Ask HN: What would you spend your time working on if you didn't need money? • Hacker News Board

Health. I'm in lower 40ties and in two and a half years had two surgeries to fix a herniated disc. After the first surgery a part of my recovery were exercises on pilates reformer and it worked wonders. Unfortunately I needed a second surgery and now I'm slowly getting back on the reformer.

My original plan was just to get back to normal and continue living as normal. This recently changed, and I don't want to get back to normal. I want to be healthier than I ever was. I want to be stronger and much more flexible. You don't know what you have until you lose it.

So without much money I'll work on myself by doing pilates and other resistance training, and if I had more money I would probably open up pilates studio so I could share the joy which I'm having.

When you're not healthy, the only thing you want above all is health. If I were asked the same question 3 years ago I would say: riding bikes all day long. This still might be the answer, but long and toned muscles come first.

Re: Ask HN: What would you spend your time working on if you didn't need money?

#104

Post by anonzzzies » Tue, May 28, 2024, 7:30 PM UTC

I have almost always done what I want and that is writing software. I like writing development tools, formal theories and low level stuff (databases, OS, editors).

And, since about two years, I am working with some friends on Common Lisp software again; far more enjoyable than anything else imho. I regret going for some of the new fads in the 90s while I could’ve been working with CL all that time. But he, regrets are useless and I did learn a lot.

Re: Ask HN: What would you spend your time working on if you didn't need money?

#105

Post by ralphc » Tue, May 28, 2024, 7:32 PM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #78

ralphc wrote: post #76

This is me. Fortunate to be able to retire at 55, programming my whole life, I love my career even when particular jobs had their issues. So now I work on projects I want to work on, no commute, no 20-person meetings. I'm currently working with a team that's recreating the Prodigy online service servers in Elixir. Having a blast, and I have my next project already in mind, also in Elixir or some other BEAM language.…

Thanks for sharing. I really look up to people like you as I'd like to semi-retire around 55 too (13 years from now on). I have a question for you: How do you assess your learning ability at 55? Let me explain -- I'd like to pursue studies in some Physics topics when I semi-retire (I can't do that now due to lack of time), but I'm not sure whether my brain is up to the job then. I know you are not studying Physics, b…

For the most part I'm staying near my field of study, programming, programming languages, theory about programming etc. In that way, just about everything I see I can relate to something I've learned before, I'm in true "I've seen it all before" mode at my age. For example the pattern matching and recursion-based "looping" navigation is just like when I went through my Haskell/Ocaml/Common Lisp/Scheme phase in the mid 2000's, so it was easy to pick up. The only new part of it is the actor-based concurrency model.

My foray into Category Theory so far has been reading "The Joy of Abstraction", which is a layman's book to CT. So far what's she's written makes perfect sense and would be mostly obvious to anyone who hangs out on HN. Moving up and down various levels of abstraction, the idea of "functions", as I read this I'm basically thinking it's what I've been doing for the past 40 years, not a big deal. We'll see as I continue in it.

Circling back to the original question, it's hard to assess my learning ability since I'm not venturing out into totally new territory for me.

When you have a job it's hard to fit in as much exercise etc. as you want, it's easier when you're retired. But also when you're retired it's easy to fill the time with other things, errands, as you get older medical appointments, and motivation is a little harder since you don't have deadlines on your projects. Work comes in spurts interlaced with reading, which is important but doesn't move the projects forward.

I do exercise regularly, especially after the heart attack. "Make these changes or you'll die" makes a great motivator.

Re: Ask HN: What would you spend your time working on if you didn't need money?

#106

Post by GenerWork » Tue, May 28, 2024, 7:32 PM UTC

natpalmer1776 wrote: post #71

I would devote my time to building high quality, durable, and energy efficient 3bd 2ba homes in the rural areas surrounding major metropolitan areas, which I would then sell at material cost. Buying my first home (mobile/manufactured) has been a combination of the best and worst thing I've ever done. The house cost nearly 3 times what my grandparents paid about ~30 years ago in the same neighborhood (on the same stre…

I've gotten into a habit of watching homebuilders on YouTube/reading about construction methods (especially with ICF forms), and it's been quite fun. Lots of advancements happening these days.

As for foundation issues, I live in a Gulf Coast state 2 miles from the Gulf as the crow flies, and my crawlspace is so humid that I had to get it encapsulated. I have 2 dehumidifiers, and now that summer is here 1 of them runs 24/7. On the flip side, the deterioration has stopped, but now the joists and subloor are drying and warping (I was warned this would happen, though).

Re: Ask HN: What would you spend your time working on if you didn't need money?

#107

Post by ralphc » Tue, May 28, 2024, 7:34 PM UTC

okdood64 wrote: post #95

Vivtek wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife and I are 57 years old, so I think I can address this. We finally got the younger child through to grad school and paid off all our debt, and now we can devote our time to what we want to do. Mostly, anyway - I'd like to be doing coding for pay, but instead I do technical translation. But in terms of study - academic work - we're free. She's got a PhD in theoretical physics and has finally had the time to sta…

> Write down your daily thoughts. Can you elaborate on this? What sorts of daily thoughts did you write down and how did it help you?

I keep a notebook of ideas I want to pursue later. A lot of times if you don't write them down they'll be forgotten over the years, unless they're of major importance.

Re: Ask HN: What would you spend your time working on if you didn't need money?

#108

Post by Guid_NewGuid » Tue, May 28, 2024, 7:36 PM UTC

In an ideal world I would go back to chemistry.

Since the option in the world we have is working 60 hours sub minimum wage trying to get through a PhD followed by bouncing round on 2 year short term contracts as a postdoc (still barely on minimum wage) while University administrators make your life hell I took the only rational route.

I switched to software and make people's lives and the climate worse for a paycheck that still isn't enough to live where I want to live.

But ideally I'd use my brain to research some of the fundamental challenges we face, battery chemistry, plastic recycling, industrial catalysts, etc, etc.

Re: Ask HN: What would you spend your time working on if you didn't need money?

#109

Post by ralphc » Tue, May 28, 2024, 7:37 PM UTC

anonzzzies wrote: post #104

I have almost always done what I want and that is writing software. I like writing development tools, formal theories and low level stuff (databases, OS, editors). And, since about two years, I am working with some friends on Common Lisp software again; far more enjoyable than anything else imho. I regret going for some of the new fads in the 90s while I could’ve been working with CL all that time. But he, regrets ar…

What do you consider fads of the 90's? We had object-orientation, of course, Java, it was the beginning of XML.

Re: Ask HN: What would you spend your time working on if you didn't need money?

#110

Post by asfarley » Tue, May 28, 2024, 7:40 PM UTC

Try to make some progress on arthritis, cancer and dementia