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A Project of One’s Own

paulgraham.com

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Re: A Project of One’s Own

#291

Post by selimthegrim »

foobarian wrote: post #280
selimthegrim wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They tend to cluster in certain metropolitan areas in the Rust Belt (St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cleveland, the latter two of which used to have regular JAT flights in 1980s) that have been hit hard by deindustrialization. Source: I'm from Cleveland, aunt married one of the (many) Slovenian-Americans there

Those cities sound familiar from high school geography. We were told that Pittsburgh was the city with the world second largest Croatian population. Not sure when that would have been true but cool nonetheless.

Certainly when Cathedral of Learning was built at University of Pittsburgh because it features a Yugoslav room

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#292

Post by jokethrowaway »

greghinch wrote: post #240
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…

It’s funny that he wrote this now living in the UK. As an American living in England for the better part of a decade now, it still shocks me how much grades matter in the hiring process for professionals with many years of experience. If you don’t get a first or at least a 2:1 in uni, and/or do poorly on your A-levels, it will hold you back for the rest of your life here

As a developer?

Nobody ever asked me anything about my education.

Maybe you need to find the right workplace. And this is still if you're doing the employee way. You can find other ways to create value in society and make money out of it.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#293

Post by dsjoerg »

chubot wrote: post #109
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…

Yeah I'm pretty sure that Christopher Alexander makes this point in one of his books, maybe A Pattern Language He says that suburbs are configured "wrong", in a way that's antithetical to life. Because the children go to school somewhere nearby, where they are babysat, and the fathers (at that time) commute to work in the city. And the children have no idea what their parents do, and that is alienating. The configura…

Guys, education design IS social design. It's the number one biggest feature of social design. Homeschooling is expensive. The cheapest is no school, kids stay home and hang out in the neighborhood unsupervised while parents are busy. Integrating them into workplaces is expensive, I'd argue the most expensive of all. It's a neat concept, but let's acknowledge that it is a luxury not everyone can afford.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#294

Post by shard »

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…

Expanding on your comment, to get into a good school and make the connections that would help you in the future, good grades are table stakes. And for certain minorities, good grades are assumed and you have to have achievements on top of that to stand out. Sure, there are many paths to success, but just like investing, where the ROI probabilities would be better if you put your money into an index fund as opposed to the state lottery, the ROI probabilities from developing a good work ethic and getting into a good school are better than alternatives. As a parent, you are using your knowledge and experience to make optimization decisions that the child might not be able to envision or foresee. Different children need different kinds of parenting techniques. I don't see how anyone can claim that either project-based parenting or tiger parenting is the be-all and end-all to raising a child.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#295

Post by shard »

kbelder wrote: post #222
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.

You can program Roblox... and Minecraft pretty much _is_ a programming UI.

I've never played either but have seen some videos of it. How much of it is just gaming and how much of it is programming? Is programming required to play the games? How often do the players engage in programming part of it as opposed to the gaming part of it?

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#296

Post by borroka »

"This is why it is a mistake to insist dogmatically on the 'work/life balance'. In fact, the phrase 'work/life' alone embodies an error: it assumes that work and life are distinct."

A beaten horse if there is one. It's not a matter of being dogmatic or seeing the 6 sides of a die. It's that, as PG says between the lines, for most people there is no particular excitement about work. For some it depends on the working conditions, for many it's their personality. I don't look for any particular excitement at work: I'm happy to work a few hours a day for a great paycheck on something I more or less enjoy.

PG, who writes as someone who has had overall a terrific time at work, by focusing only on work misses the larger behavioral point. Let me offer an example: I don't know these days, but looking at PG's photos from a few years ago, I can say with certainty that he was, and I hope for his sake that he is no longer, in not very good physical shape. I've worked out all my life, playing individual and team sports, in the gym alone and with others, and for me exercising and playing sports has overall been tremendous fun and has contributed greatly to who I am, what I've done, and what I'm doing. But I suspect for PG, to go to the gym or sweat or do anything physical has to be unpleasant, if not a nightmare. And I'm fine with that, he'd rather be doing other things, he's probably (I'm speculating here) not particularly athletically gifted, and since he's a very smart person, he can probably come up with 15 different rationalizations as to why he avoids doing enough physical activity to look better, feel better, and greatly reduce his risk of getting sick now and in the future. But, and I don't think I'm exaggerating here, it's likely that he simply doesn't like to exercise and there's no narrative about Olympic medals, great feats of physical endurance, or any dream of looking like a Greek god that would convince him to become a gym rat. Similarly, there is no Apple story that could push me toward a 12-hour workday (or whatever time is being talked about) working for others (assuming I can avoid doing so)..

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#297

Post by shard »

dpogorniy wrote: post #143
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…

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…

My parents were pretty hands-off, and luckily I had a strong interest in academics and was sufficiently self-driven. But I did sink untold number of hours into RPGs when I was young, and I wish my parents had insisted on some music lessons or sports activities. Not for any competitiveness reasons, but just to have various enjoyable skills. Certainly I can take them up at anytime, but compared to the amount of free time and ability to learn new things that I had when I was a kid, and my current hobbies and obligations, picking up something from scratch as opposed to improving something I'm already working on is a challenge.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#298

Post by UncleMeat »

austincheney wrote: post #288
UncleMeat wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mention explicit use of events or the DOM and the common sentiment reminds me of reading history about lynchings in Jim Crow era and sun down towns Mass murder with no judicial punishment resembles people being mean to you at work? Black people were disemboweled and burned alive by gangs of people who did it for fun . This is the most ridiculous comparison I think I have ever seen on this forum.

Jim Crow is a collection of various discriminatory laws and regulations with the intention of institutionalizing racial segregation and discrimination. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws It seems you are confusing Jim Crow for the various riots and racial violence that occurred during that time period. It serves no benefit to falsely intertwine similar but separate historical concepts solely to write some…

He didn't just say "Jim Crow laws" but instead "lynchings in Jim Crow era", which specifically refers to extrajudicial gang murders of black people in america.

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#299

Post by Lammy »

emteycz wrote: post #213
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.

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.

I wonder how many of them also use GitHub and VSCode :)

Re: A Project of One’s Own

#300

Post by Lammy »

borroka wrote: post #296

"This is why it is a mistake to insist dogmatically on the 'work/life balance'. In fact, the phrase 'work/life' alone embodies an error: it assumes that work and life are distinct." A beaten horse if there is one. It's not a matter of being dogmatic or seeing the 6 sides of a die. It's that, as PG says between the lines, for most people there is no particular excitement about work. For some it depends on the working…

> It's that, as PG says between the lines, for most people there is no particular excitement about work.

It's because "most people" earn money by selling their labor out of a finite 24-hour day, but PG is a Venture Capitalist whose capital works 24/7.

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