Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

brooker.co.za

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 164 posts

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#41

Post by ehnto »

mym1990 wrote: post #29
jiggawatts wrote: post #14

I started off in the "enjoying collecting gear" quadrant of photography, then I heard an insightful comment by a pro: "If you have $5K, you can either buy one good lens and use it to take photos of the pigeons outside your apartment, or spend that money on a destination holiday and take pictures of amazingly beautiful places with your old lens which still works perfectly fine." I stopped buying new kit and started go…

Somewhat similar, but within a few years of starting photography I had a DSLR and 4-5 lenses. I was also taking lots of pictures but overtime the allure of the big gear wore off as I realized I didn't want to carry it around anymore. Eventually I downsized to a Fujifilm X100F and its been a wonderful experience!

I also downsized camera gear and much, much prefer it. A version of the old saying, the best camera is the one you'll actually take out.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#42

Post by ehnto »

rfrey wrote: post #30

For efficiency, I took up machining, where "Doing" and "Gear" have had a cosmic "merge cells" command applied to them. The only reason to own machining equipment is to USE it... to create tools and fixtures to improve your machining equipment.

Same goes for 3D printing. Unless you have a specific purpose for it, you will probably just print upgrades for your printer. Or useless trinkets.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#43

Post by NegativeLatency »

dehrmann wrote: post #32
gensym wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I switched my sport of choice from cycling to running. In cycling, I kept getting pulled into the gear and tinkering. (It didn't help that I raced cyclocross, so during race season, every Monday was spent cleaning and repairing the result of the previous day's races). TBH, it was fun, but if I spent as much time training as I did tinkering, maybe I would have had some decent race results. With run…

> With running, it's harder to believe that the gear is what's holding me back from performance. Running reminds me of strength training. No one thinks a new barbell is going to add 10% to their one-rep max.

I do some triathlons a couple to times a year, and I find it enjoyable to beat people on a steel frame bike with lower quality / older gear.

Also riding a recumbent really gives you perspective on what a fast bike is. No amount of carbon fiber can beat the more streamlined and comfortable position.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#44

Post by ehnto »

swyx wrote: post #31

i love the framing introduction to this post that is something relatively quotidian but then loops back to something dev career related. > If each person has a finite amount of time to spend either learning or sharing, we'd expect to find a negative correlation between output and experience. This, in turn, lowers the overall quality of content on any given subject my counter would be that this is a U shaped curve, no…

I notice this with YouTube personalities. It takes a lot of effort to run a high quality YouTube channel, and you often see people stop being competitive in their sports and start being youtubers instead. Some of the most well compensated sports people aren't even competing, they just teach on YouTube.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#45

Post by tianqi »

Interesting article. The four quadrants are inspiring. I have thought about this many times, but not as clearly as this.

And I associated it with MBTI. Maybe the different MBTI type seem to be naturally more interested in one of the quadrants. For example, an ESFP would be more expressive, and an ISTP would be more obsessed with equipment and tools. I'm curious if it's these natural differences in personality that cause people to split into four quadrants when come to a hobby? If so, then such a split is inevitable and indiscriminate. Of course, the MBTI is not a perfect science. I'm just use it to help me understand some of the diversity in human personality.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#46

Post by Ma8ee »

dehrmann wrote: post #33
dan-g wrote: post #2

I feel like this is me spinning in circles deciding on “the best language” to use for a side project, never committing, and then inevitably losing momentum. Frameworks and languages are a software engineer’s “kit”, I guess?

This is why you should about companies touting their choice of an exotic language as a perk. Rather than hiring people who want to build a product, they hire people who bikeshed language debates. Choose Java and move on with your life.

I kind of agree with your general point. I just wish the default was something a bit less painful.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#47

Post by freetime2 »

hprotagonist wrote: post #3

There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can “overhaul” it, or you can ride it. On the whole, I am not sure that a man who takes his pleasure overhauling does not have the best of the bargain. He is independent of the weather and the wind; the state of the roads troubles him not. Give him a screw-hammer, a bundle of rags, an oil-can, and something to sit down upon, and he is happy for the day. He…

I have been roasted before on the internet for suggesting that bleeding disc brakes was inconvenient. I think this distinction between riders and overhaulers actually explains a lot!

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#48

Post by finitestateuni »

nescioquid wrote: post #35

An essay, an attempt, a try at something. Promising premise immediately deflated by the four-square (and then the paragraphoid to over-explain the four-square). Fine, let's scan over text because the four-square was over-explained. Groan, "Kit heads" -- that's the agon in this essay? Creators vs. consumers, artists vs. amateurs...or something else? >> Kit heads will often say (or imply) that having the best kit leads…

You’re rude, which is why people aren’t responding.

Marc is a well respected engineer who has worked on multiple foundational services at AWS and probably doesn’t want to go on the record saying he’s sick of rust fans, so he made the essay nominally about photography.

This essay is saying, “Fuck rust. We used java to build S3, DynamoDB, ec2 and everything else the internet runs on. Kitheads, please stop joining aws and asking if you can rewrite in rust. Learn the fundamentals of distributed systems and apply them to customer problems, and the kit won’t matter.”

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#49

Post by bloomingeek »

I know a lot of guys who love fishing and can't seem to understand why I don't. When I was younger, I geared up and fished quite a bit. Once I became successful at the sport I began to realize I wasn't having as much fun as everybody was telling me I should have been having because I was actually catching fish.

Then it dawned on me, what joy I initially had when I started fishing had run it's course. So, I moved on and was relieved of almost forcing myself to have fun at fishing. My hobby thrill now is computers and electronics. After many years I still am having fun and don't see any changes in future, but who knows?

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#50

Post by mongol »

hprotagonist wrote: post #3

There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can “overhaul” it, or you can ride it. On the whole, I am not sure that a man who takes his pleasure overhauling does not have the best of the bargain. He is independent of the weather and the wind; the state of the roads troubles him not. Give him a screw-hammer, a bundle of rags, an oil-can, and something to sit down upon, and he is happy for the day. He…

I thought it was older. Wikipedia says 1900.
Post reply on HN