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Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

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Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#161

Post by Dansvidania »

hinkley wrote: post #120
Dansvidania wrote: post #47

What a simplistic way to put things in. You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish... As a millennial, I think this kind of attitude is the problem with our generation. I mean both simplifying things into instagram-quote-sized senteces like "always do what you love" and also convin…

A lot of my friends are children or grandchildren of Boomers and have been spending a lot of time lately asking and not answering the question of how they got like this, and so I’ve been trying to answer that for myself. Below is my barely half baked theory as it stands today. After the War, there were kids everywhere. So, so many kids. They had to open schools. Whole industries about kids exploded into existence. Bu…

This is an interesting take on the sociological change.

I definitely think the pressure was one of the top factors in fucking us up :D

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#162

Post by z3t4 »

When I must work on something I dont want to do its like the solution to all world problems reviel themselves. My brain goes like this: Should I cure HIV and cancer, build a FTL and anti-gravity engine, or should I do this thing I dont want to.

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#163

Post by Dansvidania »

LoveMortuus wrote: post #57
Dansvidania wrote: post #47

What a simplistic way to put things in. You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish... As a millennial, I think this kind of attitude is the problem with our generation. I mean both simplifying things into instagram-quote-sized senteces like "always do what you love" and also convin…

The following quote helped me a lot: "The professional knows that the mundane physical act of sitting down and starting to work, sets in motion a mysterious process that produces inspiration. The amateur waits for inspiration, the professional knows that it will come after he starts. The professional therefore acts in the face of fear, when the amateur fears a big creative endeavor he waits for the fear to disappear,…

I am in a bind now. I agree with your quote, although I just stated that reducing complex matters to tweet-sized sentences is one of our big generational problems.

Whether or not it was an intentional, what a magnificently oximoron-like answer! I tip my hat to you, sir! :D

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#164

Post by chrisco255 »

EpicEng wrote: post #108
chrisco255 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a thread from 12 years ago. HN is obviously a different community now than it was then. One problem on HN is how quickly a discussion item will fade or disappear due to excessive downvotes. And for example, unlike Reddit, you can't downvote items on the main page, just comments. I'd be curious to hear an updated discussion on this, but I've seen salient points being downvoted into obscurity simply because it a…

>That's a thread from 12 years ago. HN is obviously a different community now than it was then. Yes, pg doesn't make a point of reiterating it every year. Is the community really different? I've been around for some time and I haven't noticed. dang is a mod/admin. Here he is repeating it again a year and a half ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17996858 So we have a community manager repeatedly saying "yes, t…

Those are interesting points, but I think despite the official position by dang and pg, most HN users don't downvote points they disagree with as a convention. I think this is due to the fact that a comment's karma score is not shown, which is another thing that differs from Reddit. There's no real reward or feedback for downvoting a post, and you can't know for sure if that post has -2 karma or +27 karma, so you don't really know what difference it makes. I think that's a good feature of HN, by the way.

I do think HN is much bigger now. There's less discussion on philosophy of startups in general. PG himself rarely blogs about it any more. It also seems like political topics get more frequently introduced on the front page. Also there's frequent toxicity and negativity about certain technologies which do warrant intellectual discussion, but get dog piled by naysayers. Maybe that's always been there and it's my imagination but it does seem like some of the "hacker ethos" has faded.

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#165

Post by Dansvidania »

dorkwood wrote: post #110
Dansvidania wrote: post #47

What a simplistic way to put things in. You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish... As a millennial, I think this kind of attitude is the problem with our generation. I mean both simplifying things into instagram-quote-sized senteces like "always do what you love" and also convin…

> You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish... I disagree with this, and I'm curious what long term goals you might have that aren't aligned with whatever it is you're doing now. How do you suggest a millennial choose a "long term goal they really want to achieve" in the first pla…

You make a fair point, but I think we are looking at the article in different ways.

At any rate, you stated yourself that goals come form performing something and getting the desire to master it.

Would you say that such a desire sprouts in everyone the very first time they try something?

I doubt it. It sounds like "love at first sight" and I believe it is very rare, to say the least.

I am saying that, even to get to the point where you know what you love, you need to "push through" a lot of difficult moment that will make you think you hate that very "thing" that you might -through persevering- find out you love.

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#166

Post by dceddia »

deepGem wrote: post #35

Being totally honest here. I don't find any work that I totally can't stop thinking about. There is always something that I need to get done that I don't relish, that I don't enjoy. Here's how it goes - there's an idea that you think is really nice, you start talking to people then you are hit with reality - no one gives a shit about your idea. Some do, but most of them are like meh. There comes the first punch and y…

I realize that CSS itself isn’t really the point here, that it’s just one annoying thing in the pile of annoying things. But I wanted to mention...

As a front end dev and someone who teaches front end stuff (React mainly), CSS really doesn’t change quickly, and when it does change, those changes are additive. CSS is very very good about backward compatibility.

To give a specific example, CSS Grid is a newer feature than Flexbox, but both are useful for layout, and in this case newer isn’t better, just different. (I know, newer == better is nearly a universal constant in the front end world, but CSS doesn’t suffer from that nearly as much as JS does).

I just wanted to mention this in case part of the problem is that you don’t know the “new” way to do something in CSS, and you don’t want to learn it, but you do know a way to do what you want... just do it the way you know, and it’ll very likely be fine.

You might enjoy a utility CSS framework like Tailwind [0] that relieves you from some decisions and gives you some nice shorthand without locking you in to a specific look or a specific JS framework. (I know, another thing to learn... but it’s worth a quick look, might save you time in the long run)

0: https://tailwindcss.com/

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#167

Post by teekert »

js4 wrote: post #95
teekert wrote: post #14

My problem is that I get excited about my current job (at a very large company). I'd love to do my current job, but my way. Open source part of the work, run Linux on my development machine, focus more on the tech, less on the market analyses (we did them but management is not buying in, while I am a firm believer myself). I love to build my own front end, with modern technologies. Too bad the company does not apprec…

How can you reduce risk?

Find a job with steady contract that does not mind side-projects? I've tried. It's not easy. But I have my eyes open ;)

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#168

Post by Dansvidania »

caseymarquis wrote: post #79
Dansvidania wrote: post #47

What a simplistic way to put things in. You need to do a lot of things you do not love before you have the skills, the vision and the attitude to actually do what you love, and accomplish the goals you want to accomplish... As a millennial, I think this kind of attitude is the problem with our generation. I mean both simplifying things into instagram-quote-sized senteces like "always do what you love" and also convin…

I'd like to water that generalization down a bit: Unrealistic expectations and following/giving bad career advice are multigenerational human problems that have likely plagued humanity for millenia. I'd wager this problem began in earnest the moment humans started farming. Generational division is also nothing new. Please try to respond to the bad advice, and not provide generational troll bait. I'm not saying this w…

I admit I might have generalized a bit, but I was far from trying to bait trolls.

I am a millennial myself (I do not know if the author is, and I do not think it is relevant) and I truly think this kind of attitude is damaging us. It sure has damaged me and and a big portion of people I know.

Besides... I did, as you say, try to respond to the bad advice. "We should focus on how to motivate ourselves to do things that we do not love, but that are necessary".

I am well aware that I might be wrong, and I think HN is a good place to debate different, and interesting, ideas. I also prefer to argument my disagreement in words rather than downvotes, because there is no discussion, otherwise :)

Re: Do whatever you can't stop thinking about

#170

Post by overcast »

frfl wrote: post #145
overcast wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

11am, plenty of natural light, and a calibrated desktop monitor. Looks completely readable here.

Yes, but not everyone has perfect eyesight and perfect monitors or perfect lighting conditions. Thin font, plus a 5:1 contrast ratio (text #606f7b to white bg) isn't ideal for reading. Original vs higher contrast, objectively, one is easier to read https://i.imgur.com/kDMPhfx.png

Strange, mine looks like the one on the right, except a shade darker and without the horrible aliasing. That one on the left looks like your display has the brightness maxed out. I agree people should be more conscious of typography legibility, but what you're seeing on the left looks like there is something wrong with your display. Viewing on my iPhone 11 Pro is crisp and dark as well.
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