41–50 of 97 posts
I'm getting tired of this take. There's such as thing as programming for the joy of programming. You can love a clever algorithm with no "business value". Code can be beautiful and fun to write without being useful, or optimally-useful-per-unit-of-time-invested.
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1. to me, not necessarily you.
2. to you, not me.
Want to work on interesting problems? Build software for doctors' offices and medical groups! Help lawyers crawl out of their low-tech hole! Work on software to revolutionize public classrooms! Why work on interesting tech when you could throw yourself at intractable problems that we never get any closer to solving?
Please please please go into these areas with humility. Having worked for health tech companies in SF for a decade, I've seen so many people come from Google/Facebook/Mozilla/Ticketmaster/eBay to healthcare in order to "disrupt" and "fix" it. Their disruption or fixes are many times illegal, impractical, vaporware, or completely ignore industry standards and so can't speak the same language as all the other tools in the ecosystem. It generally doesn't end well if you don't deeply partner with stakeholders and domain experts.
I'm getting tired of this take. There's such as thing as programming for the joy of programming. You can love a clever algorithm with no "business value". Code can be beautiful and fun to write without being useful, or optimally-useful-per-unit-of-time-invested.
“Work on interesting ideas, or ideas that you are genuinely interested in” is the bolded message.
Spending time painstakingly beautifying your impl of a clever algorithm or, like the author, homegrowing the 8000th iteration of a PM tool with kanban functionality instead of working with k8s/cassandra/ just to have worked with it.
Kinda feel like we all end up doing this naturally most of the time after a few years or so, and they’ve just decided to write it down tbh.
I pickied the OS as a project because Im generally interested in it. Its challenging. I had to learn Bourne shell and C, and a bit of assembly.
I am genuinely interested in the OS because I use it everyday to help solve problems.
Want to work on interesting problems? Build software for doctors' offices and medical groups! Help lawyers crawl out of their low-tech hole! Work on software to revolutionize public classrooms! Why work on interesting tech when you could throw yourself at intractable problems that we never get any closer to solving?
Want to work on interesting problems? Build software for doctors' offices and medical groups! Help lawyers crawl out of their low-tech hole! Work on software to revolutionize public classrooms! Why work on interesting tech when you could throw yourself at intractable problems that we never get any closer to solving?
Man, I sure am glad Curtis and the Wright brothers didn't take this stance after Lord Kelvin claimed "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible" before they proved him wrong less than 20 years later. Or NASA when Lee Deforest claimed flight to the moon was impossible "regardless of all future advances." Or when Einstein claimed ""There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable.…
Want to work on interesting problems? Build software for doctors' offices and medical groups! Help lawyers crawl out of their low-tech hole! Work on software to revolutionize public classrooms! Why work on interesting tech when you could throw yourself at intractable problems that we never get any closer to solving?
> Build software for doctors' offices and medical groups! Please please please go into these areas with humility. Having worked for health tech companies in SF for a decade, I've seen so many people come from Google/Facebook/Mozilla/Ticketmaster/eBay to healthcare in order to "disrupt" and "fix" it. Their disruption or fixes are many times illegal, impractical, vaporware, or completely ignore industry standards and s…
Want to work on interesting problems? Build software for doctors' offices and medical groups! Help lawyers crawl out of their low-tech hole! Work on software to revolutionize public classrooms! Why work on interesting tech when you could throw yourself at intractable problems that we never get any closer to solving?
Development is a nightmare
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Build software for doctors' offices and medical groups! Please please please go into these areas with humility. Having worked for health tech companies in SF for a decade, I've seen so many people come from Google/Facebook/Mozilla/Ticketmaster/eBay to healthcare in order to "disrupt" and "fix" it. Their disruption or fixes are many times illegal, impractical, vaporware, or completely ignore industry standards and s…
I heard some woman with a fake deep voice is on trial now.
Want to work on interesting problems? Build software for doctors' offices and medical groups! Help lawyers crawl out of their low-tech hole! Work on software to revolutionize public classrooms! Why work on interesting tech when you could throw yourself at intractable problems that we never get any closer to solving?
The problem is that advertising or finance companies can outbid public classrooms and students 10000:1. It's the sad reality: in the current system finding ever more sophisticated ways to get people to buy more crap is very profitable, helping underprivileged students succeed is not.