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Just fucking figure it out

scriptmag.com

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Re: Just fucking figure it out

#71

Post by nostrademons »

postfuturist wrote: post #44

Best advice in this article: stop driving and take public transport. This applies to hackers as well as writers--really, anyone who can do creative / useful work on a laptop. If a typical commute is 30 minutes by car or 1 hour by public transportation, you may feel like you are losing an hour a day leaving your car at home, but you are actually gaining an hour of time if you bring your laptop, assuming you want to sp…

Or move closer to work.

When I was in Boston, I had an hour commute, half by car and half by train. Yeah, I could read a book on the train. It was still a pain in the ass, and I could be doing much more productive things at home.

When I moved out to Silicon Valley, my #1 priority for deciding where to live was "It must be within 15 minutes of work." I ended up getting a place that's 5 minutes by car or 15 minutes by bike from work. It was probably one of the best decisions I made moving out here. Now I can roll out of bed and into work, and when I leave work, I'm home and can do whatever I want.

Re: Just fucking figure it out

#72

Post by ebiester »

jerf wrote: post #49
ig1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously it depends on your definition of high-status, but I know a lot of people hiring developers across a range of sectors for technically challenging jobs, and they all have trouble hiring talented people.

Every time I'm advising a young person or young people I always underline that there are challenges everywhere. If I just describe my job, it sounds terrible, very business programming oriented, but in fact in order to make it work I'm pushing myself very hard, lots of server and coordination problems, retrofitting code never meant to do this and doing it in the most developer-time effective manner, and even pushing…

It may be challenging, but something can be simultaneously challenging and boring. (For me, an MMORPG at high levels falls into this category.)

Re: Just fucking figure it out

#73

Post by patio11 »

nostrademons wrote: post #70
patio11 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know nothing about the entertainment industry, but this idea of 'putting in your dues' by working your way up from a menial position based on personal relationships has always seemed naive. I get very, very worried when I see "contribute to OSS" as career advice, for exactly this reason. No, we won't pay you, but if you could grind out some boring glue code for the frameworks that our for-profit businesses use to m…

I think the main reason to "contribute to OSS" is to learn (and demonstrate!) new skills that you would not otherwise be able to learn on the job. Businesses generally are not in the habit of paying people to do something for which there is no business need. So unless you work at Google, you are very unlikely to have an opportunity to build a webserver. Unless you work on the compiler team of a big company (almost al…

Contributing patches to Rails is exactly what I am thinking of when I say this: it is a lot of work, visibility for new contributors is poor, and the main beneficiaries are going to be for-profit businesses. Yet I hear otherwise very savvy people telling unemployed CS grads that they should build up their github profiles by, e.g., doing patches to Rails. That strikes me as an astoundingly poor use of one's time -- you don't have a coding problem, you have a marketing problem. Patches have a very poor ROI for personal marketing.

Re: Just fucking figure it out

#74

Post by nostrademons »

patio11 wrote: post #73
nostrademons wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main reason to "contribute to OSS" is to learn (and demonstrate!) new skills that you would not otherwise be able to learn on the job. Businesses generally are not in the habit of paying people to do something for which there is no business need. So unless you work at Google, you are very unlikely to have an opportunity to build a webserver. Unless you work on the compiler team of a big company (almost al…

Contributing patches to Rails is exactly what I am thinking of when I say this: it is a lot of work, visibility for new contributors is poor, and the main beneficiaries are going to be for-profit businesses. Yet I hear otherwise very savvy people telling unemployed CS grads that they should build up their github profiles by, e.g., doing patches to Rails. That strikes me as an astoundingly poor use of one's time -- yo…

I don't mean contributing patches to Rails, I mean writing Rails. Or contributing features to projects that are viewed as bit more hard-core, eg. Apache or Python, though even there you're often better-off starting a new project than contributing to an existing one.

There seems to be a general cognitive bias in the programming world against maintenance work, which strikes me as a bit dumb because it's both harder and more important than starting new projects. But as long as it exists, I'm going to exploit it, and do high-visibility but useless projects like port Arc to JavaScript or rewrite Tetris in 3 hours instead of contributing patches to JQuery.

Re: Just fucking figure it out

#75

Post by ramanujan »

patio11 wrote: post #73
nostrademons wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the main reason to "contribute to OSS" is to learn (and demonstrate!) new skills that you would not otherwise be able to learn on the job. Businesses generally are not in the habit of paying people to do something for which there is no business need. So unless you work at Google, you are very unlikely to have an opportunity to build a webserver. Unless you work on the compiler team of a big company (almost al…

Contributing patches to Rails is exactly what I am thinking of when I say this: it is a lot of work, visibility for new contributors is poor, and the main beneficiaries are going to be for-profit businesses. Yet I hear otherwise very savvy people telling unemployed CS grads that they should build up their github profiles by, e.g., doing patches to Rails. That strikes me as an astoundingly poor use of one's time -- yo…

Hmmm. If someone put on their CV that they got patches into Rails (or another large, popular OSS project) you wouldn't think of that as a pretty big plus?

Re: Just fucking figure it out

#76

Post by barry-cotter »

nostrademons wrote: post #74
patio11 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contributing patches to Rails is exactly what I am thinking of when I say this: it is a lot of work, visibility for new contributors is poor, and the main beneficiaries are going to be for-profit businesses. Yet I hear otherwise very savvy people telling unemployed CS grads that they should build up their github profiles by, e.g., doing patches to Rails. That strikes me as an astoundingly poor use of one's time -- yo…

I don't mean contributing patches to Rails, I mean writing Rails. Or contributing features to projects that are viewed as bit more hard-core, eg. Apache or Python, though even there you're often better-off starting a new project than contributing to an existing one. There seems to be a general cognitive bias in the programming world against maintenance work, which strikes me as a bit dumb because it's both harder and…

>> There seems to be a general cognitive bias in the programming world against maintenance work, which strikes me as a bit dumb because it's both harder and more important than starting new projects.

This is not unique to the programming world. Starting something and finishing it looks a lot more impressive almost evrywhere than making something that exis´ts better. Just think how much more impressive founding yet another non-profit looks on ones cv compared to doubling the projects of an existing one.

Re: Just fucking figure it out

#77

Post by VMG »

rauljara wrote: post #32
gamble wrote: post #27

I know nothing about the entertainment industry, but this idea of 'putting in your dues' by working your way up from a menial position based on personal relationships has always seemed naive. Either you can do something or you can't, and working as a dogsbody isn't going to impart those skills. This advice seems like the equivalent of telling someone who wants to be a game programmer to start in the QA department. Yo…

"I know nothing about the entertainment industry..." Then maybe you shouldn't speak about it as if you do. I have heard the same advice in this article from a number of people working as tv writers (either reading articles, or as part of my mfa in creative writing), and it does seem like the vast majority of them only got where they are by "working their way up". The idea that you can just make something good enough…

There is a this american life story about pitching TV shows - can't find it right now though

Re: Just fucking figure it out

#78

Post by njharman »

similar thought to jffio is behind why i try remember to tell people "because i don't make time" in stead of "i dont have time" when they ask why i havent started/finished the projects i talk about.

making time aka passion, drive, determination is major factor in peoples "sucess"

Re: Just fucking figure it out

#79

Post by gregpilling »

joezydeco wrote: post #56
ilamont wrote: post #53

Reminds me of something I read about the advent of cheap disk-based digital cameras with video capabilities and iMovie when they came out in the early to mid 2000s. The NYT or Rolling Stone or some other magazine interviewed a couple of documentary directors about how they were using these tools to test out ideas or do simple, short pieces. One of the directors basically said now that these tools were available, peop…

You know it's funny you mention that, because I just finished reading an AV Club interview with the producers of the original Saw movies. It was one thing to have a script passed around from place to place, but these guys went the extra step and made a 5-minute short to demonstrate the concept. Telling people you're talented and showing them you're talented are two different things, and it's surprising how few people…

So you are suggesting that people who want to make movies should create a trailer as a MVP? interesting concept.

Re: Just fucking figure it out

#80

Post by joezydeco »

gregpilling wrote: post #79
joezydeco wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know it's funny you mention that, because I just finished reading an AV Club interview with the producers of the original Saw movies. It was one thing to have a script passed around from place to place, but these guys went the extra step and made a 5-minute short to demonstrate the concept. Telling people you're talented and showing them you're talented are two different things, and it's surprising how few people…

So you are suggesting that people who want to make movies should create a trailer as a MVP? interesting concept.

From the interview:

"When we came to L.A., we had our script in one hand and this DVD in the other hand. People liked the script, but they loved the DVD. As you quickly find out in Los Angeles, everybody’s got severe ADD. Reading a script is fairly boring—it’s a nightmarish task. Whereas people loved to be able to put the DVD in..."

I used to be in a business similar to the film business where everyone and their brother had a winning concept, but the people that hand-built a prototype in their garage got the meetings. People are visual creatures, reading about a concept isn't the same as actually touching it.

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