Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 332 posts

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#221

Post by yason »

For me, programming is to build mechanisms. There's something similar there as in building mechanical constructs. That's the juicy bit for me.

Building mechanisms of course implies some core problem (i.e. how to model what you need to solve and how to compute the result) and interfacing (how to run that thing at all in a physical computing environment and how to talk to all the other), but those don't raise up as major appeals. One or both can even be trivial and I don't get bored yet.

The play of ideas and experience and using those to build something that works is highly enticing. So, the more I gain experience, the more rewarding programming has become, which in turn gives me more ideas that I try out or problems that I try to solve, which accumulates the experience, and so on.

The most boring part of programming is often interfacing. This means anything from negotiating with other people/teams to learning obscure one-off APIs just to get the juicy bits running.

The actual problem (think in terms of maths or CS) can sometimes be interesting but not necessarily per se. Rather, a tricky problem can serve as an excuse to build a very complex or advanced mechanism.

Debugging is just pure fun. It's like trying to find out that slightly loose part in the transmission of a car that sometimes makes the 2nd gear a bit difficult to engage. Debugging happens when the mechanism is mostly built but not yet completed. You can almost see it working, sans a few problems that you know are there. It's hard to imagine sources of greater motivation and mental satisfaction than debugging.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#222

Post by episteme »

dkrich wrote: post #83

I think a lot of what makes something that seems like it is work to one person actually enjoyable to another is purely environmental. For example- I knew from an early age that I liked tinkering around on computers. However when I got to college, I found programming monotonous and boring. When I worked as a software engineer for a large boring company I hated it even more. To the point that I actually quit and switch…

Out of curiosity, what was your new career? Have you ever returned to software engineering or considered it?

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#223

Post by [deleted] »

peterjancelis wrote: post #151
sedachv wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fields, rings, groups, and all sorts of things. Each of those is just a definition and a handful (literally like 5 or 6) of axioms. If I memorized the axioms and a few key theorems I could usually derive everything else in the homework and on the exams. Most mathematical objects have very similar structure and the rest is just maps (morphisms) between them. > Oh and those greek letters. That's actually a very valid…

> Most mathematical objects have very similar structure and the rest is just maps (morphisms) between them. Is there a book covering this topic that you can recommend?

[deleted]

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#224

Post by swatow »

takemikazuchi wrote: post #215
swatow wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Every year at my school I did exactly that. Once I actually turned in my solutions and my math teacher was quite upset because she didn't know what I'd do for the rest of the year in her class. She thought I was being arrogant and I should take in the material slowly, not swallow it all like a whale. But I wasn't arrogant or anything, because unfortunately this skill didn't transfer to the rest of my classes Accusin…

This is a bit of tangent, but I looked up Idris since I'd never heard of it. I'm currently learning Haskell and they look really similar. What differentiates the two? What can you do in one that you can't do in the other?

As practical matter, Idris is a new experimental language while Haskell is a mature, stable language with a useful standard library.

But fundamentally Idris is theoretically more advanced than Haskell. The core differences are

1. Idris functions can be proven to terminate (if you choose).

2. In Idris, types are first class values, and you can have dependent functions: functions whose return type depends on their input value.

An example of something you can do in Idris and not* in Haskell, in Idris you can define a vector type Vect n a, which is the type of vectors of length n with values in type a. You can also define Fin n, the set of integers less than n. Then you can define a function index : Fin n -> (Vect n a) -> a which takes an integer less than n, a vector of length n with element of type a, and returns an element of type a. This function is guaranteed to return a value, because the index is guaranteed to be in the correct range.

*For some meaning of "not": you can probably do this in some way in Haskell.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#225

Post by robotresearcher »

delian66 wrote: post #213
heurist wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think AI will be the solution to the problem. Each human is given an AI which competes on their behalf in an open market, and the human consumes the AI's profit as needed. If all the AI's are the same then everyone should be around equal and money ceases to be a concern for anyone and you can use your time any way you wish! That's my dream, anyway. I don't think 100 years is too far out for AGI. A robust utopian ec…

>>I think AI will be the solution to the problem. No, it will not. Sufficiently smart AIs will be sentient beings just like you, and it will be immoral for you to keep them as slaves.

We will make them so they don't mind working for us. It would be cruel to make them "free". Like domestic dogs. They will be our partners in life and not autonomous creatures. I don't see any a priori reason that being smart would require resenting servitude.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#226

Post by bostik »

nnq wrote: post #212
dxbydt wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but a lot of chemistry is mostly math too, and I flunked organic chemistry the first time. I think its because there is some domain knowledge involved in these subjects, which you have to actually care about. I don't particularly care which element has how many isotopes and what the valency is and how many other elements it can bond with, though I did memorize the atomic weights of all the elements in the perio…

Organic chemistry and biochemistry are very different from physics, but chemistry is a very large field and these are just a small part of it. You should have been exposed to physical chemistry or computational chemistry or maybe even quantum chemistry or analytical chemistry , if your are mathematically inclined. ...but unfortunately they are considered very advanced topics in most learning institutions, even if one…

Aiieee, physical chemistry. That thing approaches pure evil.

The chemistry department in the university I studied at required 4 courses of physical chemistry. The introductory course was bad enough - the course had mandatory practice sessions, where assistants were at hand to aid with the supposedly trickier bits. Each session was 1h45m straight.

5 weeks in, there was a supposedly simple exercise. When nobody at the class got even past the initial hurdles in the first 15 minutes, the assistant decided to show how it's done. He failed to finish the calculations in the remaining 90 minutes ... and he knew how the steps went.

Eventually I changed my major from chemistry to CS.

EDIT: btw, the assistant in question was a post-grad so lack of domain knowledge was not the reason.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#227

Post by jnbiche »

allendoerfer wrote: post #186
buckbova wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The text of each chapter was just some advice about solving them. He said that as soon as he got a new textbook he'd immediately work out all the problems I literally did the opposite of this. I went so far as to make deals with my teachers that if I got an A on every test, I wouldn't have to do any work outside of class. Maybe I figured it to be a challenge, maybe I was plain lazy. Whatever it was, that didn't pre…

Thank you for letting me feel represented. For me it always was about getting how the system works not the actual lesson. From that angle it is hard to be bad at anything at high-school level. Either you got it how school works and were good or you did not and were bad. For me there was no in-between and all the "people have different talents"-stuff. For me it was about a combination of people skills, short-term memo…

>Math always sounds mildly interesting to me and I get the concepts quickly, but i lack the discipline to really internalize it for a few months, especially bottom-up. For me it is easier to come from the other side, for example digging through scikit-learn and learning the math after I already got the big picture.

You probably already know this, but that just means you're an inductive learner, not a deductive learner. I'm also an inductive learner, but unfortunately the majority of math instruction is based on deductive learning.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#228

Post by simi_ »

tswartz wrote: post #22
delluminatus wrote: post #4

Personally, I experienced this with programming. When I learned to program in high school, it never struck me as a chore; it was always just interesting and I enjoyed it. However, I think the only reason I was able to enjoy learning programming was because of how adept I already was with computers as a "power user", because it gave me the physical skills and conceptual underpinnings required to appreciate the field.…

Ira Glass has some advice on the issue of when you start something you enjoy, but your skill doesn't match your taste. Push through and keep practicing until your skill matches your taste. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbC4gqZGPSY

Thank you, I'm going through such a phase (similar to a very long burnout), and this helps.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#230

Post by jasonkester »

littletimmy wrote: post #177
stegosaurus wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an addition to this, I've struggled a lot with the concept of working for pay and only recently could I really begin to explain why. Some people would probably call it 'entitlement', but I'm not really sure that's an accurate description. As an employee, your role is essentially a permanent state of brown nosing. First of all you must convince a rich person/company that you are worthy. Then you must convince them…

I know exactly what you mean. But that's the system we live in, isn't it? One must sell one's time And one's soul to survive. What's the way out?

Technically true. But then you only live in that system by choice.

You can instead choose to live in a slightly different system that only overlaps the "system" in a few meaningful points. You can, for instance, avoid going in to debt or living beyond your means, allowing you to live for a fraction of what your peers require. That would let you work less. Like months per year less in order to cover your expenses.

That would give you a lot more freedom to pick and choose better gigs from better employers. Better still, could choose to program computers for a living, giving you the advantage of a much higher bill rate than most folks in that "system", as well as the option to do all you work remotely for clients you've never met face to face.

So yeah, sell your time and soul, but only tiny fractions, and on your own terms. That's one of the cool perks of this career you've chosen.

Post reply on HN