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Steve Wozniak: When I die these are the moments I want to remember

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Re: Steve Wozniak: When I die these are the moments I want to remember

#81

Post by Clubber »

surfingdino wrote: post #28

He had a driven business partner who helped turn his passion for computers into a multi-billion corporation. He always struck me as immature. Not a great businessman, not a great engineer, more of a hobbyist who got lucky and quickly reached the limits of his knowledge and ability with the original Apple. His myth has greatly outgrown his accomplishments and I have a feeling even he is not comfortable with it, he'd r…

>not a great engineer, more of a hobbyist who got lucky and quickly reached the limits of his knowledge and ability with the original Apple.

I suppose you feel you are a better engineer, no? It's good to see hubris is still alive and well in tech.

Re: Steve Wozniak: When I die these are the moments I want to remember

#82

Post by RealityVoid »

madrox wrote: post #18

I resonate with this a lot. There is a time horizon beyond which the work we do doesn't really matter. No code I wrote five years ago is in production today. A vanishingly small number of products I built are still around. The act of building is a pleasure, but once it's built, its success and impact are pretty much out of my hands. Once I accepted that, I enjoyed the process a lot more, and ironically my output got…

Based on your post, I was curious how long the stuff I write will be around for. I write software for cars, so that means a lot of legacy stuff, I've seen code written by coleagues hang around in the next generations of product for about 10 years. Then you have the life of the vehicles that varies greatly, but at least _some_ of the vehicles will reach 25 years, so I'd expect at least some of the SW I write to linger around for ~35-ish years. Not bad.

A bit unsettling when I think about the varying quality of software though.

Re: Steve Wozniak: When I die these are the moments I want to remember

#83

Post by badpun »

self_awareness wrote: post #58
hhjinks wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think private healthcare would give you a better answer? You accepted the first answer the jniversal healthcare system gave you. Do you have any reason to believe you wouldn't accept that answer if given by a private clinic?

Money + private healthcare gives you options. You can go to different doctors several times a week to get a possibly different diagnosis. It costs money, so having it is a prerequisite. But giving money acts as a motivator here, because doctors want money. In "universal healthcare", you can only go to a doctor once, or two times a year. Because the waiting queues are so long sometimes. And even if you change the doct…

1. What you're describing seems to be a criminally underfunded universal healthcare. In properly funded ones, you aren't limited to one or two visits to a doctor a year.

2. Public healthcare does not prohibit people from using private doctors. People who can afford to go to the private doctor can still do it. Whereas people who can't (or can, but just choose not to), get their lifes saved by the state.

3. Profit motive is deeply flawed in all businesses, but it's especially problematic in something as critical as healthcare. If the doctors are primarily driven by money and not by doing their job properly, they'll fleece their customers. It's not uncommon among dentists (who are largely privatised even across Europe) to make up expensive, unnecessary procedures so that they can buy their next Porsche or a house on the Spanish coast etc.

Re: Steve Wozniak: When I die these are the moments I want to remember

#84

Post by b112 »

perilunar wrote: post #76
b112 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to slap this on your comment, but it seems a good place to put it. We don't know who Jobs or Woz are. At best, even most people in the field are using 3rd or 5th hand information. Quotes from Jobs or Woz don't show even the tiniest real glimpse into who a person is. Stories about persons, especially those with significant media presence, are often tailored, and invariably seen through the optics of the author o…

> We don't know who Jobs or Woz are. This being HN, I reckon there are people here who knew Jobs and Woz personally.

Context counts. And you're actually making my point, about quoting people (where myself, or Jobs or Woz) out of context.

My very next sentence:

At best, even most people in the field are using 3rd or 5th hand information.

See the "most" there? Context counts. The media is far worse than a forum such as this, where at least my words are shown. A reporter will let someone speak for 10 minutes, then quote one sentence completely out of context.

Re: Steve Wozniak: When I die these are the moments I want to remember

#85

Post by self_awareness »

badpun wrote: post #83
self_awareness wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money + private healthcare gives you options. You can go to different doctors several times a week to get a possibly different diagnosis. It costs money, so having it is a prerequisite. But giving money acts as a motivator here, because doctors want money. In "universal healthcare", you can only go to a doctor once, or two times a year. Because the waiting queues are so long sometimes. And even if you change the doct…

1. What you're describing seems to be a criminally underfunded universal healthcare. In properly funded ones, you aren't limited to one or two visits to a doctor a year. 2. Public healthcare does not prohibit people from using private doctors. People who can afford to go to the private doctor can still do it. Whereas people who can't (or can, but just choose not to), get their lifes saved by the state. 3. Profit moti…

1. It's not about some rule that limits the number of visits, it's about that you can't physically do it, because an appointment for urologist made today will get you an appointment on october. Because the queues are so long, people make appointments even if they don't need it, and then don't show up. This makes queues even longer.

2. Yes, public healthcare does not prohibit from using the private sector, fortunately. But the amount of money I pay for the "universal free public healthcare" every month dwarfs my expenses to private sector. It's like I'm paying for a really expensive service, and I can use it twice a year with questionable effects. So not only public healthcare is extremely expensive for me, I need to pay above that to use the private sector. I understand what the money is for -- so that other people can use it that are less fortunate than me. So they kind of rely on my sacrifice, on my life choices, my risk.

3. Maybe it's flawed, but it's the reality. Trying to change that isn't really my fight. If you know how to fix that then by all means go ahead. I need to spend my energy elsewhere.

Re: Steve Wozniak: When I die these are the moments I want to remember

#86

Post by poisonborz »

madrox wrote: post #18

I resonate with this a lot. There is a time horizon beyond which the work we do doesn't really matter. No code I wrote five years ago is in production today. A vanishingly small number of products I built are still around. The act of building is a pleasure, but once it's built, its success and impact are pretty much out of my hands. Once I accepted that, I enjoyed the process a lot more, and ironically my output got…

It is not necessary to be like this. A lot of code is used for decades after it's written, a lot of software is influential in its own right. I'm not even thinking of "Fortran for government" situations, but things like IrfanView, FancyBox javascript module, or Magic Fields Wordpress plugin. Not to speak of niche aoftware tools for specific communities.

Re: Steve Wozniak: When I die these are the moments I want to remember

#87

Post by masfoobar »

Ma8ee wrote: post #80
masfoobar wrote: post #77

"I want to die remembering my pranks, and the fun I had, and funny jokes. I decided that life, for me, was not about accomplishment. It was about happiness." Dont get me wrong -- I genuinely agree with this. However, such comment means little when you have achieved an (unusual) high level of success. You have experienced something the vast majority does not. To be in a position when you will be thankful taking your l…

I haven’t achieved shit and I’m perfectly happy with that. I have a decently (maybe top 10%) paying job, not a career, and am trying to spend as much happy time as I can with my kids. No one, except my family, will remember me. So what?

OK - I am glad you are happy.

Does not change my point, considering I "genuinely agree" with his comment.

Sounds like you just want to shout across the room as if I insulted you or something.

Re: Steve Wozniak: When I die these are the moments I want to remember

#88

Post by jollofricepeas »

madrox wrote: post #18

I resonate with this a lot. There is a time horizon beyond which the work we do doesn't really matter. No code I wrote five years ago is in production today. A vanishingly small number of products I built are still around. The act of building is a pleasure, but once it's built, its success and impact are pretty much out of my hands. Once I accepted that, I enjoyed the process a lot more, and ironically my output got…

I don’t know.

I had a similar perspective on gratitude when I was broke. I wasnt unhappy necessarily.

But when I became “rich” things definitely changed and I don’t even have Woz money.

Being “rich” helps in that you don’t worry about money anymore at least not in the way you did before…

But as Larry David said as soon as “making money” disappears as a worry than something else tends to take its place in your head. A good example would be “losing money” or “trusting others.”

The biggest goal should be becoming debt-free and avoiding consumerism. If you can do this you can reduce money as a worry and focus on gratitude as Woz says.

It can be hard to be happy and find direction when you’re broke.

Re: Steve Wozniak: When I die these are the moments I want to remember

#89

Post by lawn »

jaggederest wrote: post #72
The_Colonel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you suffer from the "arrival fallacy" (discussed in the article), then you will find out only after reaching the top that there's not much hapiness in there. Woz kinda saves you the trouble of many years working towards an illusory goal ("when I acommplish this, everything will be great").

It's only a fallacy for people who actually have arrived. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a useful framework - of course people who have achieved physical and emotional security, esteem in their career and family think that "it's not all about accomplishments", because they have all the accomplishments they need and are just trying to self-actualize. People who aren't in a position to worry about self-actualization be…

> People who aren't in a position to worry about self-actualization because they're trying to stay fed and clothed are unlikely to agree that money doesn't matter that much, if asked on their deathbed at presumably a young age.

Lets be real though, almost everyone who reads HN are in the self-actualization phase, instead of the "how not to starve" phase.

Re: Steve Wozniak: When I die these are the moments I want to remember

#90

Post by Ma8ee »

masfoobar wrote: post #87
Ma8ee wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t achieved shit and I’m perfectly happy with that. I have a decently (maybe top 10%) paying job, not a career, and am trying to spend as much happy time as I can with my kids. No one, except my family, will remember me. So what?

OK - I am glad you are happy. Does not change my point, considering I "genuinely agree" with his comment. Sounds like you just want to shout across the room as if I insulted you or something.

Not at all. I should have chosen my language more carefully. I think we are in general agreement. My only point was that we don’t need any laurels to rest on to be happy with a “small” life.
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