I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee • Hacker News Board

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#11

Post by wfjackson » Fri, May 16, 2014, 1:22 PM UTC

Edit: He seems to have a lot of interest and worked a lot on good documentation, which is the bane of the typical OSS project. Why doesn't Red Hat/Google etc. throw some money at him to write docs for underdocumented OSS stuff? Sounds like win win for all. It's hard to find really smart developers that are interested in writing documentation.[End edit]

If you don't really know him, his LinkedIn profile shows more details about his work.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/xahlee

Xah Lee's Summary

Full stack web site development. Heavy backend experience + unix sys adimn. Seek startupish, small team engineers environment.

Accomplishment highlights:

• Autodidact. High school dropout. No degree. • Taught graduate math students at National Center for Theoretical Sciences, Taiwan. • Invited speaker to Geometry And Visualization workshop, Tokyo Metropolitan University. • Work cited in US Patent. • Well-known open source contributor in emacs and LISP communities. • Expert in: JavaScript, Perl, Python, PHP, Emacs Lisp, Mathematica, MyLinux, SQL, Second Life Linden Scripting Language. Each with at least ten thousand lines of code. (working knowledge Java)

Specialties: • Design, code, entire system. Understand language, protocols, raw. Do not depends on frameworks/libs when unnecessary.

Portforlio:

• Xah's JavaScript Tutorial 〔 http://xahlee.info/js/js.html 〕 • Xah's {Python, Perl, Ruby} Tutorial 〔 http://xahlee.info/perl-python/index.html 〕 • Xah Emacs Lisp Tutorial 〔 http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/elisp.html 〕 • Xah's Java Tutorial 〔 http://xahlee.info/java-a-day/java.html 〕 • Xah Linux Tutorial 〔 http://xahlee.info/linux/linux_index.html 〕 • Xah's HTML5 Tutorial 〔 http://xahlee.info/js/index.html 〕 • Xah's CSS53 Tutorial 〔 http://xahlee.info/js/css_index.html 〕 • Programing Language Design 〔 http://xahlee.info/comp/comp_lang.html 〕

Xah Lee's Experience

Author and Webmaster XahLee.info January 2007 – Present (7 years 5 months) San Francisco Bay Area

Creator and author of award-winning website http://xahlee.info/ , since 1997.

• 8 thousand visitors per day. 240 thousand visitors per month. • 5 thousand HTML pages • Frequently cited in academic journals as well as online sites such as StackOverflow, Hacker News, Reddit, Wikipedia. Also cited by Microsoft TypeScript publication. (see list of citations below.)

Published more than 50 software. Have a look at

• Xah's JavaScript Tutorial 〔 http://xahlee.info/js/js.html 〕 • Xah's {Python, Perl, Ruby} Tutorial 〔 http://xahlee.info/perl-python/index.html 〕 • Xah Emacs Lisp Tutorial 〔 http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/elisp.html 〕 • Xah's Java Tutorial 〔 http://xahlee.info/java-a-day/java.html 〕 • Xah Linux Tutorial 〔 http://xahlee.info/linux/linux_index.html 〕 • Programing Language Design 〔 http://xahlee.info/comp/comp_lang.html 〕 Xah Lee's Projects

Programming Tutorial: Python June 2006 to Present Team Members: Xah Lee

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#12

Post by driverdan » Fri, May 16, 2014, 1:23 PM UTC

> why i didn't seek job all these years? well, i can only say i procrastinate and is ok living on a dime.

Why would anyone give this guy money? It sounds like his money woes are all his fault. He's just begging online rather than begging in the street.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#13

Post by yung_ether » Fri, May 16, 2014, 1:23 PM UTC

Who would hire a 45 year old programmer? Certainly good as dead. Have fun at the laundry.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#14

Post by deadghost » Fri, May 16, 2014, 1:24 PM UTC

I've come across his blog multiple times when I started with emacs and he seems like a cool guy(anyone that can spoon raw oatmeal into his mouth like it's the greatest thing ever is cool by my book).

It's great he's asking for help instead of showing up on the front page as another dead hacker.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#15

Post by dfc » Fri, May 16, 2014, 1:24 PM UTC

bestest wrote: post #6

I simply can't resist it, but alas, see what will happen to you if you code in emacs! On the serious note though, he did admit he enjoys procrastinating. Why would I help someone who never had and still does not have any motivation?

If you "simply cant resist" making a joke when another human is in the midst of a terrible situation you are a horrible person.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#16

Post by bradbatt » Fri, May 16, 2014, 1:25 PM UTC

bestest wrote: post #6

I simply can't resist it, but alas, see what will happen to you if you code in emacs! On the serious note though, he did admit he enjoys procrastinating. Why would I help someone who never had and still does not have any motivation?

Because everyone needs help at some point in their lives and oftentimes a kind gesture from someone is all they need to get started turning things around.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#17

Post by nkozyra » Fri, May 16, 2014, 1:25 PM UTC

wfjackson wrote: post #11

Edit: He seems to have a lot of interest and worked a lot on good documentation, which is the bane of the typical OSS project. Why doesn't Red Hat/Google etc. throw some money at him to write docs for underdocumented OSS stuff? Sounds like win win for all. It's hard to find really smart developers that are interested in writing documentation.[End edit] If you don't really know him, his LinkedIn profile shows more det…

Is he a particularly noted person? Maybe just in the emacs community? I don't know who he is and that resume is pretty skimpy.

It seems that his biggest need right now is self-presentation and that's a pretty tough thing to acquire on short notice.

I'd also say there would likely be way more opportunities for someone of his skillset outside of the valley, where the skimpy resume probably looks even skimpier by comparison.

I realize leaving is tough when you don't have a car, but he also won't have a home soon. Some relocation may be in order. Best of luck to him either way.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#18

Post by seren » Fri, May 16, 2014, 1:26 PM UTC

bestest wrote: post #6

I simply can't resist it, but alas, see what will happen to you if you code in emacs! On the serious note though, he did admit he enjoys procrastinating. Why would I help someone who never had and still does not have any motivation?

If you are procrastinating that much, to the point you are on the verge of literally dying or starving, there is probably an underlying issue like social anxiety, depression, etc that is triggering the procrastination reaction as an avoidance mechanism. I am not sure he is really "enjoying" it, despite what he said. (I am not a psychologist but I play one on Internet.)

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#19

Post by rando289 » Fri, May 16, 2014, 1:26 PM UTC

Xah's website has been an amazing resource for emacs users, me included. I really hope someone can help him out a bit.

Re: I'm About as Good as Dead: The End of Xah Lee

#20

Post by DennisP » Fri, May 16, 2014, 1:27 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #7

Almost sent the OP money through PayPal, but I saw this at the bottom of the post: > i won't actually be able to draw money from paypal, due to bank/IRS problem. Which is confusing because in a few lines above, this is written: > if you can help, paypal to xah@xahlee.org Can someone who knows the OP provide more context to all of this?

Sounds like a case for bitcoin.