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Why the Fuck?

raganwald.posterous.com

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Re: Why the Fuck?

#111

Post by frabcus »

clivestaples wrote: post #66
johnbender wrote: post #20

It appears that Diabetes research receives over a billion in funding each year just from the NIH [1][2]. As far as I can tell this doesn't include private funding for cures/treatments. Maybe I'm misinterpreting the data here, but it looks like many people and many millions of dollars are devoted to solving real world problems like the one Scott Hanselman has. [1] General Disease research numbers http://report.nih.gov…

I've had Type 1 diabetes for about 20 years now; it's a little bit of pain in the ass, but I don't get why people bellyache about it so much. Blood sugar meters? Check. Fast-acting insulin? Check. Insulin pumps? Check. Blindness, amputation and kidney failure are no longer guaranteed and I'm grateful as heck for that. For now I'll count my blessings: one of which is the fact that my wife has yet to find me laid out i…

My dad had type 1 diabetes. He had all the problems you mention, and died when I was 11.

Yes, died essentially because the equipment wasn't as good back then (he was born in the late 1930s, died in the 1980s) as it is now.

He also taught me to program when I was 7 (by pairing together on a ZX Spectrum!).

Re: Why the Fuck?

#113

Post by kibwen »

raganwald wrote: post #102

My fellow HNers: It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could work on "big problems." The simple truth is, I'm not smart enough, I don't work hard enough, and I've been napping when opportunity knocked a few times in my life. That being said, sometimes a man in a saloon has a few drinks and yells at the television, telling the coach of some footba…

  > It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in 
  > physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could 
  > work on "big problems."
Seconded, though I could never find the words to express this before. How the fuck is anything that I'm doing right now helping to make the world a better place? How could I even begin to make a difference with my life? Making software is the only thing that I'm marginally proficient at--I'll never start a company that sends a man to Mars or discovers the cure to a horrifying disease. Is making the next $BIG_SOCIAL_NETWORK the best that I have to aspire to?

Re: Why the Fuck?

#115

Post by pekk »

haberman wrote: post #80

In my five years at Google, I am not sure I have met a single engineer who is "trying to figure out how to get Scott Hanselman to click on ads." I have met tons of engineers who work on interesting problems like building models of query patterns to detect spiking queries (Google Trends and Google Hot Trends, all publicly accessible: http://www.google.com/trends/ ), Gmail, Maps/Directions/Traffic, improving (machine)…

That makes sense. And I am sure engineers working on cool problems at Facebook and other large companies can say the same. But there has to be someone thinking about how to get people to click on ads at these companies, because selling ad clicks is their bread and butter. Right?

Re: Why the Fuck?

#116

Post by analog »

comicjk wrote: post #56
oh_sigh wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't saying that any given programmer was the best mind of their generation - just that many of the best minds of these recent generations have been programmers, or involved in technology development in some manner. And what are some of the "pretty good ways to make a good deal more money more predictably" that you're referencing?

Uh, finance? Maybe this isn't as obvious to a non-New Yorker, but that seems to me like the easiest way for a smart person to make money.

I was thinking 'finance' too. I'll add 'oil industry' to that list as well.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#117

Post by waterlesscloud »

A year or two ago most of the responses to a blog like this were along the lines of "But facebook/google/mystartup is trying to change the world."

Now people don't even bother with that line.

That might be progress, actually.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#118

Post by Falling3 »

raganwald wrote: post #102

My fellow HNers: It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could work on "big problems." The simple truth is, I'm not smart enough, I don't work hard enough, and I've been napping when opportunity knocked a few times in my life. That being said, sometimes a man in a saloon has a few drinks and yells at the television, telling the coach of some footba…

Very well said.

And the hypocrisy cry is just an ad hominem fallacy.

Re: Why the Fuck?

#119

Post by sskates »

raganwald wrote: post #102

My fellow HNers: It does depress me, daily, that I do not have a career in physics or chemistry or biology or medicine where I could work on "big problems." The simple truth is, I'm not smart enough, I don't work hard enough, and I've been napping when opportunity knocked a few times in my life. That being said, sometimes a man in a saloon has a few drinks and yells at the television, telling the coach of some footba…

I think people are reacting negatively to your post because it comes off as a criticism of the people who work on the problems you described. If this was not the intended effect, perhaps you should clarify on your blog post, because most readers are interpreting it that way.
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