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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

#201

Post by longlivegnu »

mod wrote: post #130
nkozyra wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this feeling that kids tend to hate where they grow up due to all of the perceived failings and things they're missing out on. I grew up in a relaxed beach town in Florida, and hated it. My family all moved from NYC and fell in love in a heartbeat. Something about not being in the same place for too long applies here, too.

I grew up in a relaxed beach town in Florida (Venice), and I liked it pretty well--but all of my peers hated it. "There's nothing to do here." I just thought "seriously? We have everything but a theme park." Go carts, beaches, movies, skating rinks, arcades, everything! I've since learned that kids say that no matter where they live, seemingly.

As a software engineer near Venice FL in his early 20s there isn't a lot to do here still. I guess some people do enjoy going to the beach a lot but it definitely gets old.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#202

Post by icebraining »

solipsism wrote: post #196
icebraining wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that people think dogs have higher intrinsic value than pigs, and hence deserve more rights, is based on completely arbitrary characteristics. The proof of that is that dogs are seen as food in some cultures, cows are seen as sacred in others, etc. It's all part of belief systems that, in most cases, are inherited without being questioned. The fact that the reasons are different doesn't mean they're arbitrar…

I think it's clear that many, if not most, are not arbitrary - which doesn't mean they are well supported; not everything is valid just because it has some reason behind it. The definition of arbitrary is "having no reason behind it". Sure, judging whether a particular classification counts as "arbitrary" is hard because the definition of "arbitrary" is squishy. But what you just said amounts to: It's not arbitrary.…

No, what I meant is that even the non-arbitrary ones may not have good reasons behind them.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#203

Post by Symbiote »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #171
philbarr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Americans are big optimizers. Our retail has gone big for logistical and economy of scale reasons. Paradoxically, this is how we are frugal while maintaining a nod to consumerism. For a complex set of reasons ( much of which involves how our tax system works ) , we tend to separate housing space from business space unless you're in a city where that grew up closer together. Suburbs are unnatural and inorganic, and th…

Optimising what? Logistics for the supermarket?

The British are big optimisers. That's why the supermarket oligopoly (Tesco, Sainsbury's etc) have taken over many -- perhaps even the majority -- of small, neighbourhood shops (Tesco Express, Sainsbury's Local etc). The distribution centres and large vehicle fleet that delivers to the big supermarkets is reused to deliver to the neighbourhood shops, and many people then walk (or cycle) to those shops.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/search/Tesco+OR+Sainsburys+in+...

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/search/Tesco+OR+Sainsburys+in+...

Milton Keynes is generally regarded as a boring, US-style city: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/search/Tesco+OR+Sainsburys+in+... (I've never been).

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#204

Post by solipsism »

jerf wrote: post #119
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 programm…

I didn't vote you down, but I wouldn't be so quick to assume that the people who did voted you down because they failed to think. I don't find your point of view particularly convincing. It's not because I think everyone should be blindly encouraged to do any particular thing. It's not because I didn't think. It's for reasons such as the following:

* The grass is always greener on the other side. It's not obvious to me that, had the author of this blog started as a farmer and eventually ditched it to become a programmer, he would not have felt a similar sense of having moved to something better.

* It's not obvious to me that we should not be encouraging everyone to do whatever constructive thing they want to do at that particular time. Maybe by demotivating someone we're lowering their chances of getting far enough along that trajectory to even realize whether they like it or not. Maybe your advice makes it more likely for people to choose to do nothing hard or risky and end up unhappy flipping burgers.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#206

Post by waffle_ss »

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,…

I also grew up on a farm - a dairy farm in northern Wisconsin to be precise, which my father and younger brother still operate.

Farming can be awesome. The hard physical work and exercise are satisfying, and you'll often encounter problems that need to be solved quickly and ingeniously (e.g. some implement breaks and you need to come up with a quick fix while the sun's still up). You can really build a camaraderie with your family members / coworkers after slogging through some really physically challenging jobs or solving mentally challenging problems together.

The downsides are that the work never ends and you can never take a vacation. The cows always need to be milked (on a very annoying schedule I might add) and fieldwork needs to be done quickly when the weather is right (e.g. "make hay while the sun shines"). And it's really hard to find good hired workers to help out, because nowadays no one wants to do strenuous physical labor for relatively low pay. So on my dad/brother's farm, if one of them gets sick or hurt (another not uncommon danger), it's a big strain for them because they only have a couple high school-aged randos working part-time to help fill in the gaps.

For me the big thing that made me want to get away from the farm was the lack of free time to get lost in your own thoughts. All the menial labor, maybe excluding driving tractor, doesn't give your mind a lot of time to wander. Which, after we got our family computer when I was 10, I often found it wanting to do...

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#207

Post by jkot »

crpatino wrote: post #154
jkot wrote: post #53

Cubicle != programmer. One can program and run company from a farm.

In a way, he's doing that. Not the company thing, but he still holds a part time job as a programmer. But then, there is the issue of focus. How good can you get at both trades at the same time, if people normally take years to go through only one of the learning curves.

Those two jobs are not mutually exclusive. Programming is mentally demanding, farm work physically (with some sleep deprivation). I think it is manageable with good planning.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#208

Post by logfromblammo »

narrator wrote: post #49
mtbcoder wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Midwest, suburbs are designed and developed around the car and the "local shops" are generally located in a series of strip malls off the major roads. On the coasts and in denser populated areas, there seems to be a renewed push for more walk-able areas, public transit and such though.

I'll tell you the real, but awful, reason why we have such restrictive zoning in the U.S. The idea behind zoning is to make sure that different classes and races don't have to see each other if they don't want to. Putting commercial retail in a residential area would give outsiders an excuse to be there. The whole "white flight" from the cities has left it's mark on zoning ever since the 1960s. IMHO, this is also the…

Zoning was invented as a reaction to the Equitable Building in NYC, which was built with no setbacks, effectively bricking over all of its neighbors' windows.

That was the camel's nose under the tent, and organizations influenced by the Ku Klux Klan used zoning laws as a tool for enforcing segregation at a municipal level.

Zoning has been leaving its dirty mark since the 1920s.

Nowadays, you can probably just mentally substitute "colored" wherever you see "multi-family" or "high density", to get a sense of the original wording of the laws. The zoning map for my municipality actually uses the color brown for multi-family residential zones, and a light peach color for single-family & detached residential!

That may be an unfortunate coincidence. Zoning is probably much more about class boundaries than race now. Rich people don't want poor people walking past their houses. Or driving past them. Or seeing them. Or knowing they exist.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#209

Post by mahyarm »

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 think the reason why kids and co don't like X is probably because of isolation effects. If you can independently travel to wherever you want with little hassle and have a rich social life, then you'll like where you live. If you have helicopter parents in the suburbs or city centre that insist to drive you on their schedule to wherever, then you'll hate it.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#210

Post by kstop »

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 hated it even more, which is why I now live in the crawlspace of a supermarket.
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