Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The happiest I've ever been

ben-mini.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 402 posts

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#191

Post by daxfohl »

jebarker wrote: post #39

Personally I want to have my cake and eat it here. Tech has amazing potential to make the world a better place to live in and genuinely bring people together. The crowning achievement of AI so far to me is not Claude Code, it’s AlphaFold. I find the documentary DM released about developing it inspiring both as a technology story but also a team achieving things together that make the world better. I want to see more…

Yeah, hopefully an outgrowth of this will be new amazing applications like that, that we never could've dreamed of before. I imagine "distributed services" will be "solved" by EOY, and the days of glorified CRUD app coders making 200K straight out of college are over for good.

But I think there will be new opportunities for people who are willing and able to learn. Entirely new fields will pop up and somebody will have to work on them. Most likely, the CS grads who are out of a job, or just frustrated and want to do something else.

So I don't think the opportunity to do innovative things and make a difference in the world is gone. But the opportunity to do so by typing code into a text editor may have breathed its last.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#192

Post by guhidalg »

layer8 wrote: post #166
signatoremo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI helps you to focus on the aspects that you are interested in. Perhaps you care about database nifty stuff, but you may need the front end to make an end to end solution. You can delegate that part to AI

What if you care about all the parts?

You don’t, there’s always a choice about what to include and what to exclude in your system.

Unless you are hand selecting every atom that goes into a thing (maybe you make nuclear weapons?), you always make choices about what you focus on and what is irrelevant to your project.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#193

Post by deaux »

Aeolun wrote: post #132
tap-snap-or-nap wrote: post #127

We are just priced out of having this type of happiness due to high cost of living in a first world urban environment.

Every single environment that has a critical mass of people will have an elementary and middle school. How could you possibly be priced out of this?

This entire concept doesn't exist in much of the world. The incredible prevalence of intramural sports, and the seriousness of it, at all kinds of age groups is a very US phenomenon. Let alone random neighborhood people coaching teams.

In most of the world it's more club-based rather than school-based, and that's quite different.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#194

Post by daxfohl »

lr4444lr wrote: post #147

As someone who taught kids in person and fell into a deep depression with how Kafkaesque that job was and then found so much more gratification as a SWE, all I can say is, the author's experience is not universal. (And I am a parent, so it's not about disliking kids.) I will say though that remote work is definitely dystopia. I need an office and the presence of people physically.

Thanks for saying that! I was worried I was the only one. I mean, I'm glad I tried it, but I was happy to get back to a little more determinism in my day to day.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#195

Post by jimbokun »

whaleidk wrote: post #68
nvarsj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s an entire generation of mostly childless adults who are shocked to find they enjoy contributing to others’ happiness. I have friends like this, their only purpose in life is to have no responsibilities, FIRE, and never give to anyone but themselves. Seems like a terribly depressing way to live but pretty common in tech/upper middle class circles.

People who want to be childless usually champion the importance of building strong community through friends and neighbors, just because they don’t want kids doesn’t mean they don’t want to contribute to others’ happiness lol. People wanting FIRE is a lot more to do with the current economy and wealth of useless or harmful jobs than kids

They really don’t.

They just post about how important those things are online but not doing much about it.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#196

Post by boca_honey »

asdfe3r343 wrote: post #160
nvarsj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s an entire generation of mostly childless adults who are shocked to find they enjoy contributing to others’ happiness. I have friends like this, their only purpose in life is to have no responsibilities, FIRE, and never give to anyone but themselves. Seems like a terribly depressing way to live but pretty common in tech/upper middle class circles.

Sure why not get trapped youself with responsibilities and work your life off making rich people even richer.

That's just childish. Eventually you'll have to learn responsibilities (towards other people) are a privilege and necessary for a full life. You'll just keep getting (more) bitter and lonely until you understand that.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#197

Post by jimbokun »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #140
nvarsj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s an entire generation of mostly childless adults who are shocked to find they enjoy contributing to others’ happiness. I have friends like this, their only purpose in life is to have no responsibilities, FIRE, and never give to anyone but themselves. Seems like a terribly depressing way to live but pretty common in tech/upper middle class circles.

No one chooses to be born. Once they are, they may find that procreation is impossible for them or just not something they'll do well or even want. None of these is necessarily depressing. We have no shortage of humans, so there's no need to try to shame the childless. Nor those who focus on themselves.

We are on course to have far more elderly people than young people.

A global retirement community without even any grandkids to visit them strikes me as a depressing dystopian future.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#198

Post by jimbokun »

bengale wrote: post #62
nvarsj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s an entire generation of mostly childless adults who are shocked to find they enjoy contributing to others’ happiness. I have friends like this, their only purpose in life is to have no responsibilities, FIRE, and never give to anyone but themselves. Seems like a terribly depressing way to live but pretty common in tech/upper middle class circles.

Yeah, and I do get it to some extent. Everything about having a child seems burdensome and hard. Turns out it's doesn't feel anything like that and I can't think of anything I'd rather be doing. I wouldn't swap with another person on this planet.

Yeah kids are often more interesting and insightful and fun than adults. It’s wonderful to have their refreshing perspectives in your life.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#199

Post by jimbokun »

RGamma wrote: post #78
nvarsj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s an entire generation of mostly childless adults who are shocked to find they enjoy contributing to others’ happiness. I have friends like this, their only purpose in life is to have no responsibilities, FIRE, and never give to anyone but themselves. Seems like a terribly depressing way to live but pretty common in tech/upper middle class circles.

Childlessness seems to be an increasingly compassionate choice. Degrowth by force.

No choice is more selfish and misanthropic.

Re: The happiest I've ever been

#200

Post by jimbokun »

anal_reactor wrote: post #123
nvarsj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s an entire generation of mostly childless adults who are shocked to find they enjoy contributing to others’ happiness. I have friends like this, their only purpose in life is to have no responsibilities, FIRE, and never give to anyone but themselves. Seems like a terribly depressing way to live but pretty common in tech/upper middle class circles.

The problem though is that relationships with others are risky. When I look at my social circle about half of my friends express some kind of regret related to their marriages. Call me an entitled prick, but I honestly believe that 90% of people are liquid crap. I realized that in order to have a good social life I need to filter very hard who I hang out with. Even if I could reproduce by budding, this is not an envi…

Let me guess: you are somehow NOT part of the “liquid crap” category?
Post reply on HN