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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

#271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bill Gates said on his Reddit AMA he still writes code. Not everyone is like you dude.

He dabbles in code, on occasion. I'm talking about a love of code that takes you back into the trenches. I never said everyone is like me. But in my opinion most people are like me. If you look at the world around you and how career paths are set up, how society is setup and the general nature of most human beings... imo it is the most logical conclusion.

Actually, you did:

> We're all human, we may love programming and farming

> we're all working toward retirement

I also appreciate how Bill Gates transformed from an elite coder into a dabbler as soon as it suited your argument. You're evidently not someone who ever let facts got in the way of a good story.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually working on something like this, although minus the hippie aspect. The biggest hurdle (at least here in California) is zoning. Every county in California restricts ag-zoned land to (at most) two dwelling units, where "dwelling unit" is typically defined by having a kitchen. There are some ways to work around this, especially if you're willing to go the "tinyhouses on wheels" route, but you get into grey z…

I don't think that it has to be hippie at all. There would be some shared areas, but people would live at their own homes. The company and the farm would be shared, but that's the idea. Guess that the whole twist would be to not only depend on agriculture for providing income and food. Also, I wouldn't make it about living isolated from society, without electricity, cars or mobile phones. It would be a much more rela…

Digital Hutterites. If you haven't already, you should look into how they (the Hutterites) structure their communities. It seems like there are a lot of parallels with what you are thinking, religious aspects aside.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#273

Well, the case with me is exactly the opposite. I come from a family of farmers and since a very very young age I found myself working in the fields and greenhouses, constantly day-dreaming about the time I would make it out of there for good. Now that finally that time has come, for one thing I'm sure: I'm never going back (or at least I won't go back for a long time to come). I love "sitting behind a desk and pumpi…

Similarly, I grew up on a dairy farm and have absolutely no desire to ever raise animals again. However, I eventually found myself cash cropping and love every minute of it. Farming is a pretty vague term, really.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#274

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,…

Trivia: a Johnny Popper is a John Deere model M. I am currently in the process of restoring one. It is called a popper because of its distinct sound, caused by the non-180 degree angle between the two cylinders on the camshaft. I dream about every day to become a farmer.

Excellent. Those tractors were rockstars, and ran for years and years. I can still recall that popping sound in my head, many years later. Very distinctive.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#275

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…

I just saw a tweet of Notch

> Turns out unrolling tight inner loops really speeds them up! 38% speedup from that alone. Makes sense, it's doing one eight of the branching

https://twitter.com/notch/status/595509436040491008

Even billionaires may want to micro-optimize! Bonus point: he is developing for a "20 years old platform"

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#276
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…

First off, there has to be a clear division of responsibilities. If you don't want to be the "chickens guy", there has to be some way to incentivize and cleanly hand off all the chickens chores. If everyone is responsible, no one is.

The first thing that comes to my mind is a ticketing system with a time-dependent bounty attached. The chickens investors establish the chicken requirements, such as "ensure that all chickens are inside the coop and secure it against predators before civil twilight". That ticket repeats daily, with a bounty rising until the deadline, at which time the bounty freezes at the maximum, and the nag program starts messaging people to go do the task before a raccoon shows up. When you do the task, you press a button, which attaches a timestamped photo of you to the ticket log, which is freely auditable by the stakeholders.

The mobile farm app is continuously updated with outstanding chore tickets.

The investors pay the bounties, so it would behoove them to more often do the chores attached to the farm products for which they are larger stakeholders. If someone would prefer to skip a chore to bring in some outside income, they will essentially be paying someone else out of that to pick up the farm slack. If everyone winds up doing that, there might be professional farmhands available as the fallback, so the bounties would have to reflect what it actually costs a farming professional to do the tasks.

I am a software worker because I am an essentially lazy person, so if I were involved, it is very likely that I would invest heavily in a perennial polyculture plot, and spend much of my time researching robotic harvester designs and preservation methods for uncommon fruits and vegetables. For instance, how do you get a pawpaw off the tree and to the customer before it rots? How many walnut trees can you use in your canopy before you start shading out your persimmons? How cold can a trifolate orange tree get before you lose the fruit? Would people eat linden leaf salads? How do I encourage permanently resident pollinators?

The only people seriously looking at these questions, if anyone, would be Ag-Sci professors and their grad students. And their research might not necessarily have practical utility when it comes to making a profit as a part-time farmer.

And, of course, it goes without saying that we would have to jailbreak the Deere and come up with some open source firmware.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#277
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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.

It doesn't take much work to save those offline.

Sure, you miss out on StackOverflow's expertise, but if you really just need to refer to API documentation, that should be doable.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#278

Not to question this guy's remarkable decision or the article itself, just one expression I see quit often and makes me cringe each time, that is : the real world (referred here as a little haven of nature). Is the 19th century Industrial revolution just an illusion, the factories, the cars, the towns, the wars just a view of the spirit, and the little birds singing in the trees the real world ? Is the current (elect…

I had a similar thought. All my life I thought I wanted this for me. I did, in fact, move to Yosemite for a stretch. While success in anything is generally about how well you execute it paired with how much you desire the end result, I learned that I actually did not want that life, that I really didn't feel at home in a natural environment, and that I missed the feeling of "security" being mashed in among a bunch of humans can sometimes bring.

When I returned, I realized that there is nothing about the world of tech that is any less real, relevant or right than is the world of nature. We may not always do things in ways that produce the least negative impact for our fellow humans, or on nature in general, but show me how this digital reality of ours is invalid?

I actually thrive under the massive hours of work, the stress of delivering and the multitasking mentally I have to endure to stay afloat in the tech industry. It may not be the most conducive to a family life, but I'm figuring it out as I go and I know that I will be happier for having not stayed out in the wilderness.

I applaud anyone who finds what they need, what they want, and once they have it are happy. But I don't believe all humanity is going to find the same thing makes them happy, or is really what they need.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#279
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.

I'm the same, but I recently discovered that a dump of all Stack Overflow content is available for download. There's a few apps around to easily use it offline. Combine that with the "Dash" app for mac (which downloads other official docs) and it should be pretty easy to work off the grid.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#280

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…

Some of us aren't just "saying" we love programming; we do. If I were a billionaire, I would no more pay someone to do my programming than pay them to take my vacations.

I think your talk of "the trenches" is telling, though. The more money I have, the less I have to work on other people's projects and the more I can work on my own. Just as travel-lovers with more money can do less business travel to unpleasant destinations and more personal travel to favorite places, those of us who love programming just dream of doing more projects of our own choosing, not of escaping this terrible chore called programming that we only "say" we love.

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