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The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

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Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#81
post #68

I started off in the "enjoying collecting gear" quadrant of photography, then I heard an insightful comment by a pro: "If you have $5K, you can either buy one good lens and use it to take photos of the pigeons outside your apartment, or spend that money on a destination holiday and take pictures of amazingly beautiful places with your old lens which still works perfectly fine." I stopped buying new kit and started go…

That Z9 will be yesterdays tech in a year or two, and you'll be able to pick it up for a fraction of its current price. It'll still perform exactly as well as it does today, but the gear heads will be onto the next new thing.

> in a year or two

It probably won't see significant price drops for 5+ years, because the pace of development in the DSLR market is slowing down. There are longer and longer gaps between new significant features, which means the price of used cameras isn't going down as fast as they used to.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#82
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I switched my sport of choice from cycling to running. In cycling, I kept getting pulled into the gear and tinkering. (It didn't help that I raced cyclocross, so during race season, every Monday was spent cleaning and repairing the result of the previous day's races). TBH, it was fun, but if I spent as much time training as I did tinkering, maybe I would have had some decent race results. With run…

This is one thing I appreciate about swimming. I don’t own the pool, so no fiddling there. My swim trunks require no fiddling. The only thing that could possibly require fiddling are my goggles, but I use Swedish goggles that are so simple (two pieces of plastic and a piece of rubber - there isn’t even a gasket), they don’t require any fiddling.

can you recommend water proof earplugs? i have a ruptured ear drum and have to protect it but the wax moldable ones never seem to be completely water proof.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#83
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I switched my sport of choice from cycling to running. In cycling, I kept getting pulled into the gear and tinkering. (It didn't help that I raced cyclocross, so during race season, every Monday was spent cleaning and repairing the result of the previous day's races). TBH, it was fun, but if I spent as much time training as I did tinkering, maybe I would have had some decent race results. With run…

i just decided that i enjoy working on bikes more than i do riding them and i decided that was fine. What i dislike the most is talking to people on reddit about it. if i need a new part that i dont know where to find google will lead me to the forum that will lead me t owhat i need. if i can't find it i can ask on reddit. but i do not want to sit around on forums talking about bikes. what a waste of time. and look a…

> and look at me, im sitting around in a forum talking about bikes.

You're sitting around in a forum talking about talking about bikes. If that helps.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#84

I know a lot of guys who love fishing and can't seem to understand why I don't. When I was younger, I geared up and fished quite a bit. Once I became successful at the sport I began to realize I wasn't having as much fun as everybody was telling me I should have been having because I was actually catching fish. Then it dawned on me, what joy I initially had when I started fishing had run it's course. So, I moved on a…

this is me but for magic the gathering and dungeons and dragons. it used to be fun but now it is not. and i sat wondering why it wasn't fun for years until i decided i don't even need to know WHY i just needed to accept that it was true and find other things to do.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#85
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i just decided that i enjoy working on bikes more than i do riding them and i decided that was fine. What i dislike the most is talking to people on reddit about it. if i need a new part that i dont know where to find google will lead me to the forum that will lead me t owhat i need. if i can't find it i can ask on reddit. but i do not want to sit around on forums talking about bikes. what a waste of time. and look a…

> and look at me, im sitting around in a forum talking about bikes. You're sitting around in a forum talking about talking about bikes. If that helps.

it does. thank you.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#86
post #66
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of agree with your general point. I just wish the default was something a bit less painful.

There's two main groups on hacker news. The people who think Go and Java are the only reasonable languages, and the people who think Rust and TypeScript are the only reasonable languages.

You forgot the people who love SQL and people who hate SQL.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#87
When you present a four square quadrant to measure something in terms of two values (axes), with two categorical values like this, I’d like to request you do it the same as every successful management consultancy and pitch deck in existence: the aspirational/better/best quadrant needs to be top right, not top left.

I looked at this and immediately squinted, because it looked like doing the gear was the thing we should all be aiming for. Switch hobby and gear and talk about how to move activities up and to the right and it makes more intuitive sense.

Yes, I realise the irony of discussing the gear of an article that’s trying to encourage us to do the thing, but trust me, this will make it so much better :-)

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#88
post #2

I feel like this is me spinning in circles deciding on “the best language” to use for a side project, never committing, and then inevitably losing momentum. Frameworks and languages are a software engineer’s “kit”, I guess?

When I was a kid, I was super into programming languages. Read all about the different kinds, learned about Haskell, self-modifying code, dependent typing, and of course I wanted to design my own language. Now I just want whatever breaks the least and let’s me get the job done.

It’s funny because my family always used to ask why I went into engineering instead of computer science, and I said it was because as soon as programming became a job, it would suck the fun out of it. Well I veered away from engineering into data science, and sure enough, I don’t seem to get quite the same joy out of coding that I did when I was younger.

Re: The Four Hobbies, and Apparent Expertise

#89
post #86
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two main groups on hacker news. The people who think Go and Java are the only reasonable languages, and the people who think Rust and TypeScript are the only reasonable languages.

You forgot the people who love SQL and people who hate SQL.

How one feels about SQL is moot because it isn't really a choice. Same for shell and client-side Javascript.
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