Retiring before dying.
What’s the end goal for you programmers?
81–83 of 83 posts
Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would never stop programming. It is a joy for me to do little utilities that makes my life easier. Even with billions of dollars in bank account I would still hack away at an ESP32 to stick it in a flying helicopter toy for example. And lucky for me this field is highly dynamic, I would never get bored learning new technologies. For me programming is like a kid with his shiny toys, every day another one. And I am p…
Makery stuff is still fun, but the work stuff used to be fun and now is not. I did a lot of sysadmin so it was a lot of individual unix servers and different kinds of integration problem solving getting printers or networks to work or rigging up weird edi's over modems or ftp etc, getting some bespoke backend software to talk to some weird machine where nether the OS, nor app, nor apps language, nor wierd machine ven…
I went freelancer. Out of aprox. 12 hours per day I do programming my clients get like maximum 3. Rest are for me personally. Learn new stuff, play with different tech, etc. Most of the time my playing time also translates into paying stuff from my clients later on the road, but not immediately.
And yes, some projects I get from clients are soul sucking, but I chose them fully aware of that, hence the balance heavily in my favor in terms of hours. I get back my soul after was sucked this way :).
Re: What’s the end goal for you programmers?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if you really want to try make the world better, then start volunteering and start helping those in need Yes and no. Some of the issues can be solved by volunteering, but some of the technical progress have to done by software.
of course, but the type of software that can make the world better and solve some of the world's problems (like hunger and climate change) is not the software the majority of the people on HN are working on, me including maybe we should stop lying to ourselves and admit that what we're doing is not something special, will most definitely not make the world better and in many cases makes things even worse (social medi…
I feel very sorry for your view of the world, and I choose to see the world differently. And let's walk through a very small example of solving world hunger.
To solve hunger, one needs food. Farmer produce food, great. They solve the hunger issue. But without transportation and cold chain, the food produce by the farmer can feed only those living close by. Are those working in the transportation and storage industry not doing their bits for making the world a slightly better place?
Transportation, and cold chain, needs computer and software in many different parts of the system to work in harmony. And that's where we programmer contributed. Are you saying you rather carry the food yourself from the farm to those who need it?
In today's world, yes many are currently being exploit for profit for sure. This will have to be solved differently. However, this flaw does not diminish the fact that we as human are living in a better world than the last century.