority of people who aren’t born into mega rich families. Most people don’t become Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and even those that do benefit greatly from the pedigrees that academic achievement opens up (going to top colleges, working at desirable employers, although grades matter little there unless you’re right out of college). For everyone else grades are still used for trackin…

Grades don't matter. They matter if you really want to follow the beaten path. Sure, go ahead... join McKinsey or something like that.

Being good a learning matters. Being good at executing matters. Being good at communicating matters. Being good at leading matters.

Grades and credentials are just gatekeeping invented by people that are worse than talented people. Grades are for status not for wealth and even much less for creative and fulfilment. It's a losers game. I played it and it was stupid I will never allow my children to play that game.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#217

Post by EarthLaunch »

and0 wrote: post #88
beepbooptheory wrote: post #75

This is really nice and particularly resonant with me. I've spent maybe a good five years obsessed with coding and development in all the ways, but I never went to school for it (I have an MA in philosophy), and have never had a real tech/dev job (I have been a random temp for almost two years now, cook and grubhub before that, and many different jobs before that in kitchens and teaching guitar and such). I dream in…

I can say as someone who fell in love with coding that doing it professionally did not extinguish that fire. Still spent 12 or so hours doing game dev this weekend, and a few hours every night this week. e: To clarify I started learning in 2013ish, became a full-time dev in late 2015. So 6 years later, still finding joy in the day-to-day, but definitely have a special fire for the pipe-dream projects.

That makes me curious what project you're working on, and you might be interested in my own pipe-dream project!

There's a playfulness in doing something seemingly impossible, because succeeding at it simply means having fun playing with it.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#219

Post by zamfi »

jdmoreira wrote: post #216
opportune wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grades still matter for the vast majority of people who aren’t born into mega rich families. Most people don’t become Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and even those that do benefit greatly from the pedigrees that academic achievement opens up (going to top colleges, working at desirable employers, although grades matter little there unless you’re right out of college). For everyone else grades are still used for trackin…

Grades don't matter. They matter if you really want to follow the beaten path. Sure, go ahead... join McKinsey or something like that. Being good a learning matters. Being good at executing matters. Being good at communicating matters. Being good at leading matters. Grades and credentials are just gatekeeping invented by people that are worse than talented people. Grades are for status not for wealth and even much le…

> will never allow my children to play that game

I can see not forcing them to play the game, but "will never allow my children to" always struck me as a weird tone.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#220

Post by thebradbain »

foobarian wrote: post #165
dpogorniy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because parents are afraid that their child won't be competitive enough to have a decent life. If only parents were relaxed, if only they knew that their child can live full life without grinding through exercises. Then child just would pursue what they love, interested (unless it's unaffordable to their social strata). I wonder what we can do today to make this happen sooner. On the side note. There is a grea…

> If only parents were relaxed, if only they knew that their child can live full life without grinding through exercises. Isn't that how young people end up with liberal arts degrees saddled with debt they have little chance of ever repaying? I guess it might be a full life still but I haven't met many people in this position who enjoyed it.

While we’re comparing anecdotal evidence, here’s mine:

Have a liberal arts degree from a small liberal arts college (Most of my peers also have degrees in liberal arts, and most of them are living successful and fulfilling lives, both professionally, socially, and even monetarily; some went into tech and finance, many are not.

I think something important to realize is there’s many paths to success — even the same idea of success that many in tech seem to have (financial security) — and someone who is passionate and talented will find one; following a pre-set college curriculum churning out STEM majors is just one way to get there.

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