51–60 of 157 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe if the internet and piracy hadn't fucked artists over, they could have made decent money as a musician selling their work without having to be a major-label superstar. Alas, we do not live in that timeline.
Did most artists (in whatever form) ever have a good living in and of itself?
There was perhaps less of a distinction between "arts" and trades. People did all kinds of work on paintings, sculptures, etc., and expected to get paid for it. They rarely put their names on their works.
I've read a bit about Bach's life, and he was always concerned about making money.
One music history textbook I read identified the invention of printed music as the start of the "music industry." Before the recording era, people composed and published sheet music. There were pianos in middle class parlors, and people bought sheet music to play. Two names that come to mind were Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton. Movie theaters hired pianists or organists, though that employment vanished when talking movies came out. The musicians of the jazz era were making their livings from music. One familiar name is Miles Davis. His father was a dentist, and his parents considered music to be a respectable middle class career for their son. People did make a living from recordings before the Internet era. Today, lucrative work in the arts still exists for things like advertising and sports broadcasting.
(Revealing my bias, I'm a jazz musician).
In fact the expectation that an artist should not earn a decent living is kind of a new thing.
I didn't know about Deno and streams, but this looks fine
const file = await Deno.open("huge-quotes.txt");
const quotes: string[] = [];
await file.readable
.pipeThrough(new TextDecoderStream())
.pipeThrough(new TextLineStream())
.pipeTo(new WritableStream({
write(line) {
quotes.push(line);
}
}));Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Amusing coincidence. I also wanted to be a rock star, or at least a successful working musician. > I still play music, but not full time, and with the comfort of supporting myself with a day job. Some people say; Pursue your dream or you will regret it. This is said by people who regret their own choices. Other people say; Don't make your dream a job, because all it will be is a job and no longer special. This is s…
I say if you have money to do whatever you want everyday, there’s an overwhelming chance you’ll be happy. The rest of those sayings are just for us plebs that have to rationalize working 40-60 hours a week.
For sure. I'd argue to write the "stupid" code to get started, get that momentum going. The sooner you are writing code, the sooner you are making your concept real, and finding the flaws in your mental model for what you're solving. I used to try to think ahead, plan ahead and "architect", then I realized simply "getting something on paper" corrects many of the assumptions I had in my head. A colleague pushed me to…
I think it is common for a programmer to just start programming without coming up with any model, and just try to solve the problem by adding code on top of code.
There are also many programmers who go with their first “working” implementation, and never iterate.
These days, I think the pendulum has swung too far from thinking about the program, maybe mapping it out a bit on paper before writing code.
For sure. I'd argue to write the "stupid" code to get started, get that momentum going. The sooner you are writing code, the sooner you are making your concept real, and finding the flaws in your mental model for what you're solving. I used to try to think ahead, plan ahead and "architect", then I realized simply "getting something on paper" corrects many of the assumptions I had in my head. A colleague pushed me to…
But an easy example is "just build the single player version" (of an application) can be worse than just eating your vegetables. It can be very difficult to tack-on multiplayer, as opposed to building for this up front.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I say if you have money to do whatever you want everyday, there’s an overwhelming chance you’ll be happy. The rest of those sayings are just for us plebs that have to rationalize working 40-60 hours a week.
I think PP's point was .. that even if you spend your whole life pressed into laboring to produce a surplus to satisfy the excessive consumption of the elites of your heretical society, in ways that create existential risk for future generations, and are at odds with your own inner values and moral compass.. you can still see the 'immateriality' of all that in the grand scheme of things and choose to be happy.
There is no sociopolitical statement, no call-to-arms, no pontification as to the measure of one's life, no generational implications. There is an existential consideration, but not of the nature your post implies.
Happiness is an individual choice, available to us all at any time.
Full stop.
The Kernighan law says debugging code is twice as hard as creating it. Therefore, if you push yourself to the limit of your abilities to create the most clever code you can, you won't be able to debug it.
> The Kernighan law says debugging code is twice as hard as creating it. > Therefore, if you push yourself to the limit of your abilities to create the most clever code you can, you won't be able to debug it. If only advocates of LLM-based code generation understood this lemma.
“Enjoy writing it, it doesn’t have to be nice or pretty if it’s for you. Have fun, try out that new runtime or language.”
It doesn’t have to be nice or pretty EVEN if it’s NOT for you. The value in prototyping has always been there and it’s been very concrete: to refine mental models, validate assumptions, uncover gaps in your own thinking (or your team’s), you name it.
Unfortunately it feels that the pendulum has swung in the completely opposite direction. There’s a lot of “theatre” in planning, writing endless tickets and refining them for WEEKS before actually starting to write code, in a way that’s actively harmful for building software. When you get stuck in planning mode you let wrong assumptions grow and get baked in into the design so the sunken cost keeps rising.
Simply have a BASIC and SHARED mental model of the end goal with your team and start prototyping. LLMs have made this RIDICULOUSLY CHEAP. But, the industry is still stuck in all the wrong ways.
>>> When I finished school in 2010 (yep, along time ago now), I wanted to go try and make it as a musician. I figured if punk bands could just learn on the job, I could too. But my mum insisted that I needed to do something, just in case. Amusing coincidence. I also wanted to be a rock star, or at least a successful working musician. My mom also talked me out of it. Her argument was: If there's no way to learn it in…
> Amusing coincidence. I also wanted to be a rock star, or at least a successful working musician. > I still play music, but not full time, and with the comfort of supporting myself with a day job. Some people say; Pursue your dream or you will regret it. This is said by people who regret their own choices. Other people say; Don't make your dream a job, because all it will be is a job and no longer special. This is s…
Some want to live on the seas. They can be perfectly happy as a sailor, even if poor and single.
Some want a family, educated children, respect. They would likely need a nice house, enough resources to get a scholarship, a shot at retirement. This is obtainable working in public service, even without money.
But most have multiple dreams. That's what makes things complex. The man who wishes for a wife but also wishes to be on the seas will find much fewer paths available. Sailors also don't generally get respected by most in laws.
To mix the two, they try to find the dream-job. Perhaps work for a big oil company and be 'forced' to go offshore.
Eventually people learn that desire is suffering in some form and cut down on the number of dreams. They may even see this as mature and try to educate others that this is the way. Those who have kids often are forced to pick kids as the dream. So there's a selection bias as well.