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Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon

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Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon

#21

Post by a_a_r_o_n »

mahmoudimus wrote: post #4

Thanks for this! Lots of wisdom here. This one particularly rings very true: "Only way to get a product visionary as the CEO of a company is to start it and not get fired." From the same part in the article, "None of the existing players will – not run by product visionaries." Later elaborated on as: "just have to be better than samsung, hp, motorola – not so hard" Doesn't this in itself bring an interesting question…

Size makes it impossible. If you've ever worked at a sizable company then you understand this, if not explicitly. The work of an employee becomes more and more to integrate with the machine, and less and less to think independently and innovatively. Follow the procedures. Know what forms are needed. Know who's buyoff is needed for what. Go to the break room when there's donuts celebrating the release of R145.8.

The best a large company can hope for is a skunkworks.

Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon

#22

Post by YooLi »

Is this available in video format? I can't help but think reading this is taking something out of context or missing information. Quick glance:

1. dinosaur egg – make a search engine that all the hackers use. (top 10,000). - Like Google Code Search? That didn't turn out too well.

2. inbox is a todo list. email is the protocol for putting stuff on it. - What? I use email to converse with people, not to list what I need to do. Occasionally I will send myself a reminder mail with a list of TODOs, but my email inbox is definitely not a todo list.

5. his friend from apple: there will be no new good stuff post-steve jobs. - Is his friend Tim Cook? Isn't Apple famous for secrecy even inside Apple or do all 9000+ employees in Cupertino know what's in the pipeline?

Etc.

Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon

#23

Post by a_a_r_o_n »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #14

A nitpick: don’t try to identify a precise thing in the future. better model: columbus. “there’s something west. i’ll sail westward”. I bristle at seeing Colombus propped up as a model. The guy was wrong (he thought the earth was smaller than it actually was, so attempted to sail west as a shorter route to the East Indies), wrong (he discovered the Carribeans, not mainland America), wrong (he still thought he found t…

The guy was more right than the flat earthers, and his acting trumped any amount of right or wrong.

Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon

#24

Post by sgrove »

coffeemug wrote: post #19
hallnoates wrote: post #17

> dinosaur egg – make a search engine that all the hackers use. (top 10,000). don’t worry about doing something constraining in the short term, because if you don’t succeed in the short term there won’t be a long term Umm, search is just fine thank you. I could not survive without Google currently. The only thing I don't like about them is the lack of good customer support and the way they tend to develop unintuitive…

> inbox is a todo list. No it isn't. It's a method of asynchronous communication and file transfer. If you're using it as a TODO list, you're doing it wrong. That means most business users of e-mail are doing it wrong. Take a sample of heavy e-mail users (managers, sales people, marketing, etc.) and ten out of ten will tell you that they're inundated by e-mail, and that it is a defacto todo list. E-mail is a giant pr…

> don't be a cynic, be a builder.

Beautifully put.

Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon

#25

Post by pnathan »

larsberg wrote: post #5

Curious point: > replace universities > heading down wrong path last couple decades. not fun for students or professors. Is that (fun part) generally true? I'm in my thirties, and I certainly had lots of fun at my previous job (MSFT, on developer tools), but none of it compared with either my undergraduate or Ph.D. student experiences. That also seems to be true for most of my colleagues and friends --- who have done…

There are a number of problems in academia. I'll throw out a few, just as discussion points.

* Pay disparity between professor and industry; if you optimize for money, you go more industry.

* Papers are a key metric of success, not actual results (Which are hard to quantify)

* Defunding of public universities

* Rising cost of education vs. inflation or cost of living

* Students loans leaving graduates (and non-graduates) in heinous amounts of debt. It's very hard to pay your way through school now with a part-time low-wage job.

* Worsening average quality of incoming students causes higher burden on instructors and institutions

* Increasing amount of specialization; liberal arts majors can be very smart and have broad understanding, but get shafted because paying for on-the-job training is expensive.

* Training vs. education wars.

* Entitlement issues: "I paid for this course, I should get an A".

As usual, the cream is at the top, and can bring in enough money to keep things going, and can select on more than the ability to pay tuition.

Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon

#26

Post by anateus »

YooLi wrote: post #22

Is this available in video format? I can't help but think reading this is taking something out of context or missing information. Quick glance: 1. dinosaur egg – make a search engine that all the hackers use. (top 10,000). - Like Google Code Search? That didn't turn out too well. 2. inbox is a todo list. email is the protocol for putting stuff on it. - What? I use email to converse with people, not to list what I nee…

Going to address only #2: My understanding is that what he means is that even a social totally "conversational" message is a todo item of "read me". Less "frivolous" emails tend to either contains direct action items or imply action items that must be taken.

PG wishes that aspect be more explicit in order to gain more control over it.

Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon

#28

Post by patrickod »

YooLi wrote: post #22

Is this available in video format? I can't help but think reading this is taking something out of context or missing information. Quick glance: 1. dinosaur egg – make a search engine that all the hackers use. (top 10,000). - Like Google Code Search? That didn't turn out too well. 2. inbox is a todo list. email is the protocol for putting stuff on it. - What? I use email to converse with people, not to list what I nee…

https://twitter.com/jessenoller/statuses/173365958767935490 According to Jesse Noller the talks are being recorded

Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon

#29

Post by [deleted] »

YooLi wrote: post #22

Is this available in video format? I can't help but think reading this is taking something out of context or missing information. Quick glance: 1. dinosaur egg – make a search engine that all the hackers use. (top 10,000). - Like Google Code Search? That didn't turn out too well. 2. inbox is a todo list. email is the protocol for putting stuff on it. - What? I use email to converse with people, not to list what I nee…

[deleted]

Re: Paul Graham Keynote at PyCon

#30

Post by jarek »

a_a_r_o_n wrote: post #23
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #14

A nitpick: don’t try to identify a precise thing in the future. better model: columbus. “there’s something west. i’ll sail westward”. I bristle at seeing Colombus propped up as a model. The guy was wrong (he thought the earth was smaller than it actually was, so attempted to sail west as a shorter route to the East Indies), wrong (he discovered the Carribeans, not mainland America), wrong (he still thought he found t…

The guy was more right than the flat earthers, and his acting trumped any amount of right or wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth
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