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Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

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Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#41

Post by rickdale »

_halgari wrote: post #9

It's funny to see this stuff go full-circle. My parents left the city in the early 90's to move to a small WI farm in the middle of nowhere (15min to get to a town of 5000 people). I can see the appeal of a simpler life. But the funny thing is, as a kid, I hated it. My parents got tired of the suburbs, I longed for it. They longed for simplicity, I longed for convenience. I hated the idea of having to drive long dist…

I live in the country. Most of the year I can get food from farms that are located less than 2 miles from me, all on my street. It's phenomenal. The closest decent grocery store is an hour plus, so its nice to be able to get stuff from neighbors and it makes you eat healthy.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#42

Post by maxerickson »

jerf wrote: post #33

Yesterday I posted a comment about being careful about how we try to bring people into programming and making sure that we encourage people to openly and honestly examine themselves for whether this is something they want to do, and not just thoughtlessly grease the slide into "programming" for everybody. [1] This is the sort of thing I meant. Dig back into the first post and it's clear that this person was very inte…

There's huge benefits from people understanding clearly what sort of tasks computers are good at (and not). Or at least, having reasonable awareness of the subset of tasks that computers are obviously good at (you know, stuff like copying a piece of information into 3 different places).

I think this is sort of what many people are reaching for when they start babbling about teaching everybody to program (I guess many people calling for teaching everybody to program may not really understand it themselves).

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#43

Post by steego »

shasta wrote: post #31
Ygg2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. The longer the distance traveled the more you buy per trip. It's universal foraging behavior.

That explains why the mega store doesn't want a local shop but not why there is no local shop.

Many Americans don't see the value in a local shop because local shops tend to be more expensive and offer fewer choices. It's easier to consolidate your errands and hit a big grocery store and a big box store.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#44

Post by ryandrake »

shasta wrote: post #31
Ygg2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. The longer the distance traveled the more you buy per trip. It's universal foraging behavior.

That explains why the mega store doesn't want a local shop but not why there is no local shop.

Combination of zoning ordinances keeping shops away from residential areas and shops not being able to compete on price against the mega stores' huge economies of scale.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#45

Post by kokey »

_halgari wrote: post #9

It's funny to see this stuff go full-circle. My parents left the city in the early 90's to move to a small WI farm in the middle of nowhere (15min to get to a town of 5000 people). I can see the appeal of a simpler life. But the funny thing is, as a kid, I hated it. My parents got tired of the suburbs, I longed for it. They longed for simplicity, I longed for convenience. I hated the idea of having to drive long dist…

I can relate, though we lived on the edge of a town of 8000 people but it was 3 hours drive to a city and this was in South Africa. I hated it, I loved visiting the city. I moved to the city as soon as I could, and moved to bigger cities and other countries. That said the appeal of living in the countryside would always tempt me. Recently I was working remotely, so we decided to move to a nice big house in the country, outside of a village of a few hundred people. It was nice, but remote and lonely and after 6 months we're happy to be back in a city again, in a well connected part of a city where we can easily choose between going into the city centre or being outside of the city.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#46

Post by tjic »

This is funny ; I moved from the Cambridge MA area to a 50 acre farm in rural NH a year ago. I could identify the brand of tractor and livestock nipples from the pictures.

Everything in this article is 100% accurate, based on my own experiences of the last 15 months.

Anyway, time to stop surfing news.yc and go check in on the pigs, then get back to building the greenhouse.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#47

Post by maxsilver »

philbarr wrote: post #22
torrent-of-ions wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in the suburbs and hated it. I hated the idea of having to go long distances to get milk and eggs. I'm happy now in a city centre.

I never understood that about America. I've been lost in the suburbs in Michigan once, driving along for ages with just house after house after house, and thinking, "where's the local shop?" Surely it's got to be worth someone setting up a local shop every couple of miles?

It's usually heavily frowned upon to setup a local shop in Michigan like that, and sometimes illegal.

Retail creates undesirable traffic and crime (at least, that's their common assumption). The suburbs fight hard to keep that as far away from residential areas as possible.

Sometimes they push this to the logical extreme conclusion -- zoning commercial spaces almost exclusively at the edge of their limits.

Here's examples of the actual zoning permitted in Kentwood and Grandville, (suburbs of Grand Rapids, Michigan).

http://www.ci.kentwood.mi.us/CityOfKentwood/media/files/orig...

http://www.cityofgrandville.com/images/pdf/Zoning%20Map%20Ap...

On both maps, you'll see almost all of the red (commercial) areas are near various edge boundaries, and there's little-to-no commercial activity allowed near any central neighborhood(s).

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#48

Post by ryandrake »

I don't know--good for this guy, but there's no way I'd do it. I got into technology in order to avoid a life of back-breaking manual labor. When I was a kid I had to go help bail hay on a farm, and then graduated to assisting my father doing construction jobs. Nailing shingles to a roof under the sun all day in the middle of the summer is great motivation to go for that job in an air conditioned office.

Re: Death of a Programmer, Life of a Farmer

#49

Post by narrator »

mtbcoder wrote: post #37
philbarr wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood that about America. I've been lost in the suburbs in Michigan once, driving along for ages with just house after house after house, and thinking, "where's the local shop?" Surely it's got to be worth someone setting up a local shop every couple of miles?

In the Midwest, suburbs are designed and developed around the car and the "local shops" are generally located in a series of strip malls off the major roads. On the coasts and in denser populated areas, there seems to be a renewed push for more walk-able areas, public transit and such though.

I'll tell you the real, but awful, reason why we have such restrictive zoning in the U.S. The idea behind zoning is to make sure that different classes and races don't have to see each other if they don't want to. Putting commercial retail in a residential area would give outsiders an excuse to be there. The whole "white flight" from the cities has left it's mark on zoning ever since the 1960s. IMHO, this is also the reason for really bad public transit.
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