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

Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 309 posts

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#131

Post by vbezhenar »

stetrain wrote: post #70
driverdan wrote: post #33

Every time this topic comes up I say the same thing. If you've never worked on a farm and have some kind of romantic idea about it then you shouldn't do this. Farming is hard work. Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have. If you're thinking of doing this and do not have experience go work on a farm for a year before you buy in.

I read someone who retires and "takes up farming" as retiring to a house in a rural location and maintaining a garden and maybe some small quantities of livestock. IE someone who is not depending on the "farm" to be a commercially successful operation or is even attempting to run it as a profitable business. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_farm

30 years ago this garden was the only thing that helped my family and millions other people survive when USSR crashed. 600 square meters planted mostly with potatoes provide enough food for family to survive winter and next summer and even sell something. And it's not that hard work, because people usually had their main work for some tiny money and maintained garden before and after work.

I think that everyone should own some land to feed himself in the event of economy fallout.

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#132

Post by patwolf »

I have some farm land that I lease out to a farmer for hay. Part of me imagines retiring early and living on the land. However, I checked up on it recently while the farmer was out there baling hay. It was 95 degrees and dusty. He told me he was pretty bummed because it was too hot and dry to fertilize earlier this year and his yield wasn't going to be as good as he wanted. Then in the short time I was there, the wheel bearing started acting up on his tractor and he got a flat tire on his rake after the valve stem fell out.

It would take a better person than me to make a living at it.

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#133

Post by odyssey7 »

azhenley wrote: post #19

Just yesterday there was a discussion on taking lower pay work for happiness… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40720121

However, taking less pay for “meaningful” work is frequently an exploitative arrangement.

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#134

Post by ttyprintk »

oopsallmagic wrote: post #86
polairscience wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're both on medicaid because we have decided collectively, as a society, that "ROI" is something we should chase. The mentality that it's the wrong choice because he's not trying to write a money printing piece of software is precisely why we live in the world we do. I admire someone who wants to go out and create something in the physical world. Even if, for insane reasons, America no longer seems to value that.

Concur. I cannot believe we've gotten to the point where the tech elite poopoo one of the last remaining jobs that actually keeps people alive because it doesn't make the stock price go brrrrr. Maybe... maybe some things are worth doing not simply because there's a dollar sign in the result. Let's ponder that this Juneteenth.

This has nothing to do with tech weenies. The enemies of the American farmer are:

- declining reliability of seeds

- increasing variation in climate

- Ron DeSantis, according to Donald Trump

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#135

Post by postexitus »

latentcall wrote: post #75
driverdan wrote: post #33

Every time this topic comes up I say the same thing. If you've never worked on a farm and have some kind of romantic idea about it then you shouldn't do this. Farming is hard work. Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have. If you're thinking of doing this and do not have experience go work on a farm for a year before you buy in.

Farm doesn’t always mean hundreds of acres and millions in loans. My neighbors across the street are farmers and live in a residential neighborhood. They have a quarter acre in the front yard for growing veggies and own a 1 acre plot just outside of town. At some point sitting at a computer becomes unfulfilling and some point some people can’t take it anymore.

They are not farmers. They have a quite serious hobby (and some savings or other income to rely on probably). It's impossible to make a living out of a 1.25 acre of arable land.

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#136

Post by soraminazuki »

bobim wrote: post #47
teddyX wrote: post #26

Farming for fun is probably ok but farming for income sounds like a horrific idea

It pays badly yet it's the most essential bs-devoid job on this planet. That's showing how much our society is twisted.

Unfortunately, farming isn't devoid of BS either. As is the case with many other topics, John Oliver did multiple segments on that as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41vETgarh_8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI78WOW_u-Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za45bT41sXg

Also

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Size_Me_2:_Holy_Chicken

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#137

Post by softwaredoug »

What are the upsides/outcomes for open source project creators? Because it doesn't seem great...

It can help you market yourself (if you have that disposition) for jobs/gigs. But will you keep up interest?

You can try (and probably not succeed) at starting a company around open source. Then all the baggage that comes with maybe needing to switch to a non-open license to monetize it.

You can really put effort to building a large maintainer base / community and get it into a foundation (ie Apache, PSF, etc).

You can ignore it, but if its successful, be nagged and harassed incessantly to merge PRs

Generally these paths are all hard / different... and it seems the stress of dealing with the passive consumers is either a massive headache, or something you need to try to monetize. I wish we as an industry did a better job supporting creators here.

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#138

Post by shagie »

teddyX wrote: post #26

Farming for fun is probably ok but farming for income sounds like a horrific idea

A lot of things "for fun" are probably ok. The difficulty comes when you don't enjoy / tolerate the hard problems that come with doing it for an income.

Programming for fun is great too. Hit a problem that's not something you enjoy? Drop the project and move on.

The "its fun" vs "I don't tolerate these hard problems that come with the skill" is a significant disconnect that people have and one of the things that generates a lot of people starting something (be it a project or a career) and not moving up on it.

http://www.cs.uni.edu/%7Ewallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2018...

> ... Then I went off to college to study architecture... and found that, while I liked many things about the field, I didn't really like to do the grunt work that is part of the architecture student's life, and when the assigned projects got more challenging, I didn't really enjoy working on them.

> But I had enjoyed working on the hard projects I'd encountered in my programing class back in high school. They were challenges I wanted to overcome. I changed my major and dove into college CS courses, which were full of hard problems -- but hard problems that I wanted to solve. I didn't mind being frustrated for an entire semester one year, working in assembly language and JCL, because I wanted to solve the puzzles.

> Maybe this is what people mean when they tell us to "find our passion", but that phrase seems pretty abstract to me. Maybe instead we should encourage people to find the hard problems they like to work on. Which problems do you want to keep working on, even when they turn out to be harder than you expected? Which kinds of frustration do you enjoy, or at least are willing to endure while you figure things out? Answers to these very practical questions might help you find a place where you can build an interesting and rewarding life.

> I realize that "Find your passion" makes for a more compelling motivational poster than "What hard problems do you enjoy working on?" (and even that's a lot better than "What kind of pain are you willing to endure?"), but it might give some people a more realistic way to approach finding their life's work.

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#139

Post by jader201 »

godzillabrennus wrote: post #65
miah_ wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they have saved enough from working in tech that they can grow vegetables for themselves in a very low scale way. Its nice to escape from the career you've had for decades. Sometimes its not even an escape from the career, but the career and the city you've lived in. Moving to the forest and growing some vegetables and raising chickens isn't that difficult. You certainly don't need "millions in equipment". Its…

The woman who ran PR for Chicago Tribune did the same thing with her husband. She now has a small farm in Michigan. She runs a PR agency from the farm. I personally couldn’t do it… I prefer loud noises and bright lights but I lived in Rincon Hill and Times Square at various times…

> I personally couldn’t do it… I prefer loud noises and bright lights

How old are you?

You don’t have to answer, but I’m guessing you’re probably not past 45.

At some point, you start to prefer quiet.

I haven’t lived in a really large city, but have been around noise enough that I’m hoping our next move will distance us from neighbors and highway noise.

And yes, maybe we’ll have a farm animal or two.

Re: Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

#140

Post by linsomniac »

One buddy of mine "retired" and bought a small farm a couple years ago. I think he's most famous for the talk "Stop Writing Classes". Another has had a farm for a long time, while also developing WingIDE. We joked that he should be careful when operating his homemade thresher with his remaining arm. A play on the safety sign "do not look into laser with remaining eye".

As time progresses, I get more and more envious of them both.

Post reply on HN