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What I Worked On

paulgraham.com

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Re: What I Worked On

#181

Post by mateo411 »

dekhn wrote: post #41
chrisaycock wrote: post #9

> during the first year of grad school I realized that AI, as practiced at the time, was a hoax. I had a similar realization during grad school about a lot of the popular topics at the time (early 2000s). I even used to call them "the hoaxes of computer science". Things like grid computing or formal methods of software engineering had a lot of resources behind them, but nobody was able to use the results. Instead, ve…

I don't agree about grid computing. Many scientists got work done with it on aggregations of clusters. LIGO used pyGlobus to transfer large amounts of scientific data.

There were many cool things about grid computing and I think they got some of the abstractions right.

However, there was a larger gap in what was actually possible and what people claimed was possible. You'll see this gap in other software. However, if you compare the difference to what AWS says it can do to what it actually does, that's a pretty big difference.

The quality of the systems developed by a large company with of resources is going to be much better than a collaboration of different scientists and software engineering groups at different national labs and universities.

Re: What I Worked On

#182

Post by breck »

mdorazio wrote: post #170

This is a well-written essay even if it's a bit long and somewhat navel-gazing (it is, after all, written for pg himself). However, I was continuously struck by just how ridiculously privileged and serendipitous pg's early life was to the point where I just can't even relate to it. He basically meandered his way from an expensive (today) college to an even more expensive (today) grad school, then to art school becaus…

Who in the world doesn't think luck isn't the biggest factor in success? There are 100 PGs that were on the same path but got hit by a car, or early cancer, or killed in war, et cetera.

Just because he was born on mile 10 when others born on the same day in a poorer part of the world were born at mile 1, doesn't mean that making it to mile 1,000,000 isn't impressive.

If you think life is all about luck, and that where you are born is where you will die, and the decisions you make along the way are irrelevant, then that will probably be your fate.

I read an essay where sure, someone won the ovarian lottery (like 800K people do every year by definition), but he then goes on to higher and higher wrungs, and frequently throughout the essay mentions people that helped him out to hit each next rung. Then once he was successful went on to help thousands of people directly, and many orders of magnitude times that indirectly.

Lots of people are born a lot "luckier" then PG and then do nothing for others, or even worse try and pull the ladder up from those behind them.

Re: What I Worked On

#183

Post by abhinav22 »

mdorazio wrote: post #170

This is a well-written essay even if it's a bit long and somewhat navel-gazing (it is, after all, written for pg himself). However, I was continuously struck by just how ridiculously privileged and serendipitous pg's early life was to the point where I just can't even relate to it. He basically meandered his way from an expensive (today) college to an even more expensive (today) grad school, then to art school becaus…

Luck may be one of the biggest factors of success but it’s one outside of our control. So no need to pocket watch other people’s luckyness;)

I say this as somebody who always complains of being unlucky. What I’ve noticed is that luck plays a role, but you have to have the right mindset to take advantage of the opportunity. This is a very difficult thing to do and not a given by any means. Most people probably say they are unlucky but actually they were not good enough.

Re: What I Worked On

#184

Post by [deleted] »

mdorazio wrote: post #170

This is a well-written essay even if it's a bit long and somewhat navel-gazing (it is, after all, written for pg himself). However, I was continuously struck by just how ridiculously privileged and serendipitous pg's early life was to the point where I just can't even relate to it. He basically meandered his way from an expensive (today) college to an even more expensive (today) grad school, then to art school becaus…

[deleted]

Re: What I Worked On

#185

Post by beachy »

mdorazio wrote: post #170

This is a well-written essay even if it's a bit long and somewhat navel-gazing (it is, after all, written for pg himself). However, I was continuously struck by just how ridiculously privileged and serendipitous pg's early life was to the point where I just can't even relate to it. He basically meandered his way from an expensive (today) college to an even more expensive (today) grad school, then to art school becaus…

Privileged yes, meandering yes, but according to a pattern of following things that were interesting to him.

That's perhaps why he found himself in the right place and the right time.

Takes some balls to live life like that instead of following the road more travelled.

Re: What I Worked On

#186

Post by neonate »

Ariez wrote: post #177
mdorazio wrote: post #170

This is a well-written essay even if it's a bit long and somewhat navel-gazing (it is, after all, written for pg himself). However, I was continuously struck by just how ridiculously privileged and serendipitous pg's early life was to the point where I just can't even relate to it. He basically meandered his way from an expensive (today) college to an even more expensive (today) grad school, then to art school becaus…

While it's true about the schools, I don't agree with you on your other points. It seems like PG is cognizant of change around and within him. It wasn't by pure luck that he started Ycom, and it wasn't pure luck he started Viaweb. With viaweb he had a first mover advantage sure, but had already noticed tech and programming were interesting and changing the world. Ycom, as he said, angel investors didn't exist before…

> as he said, angel investors didn't exist before Ycom

Minor nit, but he said that about angel firms, not angel investors.

Re: What I Worked On

#187

Post by boreas »

increscent wrote: post #55

For me the theme of this narrative is that PG always relentlessly pursued what he wanted: AI, art school, Florence, Lisp, etc. He would often find out after pursuing those things that he didn't really want them, but that was helpful feedback. I'm usually stuck wanting things but not pursuing them so I don't know if I would really want them. It seems better to take initiative and go for it.

This is why I found this essay very interesting but not very useful. I don't have trouble identifying interests, I have trouble pursuing them with the intensity of a PG. I don't mean this as a criticism at all. I don't think it would be possible to write an essay that would solve this problem.

Re: What I Worked On

#188

Post by rjbwork »

mdorazio wrote: post #170

This is a well-written essay even if it's a bit long and somewhat navel-gazing (it is, after all, written for pg himself). However, I was continuously struck by just how ridiculously privileged and serendipitous pg's early life was to the point where I just can't even relate to it. He basically meandered his way from an expensive (today) college to an even more expensive (today) grad school, then to art school becaus…

Yeah this is what struck me as well. I and a number of my compatriots in high school had the ability to go to very prestigious institutions, but only a couple of us did - largely those from the worst off families economically as they were given full scholarships. None completed their degrees there however. The life of someone that privileged is pretty hard to relate to indeed, and that coming from someone who considers himself rather privileged in the first place.

Re: What I Worked On

#189

Post by codazoda »

probe wrote: post #160

> "How should I choose what to do? Well, how had I chosen what to work on in the past? I wrote an essay for myself to answer that question, and I was surprised how long and messy the answer turned out to be. If this surprised me, who'd lived it, then I thought perhaps it would be interesting to other people, and encouraging to those with similarly messy lives. So I wrote a more detailed version for others to read, an…

I also find this a lovely way to write. It's much easier to write to yourself than to someone else.

Re: What I Worked On

#190

Post by zozbot234 »

mdorazio wrote: post #170

This is a well-written essay even if it's a bit long and somewhat navel-gazing (it is, after all, written for pg himself). However, I was continuously struck by just how ridiculously privileged and serendipitous pg's early life was to the point where I just can't even relate to it. He basically meandered his way from an expensive (today) college to an even more expensive (today) grad school, then to art school becaus…

> For people who don't think luck is one of the biggest factors of success, just read this essay.

Luck has always been the biggest factor of success in "superstar", high-visibility, bubble-powered fields. You don't hear about all the people who weren't similarly lucky.

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