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The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

eieio.games

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Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#111

Post by weinzierl »

> The adults in my life were largely not mad at me. They asked me to knock it off, but also made me a t-shirt. I don’t think I’d be doing what I do now without the encouragement that I received then.

When I started college, the WWW was quite new. I quickly learned to view pages with NCSA Mosaic at the CIP pool, but had no clue at all how all of this worked. I was determined to find out, though.

I read somewhere that you needed a patchy server to make your own pages. So I googled Apache on Altavista, was briefly surprised that the first hit wasn't about the tribe, and carefully followed all the instructions without knowing what I did.

After a while I could see my test page in Mosaic and happily went home. It was late already, I was tired, so I pondered if I should boot my computer and dial-in to find out if I could see my page from home as well.

I did not understand much, but I figured, if I could view the page from home, everyone in the whole world must be able to see it.

This thought left me no peace, so I did it and to my biggest surprise it actually worked![1]

I didn't sleep much that night. Having grown up in a rural place without even a library, this absolutely rocked my world.

About two weeks later I received a notice from the university, that I wasn't allowed to run services on university resources without permission, so I had to shut it down. But apart from that, nothing bad happened, I am very glad they reacted reasonably.

[1] Our computers had public IPs and firewalls were yet to come.

Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#112

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

briansan24 wrote: post #55
adityapurwa wrote: post #29

I don’t know. Reading this made me tear up a bit. I learned software engineering when I was in junior high school. I learned it because I sucked at math, and I want to write programs that solve my homework. Then I continue writing LAN chat, HTTP server, Anti Virus, and a lot more things just because it was fun to do. It was fun, it was challenging, it was rewarding, it was amazing. Now that I’m working, with the endl…

Writing code for the joy of it, those were the days

I’m 62, and write code every day. For free, and I still regularly release apps. Most of my work (not all) is open-source.

I love it.

The secret is that I no longer work for people that destroy my work, treat me badly, or force me to do it in a way that destroys creativity, Quality, and velocity.

Being “frozen out” of the tech industry was painful, but it resulted in the first truly happy work I’ve ever done. I’m doing what I dreamed of doing, back then. Out of necessity, I have a much-reduced scope, but I still get a lot done.

However, all those decades of shipping software, on someone else’s dime, made it possible for me to do things the way that I do it now. It gave me the ability to pay the bills, and the Discipline and habit, to write (and ship) good software.

Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#113

Post by kelnos »

concordDance wrote: post #92
maxbond wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame because the solution is very simple. You have a period of time where people can register interest which is long enough that everyone can do it at their leisure. After this window closes you draw lots. Whoever wins the lottery gets the opportunity to buy (eg by receiving an email with a magic link). If they don't, you draw another person and offer it to them. Otherwise you have an "auction" where instead…

> After this window closes you draw lots. Couldn't someone use a bot to register interest a million times so they have a much higher chance of winning the lot drawing?

IIRC they require that you submit your license plate number when you register for parking, so no, you could only register once per vehicle.

Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#114

Post by HenryBemis »

adityapurwa wrote: post #29

I don’t know. Reading this made me tear up a bit. I learned software engineering when I was in junior high school. I learned it because I sucked at math, and I want to write programs that solve my homework. Then I continue writing LAN chat, HTTP server, Anti Virus, and a lot more things just because it was fun to do. It was fun, it was challenging, it was rewarding, it was amazing. Now that I’m working, with the endl…

(while reading the article..) In the beginning I was like a slow "whoooooaaaah" (mouth 20% open). Then as I scrolled down more and more the 20% became 80%.

A m a z i n g !!!!

So we _can_ have good things! And (most) people _are_ nice and cool and fun!

Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#115

Post by aduermael »

Great story, it added a delightful touch to my breakfast! ^^ Kid developers are free from all the modern (not always in a good way) tooling and routines of the professional world. I'm working on a platform that's kind of an open-source Roblox alternative, and it attracts profiles like theirs. They're so creative and always eager to help, reporting bugs and potentially harmful hacks. Cheers to them!

Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#116

Post by maxbond »

kelnos wrote: post #113
concordDance wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After this window closes you draw lots. Couldn't someone use a bot to register interest a million times so they have a much higher chance of winning the lot drawing?

IIRC they require that you submit your license plate number when you register for parking, so no, you could only register once per vehicle.

And you'll need to address this whichever approach you take. If you can't pin them down to an identity, you'll probably need to take a deposit.

Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#117

Post by wruza »

adityapurwa wrote: post #29

I don’t know. Reading this made me tear up a bit. I learned software engineering when I was in junior high school. I learned it because I sucked at math, and I want to write programs that solve my homework. Then I continue writing LAN chat, HTTP server, Anti Virus, and a lot more things just because it was fun to do. It was fun, it was challenging, it was rewarding, it was amazing. Now that I’m working, with the endl…

That's because we can't grow. You want your easy-to-use distilled library? Too bad, here convoluted hallucinated framework and it's an industry and community standard. Or you can get nothing, ha-ha. Going off the "grid" returns you there in no time.

I've found a personal set of tech that is bearable and static and am building up the swiss army tool kit that is either easy to use, or at least I am familiar with and can steer. It's just for me, no link available. My personal garden of programming. The downside is I can't interact with the "industry" that much, which I considered harmful anyway.

Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#119

Post by wongraf »

adityapurwa wrote: post #29

I don’t know. Reading this made me tear up a bit. I learned software engineering when I was in junior high school. I learned it because I sucked at math, and I want to write programs that solve my homework. Then I continue writing LAN chat, HTTP server, Anti Virus, and a lot more things just because it was fun to do. It was fun, it was challenging, it was rewarding, it was amazing. Now that I’m working, with the endl…

What a beautiful sentence "for an eye washed in silvers, everything looks gray"..

Re: The secret inside One Million Checkboxes

#120

Post by Tepix »

aduermael wrote: post #115

Great story, it added a delightful touch to my breakfast! ^^ Kid developers are free from all the modern (not always in a good way) tooling and routines of the professional world. I'm working on a platform that's kind of an open-source Roblox alternative, and it attracts profiles like theirs. They're so creative and always eager to help, reporting bugs and potentially harmful hacks. Cheers to them!

Agreed, this is my favourite story on HN in a long time!
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