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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

#241

Post by xrange »

Nicholas_C wrote: post #227
pugio wrote: post #211

This is probably too extreme of a life change for most people to implement, but there are ways to gain some of the benefits without an entire lifestyle upheaval. Recently I've begun camping on business trips instead of using my hotel budget. I'll fly in with a tent, sleeping bag, laptop, and cooler bag, rent a car, and set up camp in whichever campground is closest to the city. Most of these places are meant for loca…

> In the morning I drive into the city for business, then head back out to the campsite to hike, sit and think, and code. I haven't taken a smartphone with me, so those after-city hours are devoid of the usual notification hail. You must be a great programmer because there is no way I could program without Stack Overflow/Google.

...Maybe it is an age thing? There was a time before Google and Stack Overflow.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#242

Post by beambot »

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…

You might consider volunteering for Open Source Ecology: http://opensourceecology.org/

They're building open source farming tools -- or as they say, "blueprints for civilization". Perhaps they're open to volunteers?

Their TED talk is worth watching: http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski?language=en

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#243

Post by niix »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #191
niix wrote: post #63

I can relate to this. I left San Francisco a few weeks ago and moved to South Carolina. I love software development, and I'm not sure if I can trade it for anything at this point and time in my life. I'm currently working remotely from South Carolina and in the search for a nice house with some land, so I can live a bit more rural while still being able to do what I love.

Same here, although I picked the west coast of Florida near Tampa.

Crazy! I'm from Tampa originally haha.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#244

Post by iagooar »

joshmarlow wrote: post #235
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…

Very interesting! Not something I can be involved with right now, but it resonates with a couple of ideas I've kicked around. Maybe they'll be useful? 1) what about (possibly automated) vertical farming? It sounds like there's a fair amount of research/discussion of that right now and could be a neat blend of technology/nature. I'd love to see open sourced versions of this technology; possibly with toolkits for anyon…

1) Vertical farming sounds great. It could help getting started a farm where land is expensive. I love the open sourcing idea.

2) I love this idea! It could be a way of providing additional income for the farm. Classic farms often offer vacations for families and kids, I guess this would be a similar idea, but for engineers.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#245

Post by adwf »

Symbiote wrote: post #203
ArkyBeagle wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

Milton Keynes is probably the worst place I've ever been to in the UK.

No easy walking around town. All chain stores, very few independent shops. No hailable black cabs for some reason, everything involved calling a minicab and waiting. Just a terrible city to be in without a car and a designated driver.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#246

Post by gisenberg »

xrange wrote: post #241
Nicholas_C wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the morning I drive into the city for business, then head back out to the campsite to hike, sit and think, and code. I haven't taken a smartphone with me, so those after-city hours are devoid of the usual notification hail. You must be a great programmer because there is no way I could program without Stack Overflow/Google.

...Maybe it is an age thing? There was a time before Google and Stack Overflow.

There's also a complexity explosion to factor in, and saying that there was a time before Google and Stack Overflow seems a bit dismissive of that. Chances are, your app today is built on at least a dozen dependencies that require documentation and reference lookup several times throughout any given day.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#248

Post by proggR »

M8 wrote: post #168
ryandrake wrote: post #48

I don't know--good for this guy, but there's no way I'd do it. I got into technology in order to avoid a life of back-breaking manual labor. When I was a kid I had to go help bail hay on a farm, and then graduated to assisting my father doing construction jobs. Nailing shingles to a roof under the sun all day in the middle of the summer is great motivation to go for that job in an air conditioned office.

In the end, if society doesn't collapse, farming will be automated.

I plan on sort of following the path of the OP, but in an automated way.

Longer comment on Reddit[1], but the goal is to make a climate controlled greenhouse that houses a heavily automated aquaponics setup along with backyard chickens for eggs and eventually meat. I may take on a couple goats for milk but that would follow later. As part of this I also want to setup solar and vertical axis wind along with evacuated tubing for heating to cut down on energy dependence at the same time.

Once you realize how much of your working time is going to just provide food, shelter, and energy, it makes you question if you could manage to provide those basics in another way than money. With the tech we have now and the rising costs of food taking a bigger cut of your paid time I think we very soon could find that the cost/time investment to DIY will become less than the time investment to purchase from someone else.

This is all of course ignoring the upfront capital requirements but the idea is that if I can reduce the portion of my pay going to those things, I could either a) have more money left over for other things, or b) reduce the amount of time I work equal to the reduced expenses and have more time available for other things. Either way, less external dependencies = more degrees of freedom.

1 - http://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/2yovsq/canada_risks_...

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#249

Post by jalcazar »

crimsonalucard wrote: post #236
jorgeleo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 happ…

As much as we "say" we love programming and farming if ever we became so filthy rich that we could pay other people to do these things for us... we would. I've never heard of a tech billionaire profess his love of programming so much that he's diving right back into the trenches. We're all human, we may love programming and farming, but let's be real, programming and farming are still work and we're all working towar…

No.

Matthew Dillon doesn't need to work but keeps working on DragonFlyBSD.

Also it is possible to live and work as in retirement http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/fisherman.html

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#250

Post by iagooar »

beambot wrote: post #242
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…

You might consider volunteering for Open Source Ecology: http://opensourceecology.org/ They're building open source farming tools -- or as they say, "blueprints for civilization". Perhaps they're open to volunteers? Their TED talk is worth watching: http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski?language=en

Thanks for sharing, I knew that posting to HN would make some amazing projects pop up :)
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