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Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

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Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#111

Post by jroseattle »

iagooar wrote: post #28

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and this post definitely gives me some motivation. I'm a programmer who loves to code and build stuff, learning new programming languages and frameworks, discussing about architecture, etc. I love shipping new features and making customers happy. BUT inside of me a desire has been growing to go back to the roots, to live a life closer to the nature. I feel the need to spend…

> I've been thinking about this idea to build something like a "tech-farmer colony".

Now that is one of the best ideas I've heard in a long time. Knowing how farms work, I could find a ton of ways for this to be difficult, but we're engineers -- let's solve hard problems. :-)

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#112

Post by hluska »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #6

That bit about coming down with the 22 got to me a bit. I had a dog attack on my chicken flock last week and one of the last remaining birds was still alive but obviously dying. Even though I see them as livestock, not pets, it was still not easy to pick her up, break her neck to kill her quickly then stand back and watch it end. Never easy to kill something you're supposed to be taking care of.

My Grandma Yvette was a seriously enterprising woman who never missed an opportunity to save (or make) an extra buck. So, when I was about seven, she started raising chickens in her gazebo.

Unfortunately, she was also rather soft and she grew quite attached to her chickens...so attached that when the time came, she just gave them back to the farmer who had sold her the chicks!! :)

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#113

Post by VLM »

philbarr wrote: post #22
torrent-of-ions wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in the suburbs and hated it. I hated the idea of having to go long distances to get milk and eggs. I'm happy now in a city centre.

I never understood that about America. I've been lost in the suburbs in Michigan once, driving along for ages with just house after house after house, and thinking, "where's the local shop?" Surely it's got to be worth someone setting up a local shop every couple of miles?

Economy of scale when constructing. You can usually tell the age of a burb by how big its zones are. Some of the newest burbs have absolutely huge, staggering, sized zones.

I live in a burb thats a bit over fifty years old and there's no spot more than maybe 6 blocks from the arterial retail/commercial/restaurant strips? In some new burbs you can easily be over a mile from anything other than residential.

I will say that when I was a kid there was a lot more to do in big zones because obviously there's more basements and garages and back yards and just plain old more kids. I mean, there's only about 200 kids in my current subdivision so with a distribution of ages its quite likely that there's no one to hang out with in the neighborhood for my own kids, whereas that's never an issue in a bigger zone where there's always a friend in the same neighborhood to hang out with. Some modern zones are so big that entire elementary school districts live within the borders of single zone! Obviously those kids always have someone to hang out with in the neighborhood.

And of course the bigger the zone, the crazier the traffic on the roads between the zones, which sucks.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#114

Post by jorgeleo »

jroseattle wrote: post #81

I grew up on a farm. Not surprised to see this decision in the slightest. Farming is tough -- physically, financially, and in the end emotionally. But it is still a very rewarding life. I can remember sitting on my grandfather's lap, riding on his John Deere two-cylinder (it was called a Johnny Popper.) Pre-school? I went to pre-farming. I was probably 3 years old the first time I rode a tractor. By the time I was 8,…

"The farm life works for some people"

I agree. I couldn't do farm, I have bad allergies to pollen, dust, and too much time under the sun and I become red as a lobster, and it is painful

But programming is what I love to do. So I will say "The programmer life works for some people"

I wouldn't call the original article "The death of a programmer", I would call it "The born of a farmer". He figure out were he feels happier, and that is good thing which sometimes means leaving behind what is hip for the masses, but that is not a failure, that is centering

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#115

Post by greggman »

torrent-of-ions wrote: post #19
_halgari wrote: post #9

It's funny to see this stuff go full-circle. My parents left the city in the early 90's to move to a small WI farm in the middle of nowhere (15min to get to a town of 5000 people). I can see the appeal of a simpler life. But the funny thing is, as a kid, I hated it. My parents got tired of the suburbs, I longed for it. They longed for simplicity, I longed for convenience. I hated the idea of having to drive long dist…

I grew up in the suburbs and hated it. I hated the idea of having to go long distances to get milk and eggs. I'm happy now in a city centre.

I grew up in the suburbs and loved it. It was safe. I was allowed to go miles in any direction. I'd go 5 miles to Disneyland or 9 miles to El Dorado Park. I'd ride 3 miles to Knott's Berry Farm or 3 miles the closest mall. I could launch model rockets at the local school. There was some dirt patches where kids would make berms for riding their bikes on. My friends were all within a couple of miles. We'd play D&D and use peanut M&Ms as monsters. There was a bunch of hobbit stores just a mile away where I got model rocket parts and other hobby things.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#116

Post by blt »

ashark wrote: post #68
rmsaksida wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To be a programmer, it takes someone that doesn't mind being behind a computer for a good part of the day (even if you're able to take a break to get some fresh air on occasion). Otherwise, it will have the effect it seems to have had on the OP, and ultimately leave you wishing for something else. I don't know if that's true for everybody. Being behind a computer all day long is what I've been doing since I was 8.…

I'd be a lot happier as a programmer if I could do it only about 20 weeks a year. Hell, I'd probably gladly work 60+ hour weeks then. 40 hours week after week and I slowly grow to hate it. If only programming work were seasonal. 1/3 of my work weeks programming, 1/3 studying, practicing music, and doing non-programming creative work, 1/3 physical labor and building things with my hands. That'd be my perfect life, I t…

I'm continually in search of a job where I can split my time between programming and building stuff. I already had my dream job. I was writing control and data processing software for lab instruments, but also doing mechanical design, making parts in a machine shop, assembling electronics. Then my grant ran out, and I wasn't getting paid much either. Still think my dream job would be building boutique one-off scientific instruments.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#117

Post by bcoates »

icebraining wrote: post #79
PerfectElement wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Even though I see them as livestock, not pets" Isn't it funny how this is a completely arbitrary definition? The most sensible explanation I've seen about this phenomenon is called carnism and it's brilliantly explained by Dr. Melaine Joy in this TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0VrZPBskpg

No, it's not arbitrary at all, it's just subjective and depends on your personal relation with the animal. Frankly, that video sounds like BS to me. How much time did she spend within family farms that raise animals? The idea that you need "invisibility" or to abstract animals as non-individual or as objects is so untrue it's not even funny.

The claim that every culture only picks a handful of animal species to be considered edible, and this is part of some sort of psychological defense mechanism, is BS too. Counter-example: China, or any society that has access to a diverse hunting ground for 'game' or 'bushmeat'.

Even a 'picky eater' society like the US that only eats a few kinds of land animal species treats all fish as edible but only a few named species as 'the good ones', and only a handful of plant species are commonplace in the diet despite lots more being readily available.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#118

Post by ctb_mg »

iagooar wrote: post #28

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and this post definitely gives me some motivation. I'm a programmer who loves to code and build stuff, learning new programming languages and frameworks, discussing about architecture, etc. I love shipping new features and making customers happy. BUT inside of me a desire has been growing to go back to the roots, to live a life closer to the nature. I feel the need to spend…

It would be interesting to subsidize your tech R&D (and therefore your food output) by using a CSA-style subscription service. You don't have to only self-sustain. You could produce quality food for the local community using technology.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#119

Post by jerf »

jerf wrote: post #33

Yesterday I posted a comment about being careful about how we try to bring people into programming and making sure that we encourage people to openly and honestly examine themselves for whether this is something they want to do, and not just thoughtlessly grease the slide into "programming" for everybody. [1] This is the sort of thing I meant. Dig back into the first post and it's clear that this person was very inte…

As I sit here watching this parent post go grey, it is remarkable to me the degree to which people are bothered by the idea that automatic encouragement may not be a good idea, even when posted to a story about how someone didn't like programming as a career and even as people are singing the praises of the person realizing they don't want to be a programmer and probably should never have been a professional programmer.

Do you all really want to accept the idea that "encouragement is always good regardless of the consequences!" with such religious fervor? Is the idea that sometimes someone should not be encouraged in a particular direction really that horrifying? Where did this idea come from? Have you examined it? Have you consciously accepted it? Or is it an unexamined axiom that has wormed its way into your belief structure? And I mean that with all the philosophical baggage the term "unexamined" has.

Think. These are people's lives and livelihoods we are talking about here, not what they're going to eat for dinner tonight, and you are not excused from thought by an unexamined axiom that "encouragement always good". The linked post is hardly that unusual; I personally can name at least three people who have left the career and also gotten happier, and I know one other person currently finishing up before they go back to school to switch to a career that is definitely not programming, something that is not "farming" but is also in its own way absolutely as far as you can get from programming. You have to think, and teach others to think too.

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