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The happiest I've ever been

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Re: The happiest I've ever been

#41

Post by lm28469 »

arjie wrote: post #21

Huh, strange. I remember when I was a little 9 year old boy typing in: FD 40 RT 90 FD 40 RT 90 FD 40 RT 90 FD 40 RT 90 To get a square on the screen. And then I was slightly older boy destroying my dad's precious slides for his presentation by formatting the entire disk accidentally while installing Red Hat Linux 8 Psyche from CDs my dad got at the bazaar. I was so excited for Shrike to come out the next year. Then I…

We're retiring later and later, working more per week, purchasing power is going down, quality of goods is going down, life expectancy is decreasing, child mortality is increasing, teenage suicide is increasing, illiteracy is increasing, &c.

But trust us this time we'll do incredible things, the same things but more of it, faster and cheaper, will automatically make things amazing!

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#42

Post by Flere-Imsaho »

antonvs wrote: post #29
fortzi wrote: post #13

OP might love tech, but he sure doesn’t sound like he loved the craft. Describing it as sitting in front of a rectangle, moving all rectangles around is so reductive.

I don’t even know what he’s referring to. What are the rectangles he’s “moving around”? And couldn’t you say the same thing about all writers, for example? The one downside to the Internet and social media is that truly useless takes can get much more traction than they deserve.

CSS boxes!

Honestly the one thing that I'm really looking forward to is no longer having to touch CSS.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#43

Post by RGamma »

arjie wrote: post #21

Huh, strange. I remember when I was a little 9 year old boy typing in: FD 40 RT 90 FD 40 RT 90 FD 40 RT 90 FD 40 RT 90 To get a square on the screen. And then I was slightly older boy destroying my dad's precious slides for his presentation by formatting the entire disk accidentally while installing Red Hat Linux 8 Psyche from CDs my dad got at the bazaar. I was so excited for Shrike to come out the next year. Then I…

And simultaneously we built this huge machine that gives us everything we need to survive on software we don't understand, ready to have it abducted by people who have never done a (positively) productive thing in their lives seemingly any moment now. Monkeys with computers.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#45

Post by jraby3 »

bengale wrote: post #35

In the nicest possible way, this is basically the oldest lesson there is. You weren’t happy because you optimized your feelings or had the right opinions. You were happy because you stopped focusing on yourself and became responsible for other people. Six kids needed you, in the real world, every week. That kind of outward focus kills emptiness fast. Chasing happiness, moral righteousness, or political engagement jus…

Similar for me. Happiest I've ever been was when I was an assistant guide for birthright Israel.

My job was to make sure the 40 kids that came were having a good time. When your job is to make others happy, you become happy.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#46

Post by cataphract »

SoftTalker wrote: post #22
internet2000 wrote: post #11

The moving tiny rectangles framing is interesting, it gets to the heart of why I find all the anti-AI takes so difficult to comprehend. If you never made any effort to connect what you do with what value is added in real life, then it's no wonder better tooling is leaving you lost. Programming (other than code golf) has always been an implementation detail for solving problems IRL.

The programming itself is the reward for people who love doing it. It attracts the sort of detail-oriented thinkers who enjoy the doing and don't frame everything in terms of "value added." AI is attractive to the sorts of people who have their secretary write their Christmas cards.

I think there's a middle ground. I like coming up with solutions to problems (mostly technical problems, may even be very low level ones). But I always found writing the code generally tedious. Basically, once I had a good detailed idea of what the implementation would look like, actually executing the plan would bore me.

AI is still not competent enough to come up with good solutions in many things I work on. So, at least so far, AI has made me happier.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#47

Post by lstodd »

lm28469 wrote: post #41
arjie wrote: post #21

Huh, strange. I remember when I was a little 9 year old boy typing in: FD 40 RT 90 FD 40 RT 90 FD 40 RT 90 FD 40 RT 90 To get a square on the screen. And then I was slightly older boy destroying my dad's precious slides for his presentation by formatting the entire disk accidentally while installing Red Hat Linux 8 Psyche from CDs my dad got at the bazaar. I was so excited for Shrike to come out the next year. Then I…

We're retiring later and later, working more per week, purchasing power is going down, quality of goods is going down, life expectancy is decreasing, child mortality is increasing, teenage suicide is increasing, illiteracy is increasing, &c. But trust us this time we'll do incredible things, the same things but more of it, faster and cheaper, will automatically make things amazing!

[flagged]

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#48

Post by colinnordin »

> But improving each kid’s skill and confidence was the real mission. Instead of my desk job, I’d be asking Clayton how we could make Corey¹ use his body for rebounding. Or how Monte’s soccer skills could be best leveraged. Or how Evan, our best player, could become an on-court leader.

I wonder how software development would be like if we had coaches like this.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#49

Post by shermantanktop »

My boss is a technologist. Adding computers to problems makes him happy. Getting people out of the way makes him happy.

I’m an IC (no direct reports) and I’m a “humanist”. Helping people become better and more skilled makes me happy, in the same way the coach here got joy from the goofball making a great play.

On paper we should probably switch jobs. I have way more technical depth, but the crucial difference is that he is more goal-driven, better at managing upward, and more in tune with political trends.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#50

Post by anamexis »

lstodd wrote: post #47
lm28469 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're retiring later and later, working more per week, purchasing power is going down, quality of goods is going down, life expectancy is decreasing, child mortality is increasing, teenage suicide is increasing, illiteracy is increasing, &c. But trust us this time we'll do incredible things, the same things but more of it, faster and cheaper, will automatically make things amazing!

[flagged]

Retirement is the withdrawal from active working life, i.e. having a job. It is not a US concept.
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