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The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything

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Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything

#201

Post by matheusmoreira »

figassis wrote: post #25

I too suffer from this, but as I learned, Nature built an elegant solution to this. Have a family and kids. Your choice when you have time off of work will be reduced to hacking or playing with your child that you have been neglecting due to a crunch at work. You’re welcome.

Indeed. Marriage alone led to a complete reevaluation of my priorities in life. I still want to make cool stuff but my hobbies are so far down my list of priorities right now I would have to be actually getting paid in order to justify spending time on stuff.

Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything

#202

Post by ajuc »

XCSme wrote: post #137
erulabs wrote: post #42

Software engineers, I love yall. To see the light at the end of the tunnel. To see some glorious perfect paradigm that maybe could be. I envy you. I grew up in a datacenter. Leaky air conditioners and diesel generators. Open the big doors if it gets too hot. Now let’s go back. Back to when we didn’t know better. Software doesn’t stay solved. Every solution you write starts to rot the moment it exists. Everything, eve…

> Software doesn’t stay solved. Every solution you write starts to rot the moment it exists. I don't really agree with this. Yes, it gets outdated quickly and breaks often if you build it in such a way that it relies on many external services. Stuff like relying on "number-is-odd" NPM package instead of copy-pasting the code or implementing it yourself. The more dependencies you have, the more likely it will break. I…

I remember when Turbo Pascal 7.0 programs started failing with Division by 0 error cause Turbo Pascal runtime does calibration loop at the start to calculate how many no-ops to sleep for 1 millisecond.

So - your HelloWorld written 10 years ago suddenly stopped working after CPU you run it on got too fast.

Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything

#204

Post by jurgenaut23 »

diggan wrote: post #167
jurgenaut23 wrote: post #164

> Burnout does not just come from overwork. It comes from overresponsibility. I don't _think_ it is accurate. I think burnout comes from putting energy into things that don't have meaning. Case in point, this article: as you realize that fixing everything is a never-ending game with marginal ROI, you end up burning out. If overresponsibility alone caused burn out, I think that every parent out there would be impacted…

> I think burnout comes from putting energy into things that don't have meaning. That'd mean that people who are burned out all did so because they did stuff that didn't have meaning? Ultimately, I think you can get burned out regardless of how meaningful it is or isn't. People working at hospitals (just as one example) have probably some of the most meaningful jobs, yet burn out frequently regardless. More likely th…

I'd argue it actually makes things worse. When you can have a higher-purpose job (an ICU or ER nurse who is saving patient's life everyday) and you're spending most of energy on administrative overhead, the effect is just magnified.

Meaning is a subjective thing. That's why some people thrive in some environments and some may burn out. If you put your average IRS auditor in a hospital, they might actually find more meaning in filling forms than exchanging with patients.

Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything

#205

Post by tdpvb »

VladVladikoff wrote: post #196
pmarreck wrote: post #159

Oh wow. This hits hard in the feels. Here's my personal submission for "UI problem that has existed for years on touch interfaces, plus a possible solution, but at this point I'm just shouting into the void": https://medium.com/@pmarreck/the-most-annoying-ui-problem-r3... In short, an interface should not be interactable until a few milliseconds after it has finished (re)rendering, or especially, while it is still in…

This has a name, it’s called CLS (cumulative layout shift) and Google actually penalizes SERP rankings for pages with bad CLS. More info on it on lighthouse.dev (if I recall the domain correctly).

Google is an annoying example! Especially on mobile the search bar shifts around between mainpage, search field edit-mode, and results page, but shifts only a half second after loading a static version. End up clicking into a blank new search page because the doodle jumps to right under your fingertip.

Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything

#206

Post by matheusmoreira »

This resonates so much. It's always nice to see I'm not alone.

I believe computer programming is the closest humanity has ever come to godhood. We're creating entire universes out of unstructured bits. It's addicting. I feel this deep need to remake everything in my own image, to have the entire system reflect my own understanding.

I often feel like I'm insane for thinking there's a better way. Surely someone much smarter than me would have thought of it, right? I must be stupid and missing some crucial fact that proves me wrong. Then I do it and it actually fucking works. What a rush.

I only regret the fact I'm a mere mortal with just one lifetime and whose days have just 24 hours which must be carefully allocated. Real gods have infinite time and are capable of infinite effort. Just look at the universe. It's a deep religious realization.

> Your once-perfect tool breaks silently because libfoo.so is now libfoo.so.2.

... Solution: get rid of libfoo and do it yourself. Now when it breaks you only have yourself to blame.

Yeah, I know... At some point it becomes pathological. It can still be an immensely fun activity if you're curious and have way too much free time on your hands.

> Sometimes, it’s OK to just use the thing.

Also okay to just complain. No, you don't actually need to send in the damn pull request. It's alright.

Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything

#207

Post by mjevans »

pmarreck wrote: post #159

Oh wow. This hits hard in the feels. Here's my personal submission for "UI problem that has existed for years on touch interfaces, plus a possible solution, but at this point I'm just shouting into the void": https://medium.com/@pmarreck/the-most-annoying-ui-problem-r3... In short, an interface should not be interactable until a few milliseconds after it has finished (re)rendering, or especially, while it is still in…

If a user is interacting, DO NOT UPDATE the list / models / etc.

If an update is required, rather than just desired, freeze all input so the user knows it's about to update, this might be accompanied by a quick 'fade' or other color shift to indicate an update is about to be pushed and they should release and re-plan actions.

Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything

#208

Post by ziml77 »

warp wrote: post #191
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sheer amount is zero with an ad blocker enabled. I consider UBO basically mandatory for browsing the web in 2025, too many sites are unusable and infuriating without it.

I had two popups visiting that medium link with uBlock Origin. Perhaps it is possible to get zero with UBO, but default settings don't seem to be enough.

I think you need to enable the Easy List Annoyances filters.

Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything

#209

Post by XCSme »

ajuc wrote: post #202
XCSme wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software doesn’t stay solved. Every solution you write starts to rot the moment it exists. I don't really agree with this. Yes, it gets outdated quickly and breaks often if you build it in such a way that it relies on many external services. Stuff like relying on "number-is-odd" NPM package instead of copy-pasting the code or implementing it yourself. The more dependencies you have, the more likely it will break. I…

I remember when Turbo Pascal 7.0 programs started failing with Division by 0 error cause Turbo Pascal runtime does calibration loop at the start to calculate how many no-ops to sleep for 1 millisecond. So - your HelloWorld written 10 years ago suddenly stopped working after CPU you run it on got too fast.

Yes, if you change hardware, the software can break (a lot less often now than before though, as hardware changes are a negligible and they usually think about backwards compatibility).

Re: The curse of knowing how, or; fixing everything

#210

Post by Onawa »

warp wrote: post #191
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sheer amount is zero with an ad blocker enabled. I consider UBO basically mandatory for browsing the web in 2025, too many sites are unusable and infuriating without it.

I had two popups visiting that medium link with uBlock Origin. Perhaps it is possible to get zero with UBO, but default settings don't seem to be enough.

OP might also be using a list like the "Anti-adblock Filter". You also might want to explore the settings of UBO as there are more lists titled "Annoyances" that you can enable to shut out further garbage.

https://reek.github.io/anti-adblock-killer/

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