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The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

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Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#121

Post by nemo44x »

mnky9800n wrote: post #77
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…

i just decided that i enjoy working on bikes more than i do riding them and i decided that was fine. What i dislike the most is talking to people on reddit about it. if i need a new part that i dont know where to find google will lead me to the forum that will lead me t owhat i need. if i can't find it i can ask on reddit. but i do not want to sit around on forums talking about bikes. what a waste of time. and look a…

You are sitting on a forum talking about not wanting to be on a forum talking about bikes. Very meta.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#122

Post by Mawr »

jwhiles wrote: post #66
Ma8ee wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There's two main groups on hacker news. The people who think Go and Java are the only reasonable languages, and the people who think Rust and TypeScript are the only reasonable languages.

You'd think so, but from what I've seen, the overlap between enjoyers of Go and Java is tiny. The languages may occupy the same niche, but their design philosophies are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#123

Post by xmcqdpt2 »

jiggawatts wrote: post #81
cesaref wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Z9 will be yesterdays tech in a year or two, and you'll be able to pick it up for a fraction of its current price. It'll still perform exactly as well as it does today, but the gear heads will be onto the next new thing.

> in a year or two It probably won't see significant price drops for 5+ years, because the pace of development in the DSLR market is slowing down. There are longer and longer gaps between new significant features, which means the price of used cameras isn't going down as fast as they used to.

Some digital cameras (looking at you, Fujifilm X100v) are now selling above release MSRP even three years after release!

As frustrating as it is, I must say it is kinda nice to finally have one sphere of consumer electronics where you don't have to update all the time!

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#124

Post by hprotagonist »

pjc50 wrote: post #117
rramadass wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, Ha, Ha! Jerome Klapka Jerome ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome_K._Jerome ) is one of my favourite authors. For those folks unfamiliar with his works Project Gutenberg is a great resource https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/173 Start with "Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow" and go from there. Just make sure that you are not eating/drinking while reading his books and have somebody monitoring you in case you…

> Klapka I've known of "Three Men In A Boat" since childhood and it never occurred to me to ask what his middle name was, or that it might be this surprising.

I’d half thought that the K stood for K!

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#125

Post by TrackerFF »

I've played guitar for something like 25 years, and have been active on forums for the same time. I've oscillated between "collecting gear" and "playing guitar" many, many times - not that those are mutually exclusive, at all, but it I feel that it is such a ubiquitous thing in that space, that most everyone that play guitar seriously have found themselves in the same position.

Suddenly you find yourself with too much gear, and you've spent too much time just buying stuff, without putting equal effort into your playing / writing / etc.

Then you speak with the guys that are actually out there playing, and get a refresher to pick up your damn guitar and just play, gear be damned. So you feel very motivated for months...years...and then you're suddenly back collecting stuff, or spending too much time reading about the stuff.

And to be honest, it kind of reminds me of when I started coding. Back then, I had a compiler, a bare-bones text editor, and that was that. I was really productive, creative even. Then I got caught up in the world of tooling, and I spent more time on building my perfect setup, rather than building products. (as much as I'd want to, at least).

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#126

Post by pjc50 »

red_admiral wrote: post #73

On the hobby/gear distinction, I once heard a great interview with Sir Paul McCartney (of Beatles fame). He talked about how someone once asked him what brand of electric guitar strings he used - apparently a point of great debate among the gear nerds in the music business - and he replied "I don't know, silvery looking ones?" or something like that. It blew some minds.

For people with nine hours to spare and an interest in this kind of thing, the Get Back documentary is incredible.

Five minutes of discussing the space, setup etc. Tea break. Hour of playing random riffs and scribbling on bits of paper. Desultory not-quite-argument between John and Paul. Bored Ringo. Friendly banter. Slightly less friendly banter. Then, after hours of faffing around, suddenly there's a reluctant agreement to get back to work - and everyone launches into one of the hits they're supposed to be recording, and suddenly it's the Beatles at their peak.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#127

Post by RHSman2 »

xmcqdpt2 wrote: post #118
RHSman2 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an ex pro photographer (not great as I am an ex!) but the best camera is the one easy to access and use. While my photos don't have the three dimensional quality they used to have, they are in the moment and captured by doing rather than doing photography. iPhone Camera. Incredible.

What really rebooted my photography is buying a high quality (well not even all that high, a used Pixma Pro 200) photo printer. There is something special about holding pictures printed on quality paper. They make great gifts (well if they are good!) They look different than on a screen. I print (good) iphone photos without any retouching or correcting on photo 4x6 and they look great! Doing this without fiddling in…

Ha, the printer killed my love in the end. It just had an end of life. Finished. Meh!! £1500 gone!

But yes, loved printing and seeing the analog reality. Different papers, inks etc. The slow sounds of production.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#128

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

sveme wrote: post #100
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…

But rock climbing doesn't have the gear heads of other hobbies - at least, I've never encountered these. There are definitely people that enjoy the technical aspects of how to best secure yourself with your gear, what knots to use and so on, but otherwise I haven't had many of these discussions. On that aspect, rock climbing and especially bouldering are very similar to running. Don't get me started on trail running,…

I know people with certain shoes for certain climbs. If you’re an outdoor climber there’s plenty of gear to be had and debated, from carabiners to anchoring to assisted (or unassisted) belay

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#129

Post by _ph_ »

Personally, I am firmly in all 4 quadrants of the graph :)

My main hobby is photography. From the minimum viable gear perspective, I had "enough" many years ago. I like taking photos a lot, but I also like the gear perspective. New gear - mostly new lenses - often enough give new angles and inspiration. And I like to discuss gear and techniques. That also contributes to my abilities and also just can be fun, as I am like probably most HN readers quite interested in technology.

Also, at different times in the year and different life situations, the one or the other part of the hobby is more feasible, so it is very nice to be able to follow the same hobby under different circumstances.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#130

Post by boredumb »

RugnirViking wrote: post #72
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?

The best language for a side project is either a) the language you want to learn, the side project is a means towards this end or b) the language you know best, you want the side project to actually be good

I agree with this 100%, every time i've wanted to get into a new tech stack I start a new side project more-or-less as a thinly veiled reason to learn it and hit my head on real world roadblocks within it. If nothing else you can learn beforehand that you'd never want to use it as a daily driver and drift on to the next big thing.
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