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Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

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21–30 of 92 posts

Re: Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

#21
I want to be content almost all the time.

Professionally, around 1978 I had an epiphany: I realized that I was sometimes very good/lucky at solving ‘show stopper’ type problems at work, and I 99% freed myself from worrying about my job. I started a hard policy of working just 32 hours a week (taking 80% salary) and prioritized learning things that I cared about. I also became more generous in putting energy into helping coworkers; I have had 6 visits this year from old co-workers (I live off the beaten path in Sedona Arizona) so I don’t feel like I am just bragging when I say I have respected coworkers and cared about them.

So really, my life’s work is learning what I want to learn in tech and spirituality (mostly Self Realization Fellowship and also Buddhism).

EDIT: I forgot the ‘big thing’: I love my family and friends.

Re: Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

#23
Explaining how the Curry-Howard square [1] relates to DNNs and AI more broadly.

Not a full time job, but been at it fives years and still going… so that seems the strongest contender so far.

[1] - Alegebra-geometry equivalence commutes with logic-computation equivalence; this provides a map between the world of type statements and the world of diffy-Q networks.

Re: Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

#24
I used to be into a ton of different things, I still find a lot in the world fascinating.

But it's too much. Over time I have been slowly carving out the life I want to live. Cutting out the distractions that are only mildly interesting.

It's down to:

* My family's well-being, which includes myself.

* My music career (composer/songwriter).

* A continual series of actions to keep tipping my work/life balance farther and farther to the "life" side.

* Camping.

Re: Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

#26
post #18

I suspect https://buttplug.io is gonna keep me busy. I’ve already been working in the intimate haptics field for ~18 years and it’s remained interesting the whole time, so no plans on stopping.

Don't you get numb at some point? Sorry, this subject is too funny. :-)

That’s why it’s so fun to keep working on!

Re: Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

#28
my children, first & foremost

technically:

https://htmx.org - bringing hypermedia back as a viable web architecture

https://hyperscript.org - bringing HyperTalk back as a viable scripting language

https://grugbrain.dev - bringing humility back as a viable programming vibe

Re: Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

#30
Raising my kids, and I have 5 of them. I've built some cool software, which has built companies and positively affected the lives of millions of people, but in the end that was just a paycheck.

One kid will be a nurse, another is in engineering school, another seems to be destined to be an artist, and the last two can do almost anything. But even more importantly, they are all kind people (nerdy, but kind). I will take that.

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