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

291–300 of 332 posts

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#291

Post by eru »

stegosaurus wrote: post #124
dxbydt wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if the idea of work itself is what you dislike? In one of the economic courses I took, the Professor posed this very question. Apparently Karl Marx had also opined along these lines - how would a society incentivize someone who only likes to build sand castles ? He can't monetize the sandcastle because the waves wash them out, so he just builds another one & another one & so on. Sometimes I think programming i…

On the incentives point, it seems to me that 'we' as a society focus far too much on money and expect it to paper over the gaps that employment inevitably causes. Finish after your children leave school? Money -> childcare. Can't get time off to cook for yourself more? Money -> restaurant meals. Small stuff. Office located in a stupid place like downtown, forcing _everyone_ into a silly commute. Lack of parking space…

Can't you move downtown?

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#292

Post by eru »

WillNotDownvote wrote: post #59
rabbyte wrote: post #11

Is it common for programmers to dislike debugging? I'm stunned. I never considered the possibility, it's always been something I enjoyed. I don't believe it impacts you either way in terms of capability but I imagine it impacts your desire to continue.

It's my favorite part of programming, by a very long stretch. For me it's often a chance to really dig into understanding exactly how all the gears click together, which is my true joy. On a couple of teams I fell into the role of "team debugger", helping everyone with whatever was broken, and those have been my happiest times.

Seems like a great position to learn about everything the team does.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#293

Post by eru »

frevd wrote: post #259
rabbyte wrote: post #11

Is it common for programmers to dislike debugging? I'm stunned. I never considered the possibility, it's always been something I enjoyed. I don't believe it impacts you either way in terms of capability but I imagine it impacts your desire to continue.

My personal aversion: being forced to do unit testing. Compared to that, debugging is very enjoyable.

Try QuickCheck, it makes testing fun. (It originated in Haskell, but people have written versions of the library for other languages.)

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#294

Post by pjbrunet »

dxbydt wrote: post #38

This excerpt - "what he really liked was solving problems. 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—to the slight annoyance of his teacher, since the class was supposed to work through the book gradually." is literally me. I did that. Every year at my school I did exactly that. Once I actually turned in m…

"I secretly hate programming, debugging, programmers, git, the whole enterprise - just seems so stupid & futile."

Git seems like an evolutionary step tovards something more intuitive and efficient.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#295

Post by Bahamut »

shostack wrote: post #281
dxbydt wrote: post #38

This excerpt - "what he really liked was solving problems. 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—to the slight annoyance of his teacher, since the class was supposed to work through the book gradually." is literally me. I did that. Every year at my school I did exactly that. Once I actually turned in m…

I failed algebra one year in high school. I thought I was absolutely the worst person in the world at math. Turns out, crappy teachers and a teaching methodology that is diametrically opposed to one's optimal learning style count for a lot in school. However what was amazing to me was how I went from zero confidence in my math skills to actually being excited about math when I took geometry. I never studied once in t…

I encountered many students with such misconceptions of their math ability when I taught as a grad student for two years. With many of these, it turned out they had a strong talent for it, they just didn't have a good pre-college math education. I would tell those students that they possessed a good ability at it and encourage them to try pursuing a math-related career.

I don't know if I made a difference in that regard, but it appeared to help bolster their confidence in themselves a little. Educators should do more to reinforce their students and help improve their passion. The state of our K-12 education system is horrid overall here in the US.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#296

Post by swatow »

nbouscal wrote: post #286
swatow wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inpu…

Yeah, you can definitely do that example in Haskell – if by Haskell you mean GHC. GHC has been slowly but surely adding dependently-typed features for quite some time now, which will culminate in a proper DependentTypes pragma sometime soon (for some meaning of soon, anyway). There are a lot of other differences between Haskell and Idris, though. Totality is a pretty big thing, and Idris is also strict by default. It…

I'm somewhat new to the field, so this might not be properly phrased, but isn't totality an inherent part of full dependent types?

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#297

Post by hasenj »

There are many activities that I enjoy doing as a hobby, but can't imagine doing them as a profession or for a living.

One of them for example: if I like a song in a foreign language I'm learning, I will look up the lyrics and try to translate it by carefully analyzing each sentence and using lots of dictionaries and Google searches (sometimes asking on Forums or asking native speakers in person). It takes anywhere from hours to days. It might seem to most people that this requires discipline and tenacity, but when I do it I just do it for fun.

I'm not so sure though that I would enjoy it the same way if I had to do that kind of work for a living.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#298

Post by hasenj »

chubot wrote: post #55

I'm surprised that Paul Graham likes debugging. I tend to stereotype programmers into two camps: one that likes debugging, one that doesn't. I thought he was part of the latter group. Some programmers are engineers: they deal with the world as it is -- messy, inconsistent, evolved. They are good at debugging, because they are in tune with how things actually work (not how people SAY they work.) They like trying thing…

Is this based on MBTI/Jungian personality types? Because it corresponds almost exactly to INTJ vs INTP.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#299

Post by chubot »

hasenj wrote: post #298
chubot wrote: post #55

I'm surprised that Paul Graham likes debugging. I tend to stereotype programmers into two camps: one that likes debugging, one that doesn't. I thought he was part of the latter group. Some programmers are engineers: they deal with the world as it is -- messy, inconsistent, evolved. They are good at debugging, because they are in tune with how things actually work (not how people SAY they work.) They like trying thing…

Is this based on MBTI/Jungian personality types? Because it corresponds almost exactly to INTJ vs INTP.

Well, it's just based on my own observations. There's a relationship to Meyers-Brigg, but I don't think it corresponds exactly.

I'd bet PG is neither INTP or INTJ; he seems like ENTP. An introvert isn't going to start something like YC where you talk to hundreds of people, and manage hundreds of companies.

P vs J or perception vs. judgement doesn't quite characterize it either. I'm specifically talking about a way of approaching the work of programming. A big difference is that MBTI is supposed to apply to the entire population, where I'm just talking about programmers -- less than 1% of people. I think it's possible to describe/categorize the smaller group more accurately.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#300

Post by hasenj »

chubot wrote: post #299
hasenj wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this based on MBTI/Jungian personality types? Because it corresponds almost exactly to INTJ vs INTP.

Well, it's just based on my own observations. There's a relationship to Meyers-Brigg, but I don't think it corresponds exactly. I'd bet PG is neither INTP or INTJ; he seems like ENTP. An introvert isn't going to start something like YC where you talk to hundreds of people, and manage hundreds of companies. P vs J or perception vs. judgement doesn't quite characterize it either. I'm specifically talking about a way of…

You're talking about NTs :)

I'm not talking about P vs J, more like Ti vs Ni

Ti-Ne - Approach problems from philosophical first principles

Ni-Te - See reality for what it is and bend it to your purposes

Post reply on HN