Reading Joseph Albahari's Threading in C#. Must read for .Net Developer.
Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
441–450 of 839 posts
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#442The idea that your mind is not you . That "thinking", as a process, is just a tool of your body, just like eyesight, for example. Listening to meditation and mindfulness practitioners like Jon Kobat-Zinn and Eckhart Tolle, I found it absolutely groundbreaking, for myself, to realize that the mind is an instrument that needs training and tuning, and sometimes can lead you astray, and can't be trusted unconditionally.…
Related : you are more what you do than what you think. What you think mostly comes from what you do, and that determines who you are; act more, think less. Do things, don't overthink it.
This reminded me of Revealed Preference Theory[1], which is about observing consumer choices, but the idea is broadly summed up as "It is not what you say, it is what you do that reveals what you want." or who you are.
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#443"Premature optimization is the root of all evil" More and more, I'm realizing this applies more broadly than just for code. Abstraction is a form of optimization and shouldn't be done before the space has been properly explored to know what abstractions should be built. Standardization is a form of optimization and shouldn't be proposed until there's a body of evidence to support what's being standardized. Failure to…
Proof of value vs Proof of concept.
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#444Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot o…
I watched Ira’s video probably 9 or 10 years ago. And while I didn’t notice it back then, this message had a huge impact on me and resonated heavily with my world view over the years, serving as a great motivational driver on my most challenging times.
The funny thing is, as time went by and I valued this lesson more and more, I couldn’t, for the life of me, find this video again, nor the author of the quote. I remember going on lengthy google sessions trying to find it back, but failed hard every time, to a point I thought I had dreamed of it, or that it was lost for good.
And here it is, 10 years later, on HN, and we meet again. Finally!
Thanks for posting this.
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#445Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot o…
> All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste Like saying “How bout them Cowboys” at a club in Dallas. Everybody wants to think they have good taste and everybody wants to be told they have good taste. Of all the people who read that quote and nod along thinking, “yes this is me” how many are actually right?
Most likely: all of them. Most people have above average taste in some subject they are, for whatever reason, overly interested in. And you can't really judge this based on how good they are now or will be because that doesn't say anything about their taste just their current ability.
It's kinda like your example. No one in Dallas really thinks the Cowboys are any good. Not anymore. It's just something mildly amusing you can say. In fact the comment is rooted in being obviously tasteless. It's just the local team that was really good way back when. Those with taste may recognize that Romo was actually good or that he's made a good commentator but no one actually thinks the Cowboys are or were good since their heyday. (Though honestly I don't know or care about the team. I'm basing this on listening to sports people.)
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#446This sentence from Fight Club has had a long lasting impact on me: "The things you own, end up owning you".
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#447Rust's "borrow checker" https://doc.rust-lang.org/1.8.0/book/references-and-borrowin...
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#448One thing that’s been super meaningful for me is the notion that if you don’t put something into words, either in speech or in your head or on paper, you don’t know anything about it, even if it’s a feeling or a belief or an intuition deep within you that you’ve held for as long as you can remember. The act of simply putting a thought into words makes it immediately obvious to you if you really understand it or not,…
Well, it's been said the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else.
But you're right. Just making a presentation for nobody is a great way to learn something on many levels.
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#449I’m still only somewhat recently down this particular path, but it’s proven to be one of the more profound realizations I can remember:
You can’t guilt yourself into doing things you want to accomplish. You’ll always resist and make excuses. The only way is to enjoy the act of doing them.
Fighting procrastination, whether by guilt or rewards, is a losing game. Instead, cultivate an appreciation of the task you’re resisting, however complex or banal it may be. Learn to enjoy the micro-accomplishments of each moment. Instead of the dopamine hit of procrastination, train yourself on the dopamine trickle of sustained action.
It’s not an all-at-once change, but for me, at least, it’s had a very concrete effect so far.
Re: Ask HN: Name one idea that changed your life
#450if it's only one, then it is the idea that "the word creates objects", or that "creating a word, makes the object", and the power of language
for example, you can take some time to study a language, until it becomes impossible for you to not understand it when you perceive it, it becomes a part of you, of both your cognitive self and your subconscious, and you can encapsulate all of that, saying that "you grok the language"
you can also see this in a lot of places, instead of "the study of the properties of matter in relation to heat and temperature", you can say "thermodynamics", and you instantly convey a lot of meaning
and this has "given me" some moments where "a lot of pieces fall into place", like understanding that a less general version of this, is the Abstraction taught at CS classes, where it is about computational systems, and hiding implementation details, rather than the more general idea of encapsulating the understanding complex ideas, in short sentences (or words)
it's the title of an Essay I had to read in high school, when I read it, rather than the message it was supposed to convey, which is how language gave women a lesser standing in society, I got really interested in the title, in Spanish it's "La palabra crea objetos"
there are also others, like how "you don't really have to do anything, other than deal with the consequences of your decision to do, or not do something", you don't have to eat, but if you don't, you have to deal with the consequences, it gave me a more concrete feeling that that our choices shape our lives
and how everything is connected, in the way that when there was a terrorist attack in NY, thousands of miles away, in another country the price of fish and shrimp dramatically drops, in that the space station's parts were influenced by the Roman Empire, and in that war has driven a lot of the development of science and technology