just wanted to point out that according to the top comment on the link to quora you posted (http://www.quora.com/TJ-Holowaychuk-1/How-is-TJ-Holowaychuk-...), it seems that TJ is a hivemind. Are you sure you want to compare yourself to that?
I don't want to be a Real Programmer
61–70 of 90 posts
Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (Most) humans aren't supposed to work 80+ a week. I say most because there are always those superhumans you come across that just seem to be able to do it I don't think they're superhuman, they are people who have no lives and will burn out in a short period of time. I can only feel sorry for them.
This thread seems to assume that there's a clear distinction between 'work' and 'not-work'. That isn't always the case as it's entirely possible that someone can love what they do to the extent that the lines completely blur (yes, that means those people could be exploited for that passion). An example of this is academia where every prof I've met 'works' insane hours but are completely (and happily) absorbed in thei…
This.
Compare it to other things, say for example, musicians.
When a band goes on tour, it could be looked at like they're putting in 168 hours a week. Really though, they're doing maybe 8 hours a week of actually playing in front of people, maybe like 5-15 hours of practice, and that's all the solid "work" they're doing. That's not where the job ends though...100% of their life is their job because they are always potentially writing new material.
Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
There do seem to be a lot of rather "precious" induhviduals coming into the industry these days who seem to easily get obsessed with trivial stuff whilst missing the bigger picture.
coming to the industry? I am working with a bioinformatics team leader who seems to be obsessed with his hipster stack Mongo, Node , Angular, hang on... nope, changed to Tokyo Cabinet, Nope, its Elastic Search this week. Its basically a relational problem we are trying to solve, but because it is moderately big data (will be a few terabytes in the end), we NEED to use NoSQL.
Don't worry, it won't be Node for long either.
Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
This thread seems to assume that there's a clear distinction between 'work' and 'not-work'. That isn't always the case as it's entirely possible that someone can love what they do to the extent that the lines completely blur (yes, that means those people could be exploited for that passion). An example of this is academia where every prof I've met 'works' insane hours but are completely (and happily) absorbed in thei…
The "work is their passion so it's not work" contrarian-ism is certainly not uncommon. But the argument against 80 hours is generally stress-induced health and productivity related. Given, if a person "loves what they do" then the stress part is probably lower, reducing the negative effects of the first. But the other argument is that, after so many hours, returns on effort are reduced, and I don't see a good argumen…
You have to be doing something for all the hours in the week. We don't get stresses out playing tennis or having sex (well...) or going to the movies.
So its got more to do with extended concentration on one task, vs the actual hours? If the work has several tasks (e.g. rehearsing, the gig, songwriting, negotiating) then maybe its not the same as sitting in front of a screen the same time.
Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
A sufficiently high-level static-typed language is similar to Math. Are mathematicians 'just end-users' to someone? In your world of abstractions you are the god.
Maths is a noble pursuit that's been around for millenia. The greatest achievement that a programmer can aspire to is writing/improving/optimising the libraries (linear algebra solvers, numerical routines, etc.) which enable Mathematical advances. On the other hand, Mathematicians are just those people who write blog posts which tell the Web designers which type of graphs to use in the analytics section of their app,…
Are you aware that programming itself is a branch of mathematics? Don't put things on pedestal. "The greatest achievement that a mathematician can aspire to is helping to improve software, for even our minds are software."
Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer
#66I don't want to be a Real Anything.
Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer
#67> If you are anything like me, you want to become as good as TJ.
Who?
If you pick up a guitar because you want to be better than Jimmy Page some day you're going to burn out. You might not even realize that you don't even like playing guitar until years later when it becomes apparent that you're not achieving the success and fame you thought you would.
We're all subconsciously reinforced to believe that with hard work, perseverance, and that hidden spark of special talent in each of us that we can achieve our dreams. This fantasy is the perfect entry way into our brains to implant desires and ambitions. You want to believe you're the hero of your own story because the reality is certainly not preferable.
Don't get caught up in it. Create your own narrative. If programming is only interesting because you want the attention showered on other people then programming is not going to be interesting to you in five, ten years when your fantasy fails to materialize.
Programming will always have it's greats just as any field, industry, or art form. Learn from them. Don't try to be them. Many of them are about as talented, smart, and clueless as you anyway.
Donald Knuth didn't spend half a life-time and counting writing TAoCP just to speak at conferences. That kind of work takes dedication that only an intrinsic love of the craft can produce.
Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "work is their passion so it's not work" contrarian-ism is certainly not uncommon. But the argument against 80 hours is generally stress-induced health and productivity related. Given, if a person "loves what they do" then the stress part is probably lower, reducing the negative effects of the first. But the other argument is that, after so many hours, returns on effort are reduced, and I don't see a good argumen…
You have to be doing something for all the hours in the week. We don't get stresses out playing tennis or having sex (well...) or going to the movies. So its got more to do with extended concentration on one task, vs the actual hours? If the work has several tasks (e.g. rehearsing, the gig, songwriting, negotiating) then maybe its not the same as sitting in front of a screen the same time.
I'd ask the professional tennis player or porn star if their jobs are/would be stressful at 80 hrs per week... but in the spirit of it I can definitely agree.
The multitude of tasks bit is true. Where my BS meter starts to twitch is when it's a developer telling me that they've been hacking 12 hours a day for x years and feel fit as a fiddle. In those instances, I've gotta imagine the quality output vs. time quotient is lower per capita than the average 30-50 hour per week dev.
Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maths is a noble pursuit that's been around for millenia. The greatest achievement that a programmer can aspire to is writing/improving/optimising the libraries (linear algebra solvers, numerical routines, etc.) which enable Mathematical advances. On the other hand, Mathematicians are just those people who write blog posts which tell the Web designers which type of graphs to use in the analytics section of their app,…
Are you aware that programming itself is a branch of mathematics? Don't put things on pedestal. "The greatest achievement that a mathematician can aspire to is helping to improve software, for even our minds are software."
Erm, yes? That was exactly my point, hence my contrast of two completely opposite viewpoints and the claim that it's relative.
Re: I don't want to be a Real Programmer
#70OP: just would like to point out that you might get some weird looks when mentioning your domain name to the portuguese speaking crowd. Visually it looks a lot like "very badalhoco".
Google translate did not return any result. I assume it is some kind of swear word?
I actually laughed when I realized. :)
"Badalhoco" translates to naughty.