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Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

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Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#91

Post by fatalerrorx3 »

jeremiep wrote: post #31

Life: dropped the TV subscription, stopped reading newspapers and generally disconnected myself from the mainstream world. Thinking outside the box becomes natural then. Programming: Teaching myself Lisp and Emacs, dropping Agile methodologies, ditching OOP for functional, writing my code as if I'm replaceable and the next guy needs to pick up where I left without any trouble. The last point actually gives me more va…

I love it lol, I'm disconnected and off the grid in so many ways...I do still have TV, but I do not have a facebook account but used to... It may prevent me from getting a job at facebook but that only matters if you're not planning on creating the next big something yourself.

Although don't you think that by reading HN you could end up being part of a "group think" mentality since most of all of us here are involved in IT?

Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#92

Post by itg »

lifehouse67 wrote: post #83

Life: Accepting Jesus as saviour. I have prayed for wisdom and understanding. This has helped me to deal and understand every kind pf situation am facing and also understand people. Programming: Having an understanding of every situation i face.

Are some people seriously downvoting this?

Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#94

Post by moutard »

scottmagdalein wrote: post #71

Life: forgiving my wife after she had an affair. It was hard, but a single mistake doesn't negate the fact that she is a great mom, we are good together and our son deserves a shot at having his dad in the house. Programming: learning by doing instead of by reading. I started learning Rails when I wanted to build PicDigest and the mistakes I've made have helped me learn faster on a broader foundation.

I hope you're posting under a pseudonym. Revealing that one's wife had an affair is no small potatoes.

Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#95

Post by scottmagdalein »

moutard wrote: post #94
scottmagdalein wrote: post #71

Life: forgiving my wife after she had an affair. It was hard, but a single mistake doesn't negate the fact that she is a great mom, we are good together and our son deserves a shot at having his dad in the house. Programming: learning by doing instead of by reading. I started learning Rails when I wanted to build PicDigest and the mistakes I've made have helped me learn faster on a broader foundation.

I hope you're posting under a pseudonym. Revealing that one's wife had an affair is no small potatoes.

Nope. I'm Scott. It's public knowledge. We were separated for eight months as a result of the affair. Everyone who knows us knows the reason for the separation.

Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#96

Post by joshuakarjala »

nphrk wrote: post #38
elorant wrote: post #36

Starting to learn about art (aka going to Museums, art galleries, reading art books). It soothes my soul. By far the most intellectual challenging activity I've ever done.

Could you recommend some introductory books? I've always felt bad not having clue about art.

A great light-handed introduction to Modern Art was produced by the BBC in 1999: This is Modern Art: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoSjRRv6ZrE

A book was also written by Matthew Collings: http://www.amazon.com/This-Modern-Art-Matthew-Collings/dp/18...

Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#97

Post by lumberjack »

Life: (1) Learning to choose the most productive and rewarding options even (for example I could spend a day tinkering on the next ProjectEuler.net problem or I could focus that effort on studying or finishing my latest project). (2) Learning never to cease working. This is subjective but personally I tend to find it hard to start working after a long break but once I get the momentum I can keep it up very well without stress. (3) Opening my mind up to the possibilities. Learning and knowledge are never bad and it's not healthy to be overly sure of yourself.

Programming: (1) Getting into the functional programming mindset. I am not going to completely ditch OOp but there are times when I find functional programming much more intuitive. (2) Getting the basics of algorithms and data structures. This was a long time ago but I remember it affecting my whole perspective of what programming was about. (3) Implementing non-intuitive algorithms to solve hard problems, mostly still considered as research areas. For once the solutions were not "obvious" and a mechanical approach, however complex, was not enough. I started with game theory, and am now trying to get into machine learning and overall I'm finding this experience a very pleasant. (4) Tools wise, discovering the free software "ecosystem", especially GNU/Linux, vim, tmux, tiling wms, learning to use the shell and utilities productively...etc I still have a long way to go but these tools are already paying off.

Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#99

Post by scottmagdalein »

kenjackson wrote: post #57

Life: Having a child. The first six months were mad hard. But he's been what gets me up in the morning now... Literally Programming: Not caring about trends. I've realized I can learn pretty much anything on demand. So I find interesting problems and try to solve them, rather than spend alot of time learning frameworks and languages and hope to apply them. And I've found learning on demand for real problems causes me…

Oh man, having a kid was and is amazing. I used to hate kids, but I can't stand being away from my son now. My wife and I were just talking this morning about having another.

Re: Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made?

#100

Post by vpans »

ajdecon wrote: post #85

Realizing that being happy was more important than achieving an arbitrary goal (a PhD) that was (a) making me miserable, and (b) didn't matter to anyone but me. Getting past that mental block was basically necessary for a lot of amazing things that have happened since, both in work and life.

As someone doing a PhD who only got into it because I didn't know what else to do really... this really hits home. What changes did you make?
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