A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
madned.substack.com
A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
1–10 of 265 posts
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#2Key quote which shows that this young person was a problem-solver, even if his computer skills weren't elite:
> I created a “good” BASIC file from scratch [...] Then I compared it to one of the “bad” ones.
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#3Key quote which shows that this young person was a problem-solver, even if his computer skills weren't elite: > I created a “good” BASIC file from scratch [...] Then I compared it to one of the “bad” ones.
I was GOING TO comment this. He was a teenager and found a solution no one else has found. That's some great problem-solving skills if you ask me.
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#4That was an interesting and well written story.
Early days of programming were sure facinating. Small businesses using other small businesses to write custom software. Lots of tinkering and hacking. Interesting times.
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#5Loved this one. When I was mid-20’s I found myself in a “how much” situation as well. Thankfully I had the gumption to “go for it.”
I had found a solution to save the business 100k+ when another contractor charged 10k+ and failed to complete a job because the business couldn’t pay them any more. The thing is, once I started digging into it, the other contractor had done 95% of the work; It just needed a nudge to get finished. But As far as the business was concerned, it was 0% done because it was an all-or-nothing situation (either it worked or didn’t).
I did the final 5% and charged $3,000. I presented it as “I can fix the problem for 3k.” Was that completely fair to them I sometimes wonder? I don’t lose any sleep over it — they had a problem and I fixed it. I think it was wrong for the first contractor not to finish the work up and deal with a final invoice rather than insisting on pay in advance and abandoning them that close to the finish lone.
As far as the business was concerned I was a very cheap solution, and I made an hourly rate of about $2k per hour.
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#6That story lifted my mood.
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#7I really liked this story, and it resonated with me. My programming career began in much the same way, at about the same time.
The only non-computer job I've ever had was my first, a six-week stint at a Burger King, and I was desperate to never do that again. I undersold my skills often, and got in over my head just as often.
It was a great, if sometimes painful, learning experience.
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#8Such a great story, well written too.
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#9Again we see similar issues that motivated RMS to create the free software movement. The buy bought a program but did not had the ability to read or edit it, today you will get a DRM on top of the program and some TOS that would say it is illegal to even attempt to get pass the DRM. Video game crackers show this DRMs will eventually get broken so the industry switch to services instead, now you are really screwed , you can't flip a bit to fix an issue or you can wake up and the software is now updated with nice new bugs or pointless UX changes.
Re: A teenager's guide to avoiding actual work
#10I really liked this story. Im much too young to have been around for it, but I feel like this era of computing must have been kind of magical where there was a lot of access and no walled garden nearly to the scale of a google or apple where the obfuscation just requires a flipped bit.