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What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

paulgraham.com

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Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#311

Post by jschwartzi »

cgag wrote: post #176
stegosaurus wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an addition to this, I've struggled a lot with the concept of working for pay and only recently could I really begin to explain why. Some people would probably call it 'entitlement', but I'm not really sure that's an accurate description. As an employee, your role is essentially a permanent state of brown nosing. First of all you must convince a rich person/company that you are worthy. Then you must convince them…

I feel this way so strongly. "Why do you want to work for us?" Because I have to sell my labor to pay my landlord for a place to sleep. I'm passionate about a few things, but none of them include being told what to do, then having someone take a large cut out of the value I produce. Edit: I'm currently researching alternatives to traditional corporations, like worker owned cooperatives. If you or anyone reading this…

I always think "Because I need money to survive," followed by "and your project seems like it would look good on a resume for when I apply for a new job in 3 or 4 years because you're not paying me enough anymore." Then I say "I'm excited for the opportunity to develop this product." I never told them "why" I'm excited. I only told them that I am, which is all that they really want to hear.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#312

Post by nbouscal »

swatow wrote: post #296
nbouscal wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, you can definitely do that example in Haskell – if by Haskell you mean GHC. GHC has been slowly but surely adding dependently-typed features for quite some time now, which will culminate in a proper DependentTypes pragma sometime soon (for some meaning of soon, anyway). There are a lot of other differences between Haskell and Idris, though. Totality is a pretty big thing, and Idris is also strict by default. It…

I'm somewhat new to the field, so this might not be properly phrased, but isn't totality an inherent part of full dependent types?

I'm not an expert, but I wouldn't think so. To me, full dependent types just means you have pi and sigma types. I don't see anything fundamental about pi and sigma types that would prevent you from having bottom in your language, or from allowing users to define partial functions.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#314

Post by ar_turnbull »

frevd wrote: post #261
TrysterosEmp wrote: post #67

Well this line of reasoning works beautifully for engineers, because solving the types of problems engineers love also HAPPENS to be extremely lucrative. What if acting doesn't feel like work? Playing soccer? Hiking? It's extremely difficult to make money doing these things. "Follow your folly" career advice can work, or it can just make people feel terrible because they realize they're doing things they don't love b…

Besides the finding something that you enjoy part (and given that that makes you good at it) there was this second part - something that is work for somebody else. He probably should have mentioned that there is an implicit third part - finding and convincing somebody to actually pay you for doing this work, plus a fourth issue - the competition. However, there are careers in soccer, not sure about hiking though, tha…

It may not be the most lucrative business for the person who loves hiking, but somebody has to write the guidebook.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#316

Post by tutufan »

pjbrunet wrote: post #294
dxbydt wrote: post #38

This excerpt - "what he really liked was solving problems. The text of each chapter was just some advice about solving them. He said that as soon as he got a new textbook he'd immediately work out all the problems—to the slight annoyance of his teacher, since the class was supposed to work through the book gradually." is literally me. I did that. Every year at my school I did exactly that. Once I actually turned in m…

"I secretly hate programming, debugging, programmers, git, the whole enterprise - just seems so stupid & futile." Git seems like an evolutionary step tovards something more intuitive and efficient.

I would say truly _revolutionary_. A spectacularly useful tool.

And yet, there is something to Devops Borat's quip that in 1990 entire Internet fits in head, but in 2012, just git no longer fits in head. (paraphrased)

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#317

Post by tutufan »

ritchiea wrote: post #3

Ugh I hate stuff like this. Sometimes programming feels like work, sometimes it doesn't. I write, I make art. A lot of people wouldn't consider either of those real work. Yet sometimes each activity feels like work, other times the activity feels great and feels like something I could do forever uninterupted. Virtually all of the time you find something you enjoy, even if someone else thinks it's work, there will be…

Not particularly a PG fan, but I think that ("trite/useless") might be a bit harsh. If trite means obvious, well, that sort of thing wasn't obvious to me early in my career, and even now after decades, it's hard to keep advice like this firmly in mind.

I, too, hope that your friend is able to find a happy niche for himself.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#318

Post by tutufan »

rabbyte wrote: post #11

Is it common for programmers to dislike debugging? I'm stunned. I never considered the possibility, it's always been something I enjoyed. I don't believe it impacts you either way in terms of capability but I imagine it impacts your desire to continue.

It depends. I enjoy it as long as it's moving the ball forward. But if the people producing the stream of bugs won't take obvious steps to squelch the flow (or at least not stop me from doing so), it can be a maddening and Sisyphean task.

Re: What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

#320

Post by tutufan »

duderific wrote: post #37

Funny he used the example of popping zits as something that most people don't enjoy. I rather enjoy popping a nice juicy zit on the occasion that I get one - it's quite cathartic. I wonder if I can make a career of it.

Watched a couple, in their 30s, doing this on the subway the other day. She was sitting in his lap, going at his face, for the length of my ride (10-15 minutes). Guess I should be happy for them... :-/
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