Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Be prolific

chrismytton.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 134 posts

Re: Be prolific

#51

Post by jlangemeier »

throw149102 wrote: post #34

I realize this is a silly criticism, but it's strange that the author would write about how it's valuable to make a lot of stuff but then to only write 11 sentences about the topic. It seems like it would be much better way to demonstrate the point if the author wrote 100 pages about producing more work/art/code, without any rhyme or reason or editing. After all, the thesis is "Quantity leads to quality", why not jus…

As one of my martial arts sensai said:

"Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect."

But we're probably splitting hairs that a reasonable person would understand don't need splitting by looking at the whole piece, which can be boiled down to: "Make lots and seek feedback more."

Re: Be prolific

#52

Post by matsemann »

Insanity wrote: post #2

It's the same with software I imagine, because of several reasons. 1. Writing more code (and being conscious of it) makes you a better engineer. You'll run into more issues that you will fix and, hopefully, remember. 2. If you'd take the art example and say "Paint 20 cubist pieces", and then transfer that to "Write 20 authentication servers", each iteration you'll benefit from what you learned and be able to 'clean u…

One software concept where it's applicable is game programming. Lots of people have their dream/pet project they spend years on tweaking and making all these features for, but the underlying game mechanic just isn't... fun enough, I guess? But making lots of small games (at game jams or so) one can discover great concepts, and then nail those.

Re: Be prolific

#53

Post by saberdancer »

ajuc wrote: post #48
meheleventyone wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a different idea though. Rather the whole point here is that when learning it's better to focus on quantity over quality AND by doing so that quality will naturally be better. The parent is looking for examples of this latter idea.

If you consider version n+1 of your software a new product - it's the same idea. This is basically agile vs waterfall.

But if you threw away all the code after each version, I doubt you'd get much done. Sure the code might be perfect, but you can do only so much in a short timeframe.

Perhaps it would be best to iterate fast early on in the project, throw away a couple of weeks with PoCs and then go for the big one.

Re: Be prolific

#54

Post by meheleventyone »

ajuc wrote: post #48
meheleventyone wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a different idea though. Rather the whole point here is that when learning it's better to focus on quantity over quality AND by doing so that quality will naturally be better. The parent is looking for examples of this latter idea.

If you consider version n+1 of your software a new product - it's the same idea. This is basically agile vs waterfall.

Starting simple versus starting complex is different than making the same kind of thing repeatedly to refine the act of making it and the end quality.

Iterating on a project is definitely a great way to learn about it, refine how you make it and accrete complexity. So it can but doesn't necessarily have to encompass both ideas.

I also think that whilst it's tempting to stretch the anecdote to fit all sorts of ideas it's particularly unhelpful when trying to discuss the idea it actually references.

Re: Be prolific

#55

Post by ozmbie »

matsemann wrote: post #52
Insanity wrote: post #2

It's the same with software I imagine, because of several reasons. 1. Writing more code (and being conscious of it) makes you a better engineer. You'll run into more issues that you will fix and, hopefully, remember. 2. If you'd take the art example and say "Paint 20 cubist pieces", and then transfer that to "Write 20 authentication servers", each iteration you'll benefit from what you learned and be able to 'clean u…

One software concept where it's applicable is game programming. Lots of people have their dream/pet project they spend years on tweaking and making all these features for, but the underlying game mechanic just isn't... fun enough, I guess? But making lots of small games (at game jams or so) one can discover great concepts, and then nail those.

I’ve worked in the games industry and this is pretty much my advice for people who are interested in it: Just make as many games as you can.

Don’t get hung up on some big new MMORPG game you’ve got in your head. Just start by making Pong, then Space Invaders, then Pac-Man. Then make a dozen small prototypes of your own ideas, each time based on what you’ve learned.

You get practical development experience but more importantly, you learn that iterating and experimenting is where good ideas come from and where bad ideas are discarded.

Re: Be prolific

#56

Post by meheleventyone »

saberdancer wrote: post #47
meheleventyone wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a different idea though. Rather the whole point here is that when learning it's better to focus on quantity over quality AND by doing so that quality will naturally be better. The parent is looking for examples of this latter idea.

I'm mostly interested in the source of the story, it sounds completely fabricated and if it is true, it should be very easy to replicate. But let's take the idea to the extreme, imagine we are building an system, one team starts building and improving on the design for 6 months. Other team builds and starts anew every 2 weeks. Who would have a better system at the end of 6 months? Tough to tell, the iterative one wil…

I don't think it's important for the message if the story is true or made up. It's overthinking things to an extreme.

I also think it's being misapplied when put into a completely different context. Teamwork, not students learning, project that is harder to start again and slower to iterate that way etc. I'm not sure we should consider every piece of advice as being some how completely universal.

We could also overthink it in the other direction. The students themselves could have come to the conclusion that the best way to get quality was lots of practice and made lots of pots or parts of pots until they had perfected pot making and merely presented the final result. Whereas the students that went for quantity merely made a load of crap pots. Same lesson but roles reversed.

Re: Be prolific

#57

Post by li4ick »

ChrisRackauckas wrote: post #11

When teaching mathematics I like to always mention that the greats like Ramanujan, while it seems like they just knew everything from pure thought, they all actually did a ton of work by hand. Ramanujan in particular is known for his fastidious notebooks calculating thousands of digits numbers like pi. From writing out the calculations for hours and days, he'd come up with simplification formulas and develop new insi…

Newton's notebook was published here a while ago. http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-04000/40

There's a ton of work behind the genius. There's no "apple on the head" story, almost never.

Re: Be prolific

#58

Post by enriquto »

li4ick wrote: post #57
ChrisRackauckas wrote: post #11

When teaching mathematics I like to always mention that the greats like Ramanujan, while it seems like they just knew everything from pure thought, they all actually did a ton of work by hand. Ramanujan in particular is known for his fastidious notebooks calculating thousands of digits numbers like pi. From writing out the calculations for hours and days, he'd come up with simplification formulas and develop new insi…

Newton's notebook was published here a while ago. http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-04000/40 There's a ton of work behind the genius. There's no "apple on the head" story, almost never.

Newton was just incredible. The man polished his own lenses for his experiments. This, although there were already professional lens makers in England at the time, and they were better than him. Today, these antics would be dismissed as "bad practice", "reinventing the wheel", "losing two weeks rewriting a stupid lens" or some other corporate bullshit. But his great insights on the nature of light came from the very act of polishing a glass, using finer and finer sand until it becomes transparent when the grain of the sand is half the wavelength of the light.

Re: Be prolific

#59

Post by redis_mlc »

meheleventyone wrote: post #56
saberdancer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm mostly interested in the source of the story, it sounds completely fabricated and if it is true, it should be very easy to replicate. But let's take the idea to the extreme, imagine we are building an system, one team starts building and improving on the design for 6 months. Other team builds and starts anew every 2 weeks. Who would have a better system at the end of 6 months? Tough to tell, the iterative one wil…

I don't think it's important for the message if the story is true or made up. It's overthinking things to an extreme. I also think it's being misapplied when put into a completely different context. Teamwork, not students learning, project that is harder to start again and slower to iterate that way etc. I'm not sure we should consider every piece of advice as being some how completely universal. We could also overth…

> I don't think it's important for the message if the story is true or made up. It's overthinking things to an extreme.

Agreed. There's a lot of pedants on HN who have what I call "the Snopes illness."

Re: Be prolific

#60

Post by redis_mlc »

sriku wrote: post #24
ChrisRackauckas wrote: post #11

When teaching mathematics I like to always mention that the greats like Ramanujan, while it seems like they just knew everything from pure thought, they all actually did a ton of work by hand. Ramanujan in particular is known for his fastidious notebooks calculating thousands of digits numbers like pi. From writing out the calculations for hours and days, he'd come up with simplification formulas and develop new insi…

Absolutely this! Another way I express this to my colleagues is to consider that Einstein (and others) took fifteen years to develop the relativity theories that did not require any new theoretical or experimental input. All of that is typically taught in a semester's graduate level course today. The "genius" perception hides all the hard work, false turns, recoveries, retries, .. busy work as you put it .. that's be…

> Einstein (and others) took fifteen years to develop the relativity theories that did not require any new theoretical or experimental input.

Further to that, when Einstein worked in the patent office, it's likely that applications related to railroad time synchronization crossed his desk, inspiring his work on relativity.

Post reply on HN