Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oral sharing has been the human way of transmitting stories for tens of thousands of years. Your newfangled "written books" are just a novelty :)
I think "single-tasking" is key though :)
Yeah.
No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
921–930 of 966 posts
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#922Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't watched a lot of things the past 10 years. A couple movies with friends, but I can count those on one hand. I don't really miss it. Some friends find t weird and try to push recommendations still, and I thank them and tell them I'll put it on the list. Then I promptly forget what they talked about, but they seem to have been satisfied with this. No harm done, right? On the other hand, they seem to be all ab…
I do audio books too. Actually often if a book is good I'll download the text too to read and listen to interchangeably. It's nice going for a walk in the park while listening to the book once in a while.
I enjoy the walk and quiet. I do t want someone talking into my ear when I go for a lonely walk to get away from people, work, noise. I find that it defeats the purpose to take your phone with podcasts and audio books with you for such occasions.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#923Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think one of the problems is the interface through which we access these tools. I know when I walk into a Walmart that I'm dealing with a huge organization and if I accidentally break something while I'm walking through an aisle, I don't necessarily feel that bad. If instead I was walking around in a mom-and-pop store and broke something, I would apologize profusely and demand that I pay them for their troubles. Wh…
I wonder how one rectifies this. I feel like small open source developers have conflicting incentives here. If an open source project was clearly prefaced with "While this is professional and fully featured, it's also the effort of one human working 10 hours a week on the weeks he doesn't have the kids", would you use it? Developers who want their open source projects used have incentive to make their project look se…
My personal take, maybe not suitable for everyone.
Don't use github. Github is that big faceless storefront. Use your own personal site, make it really simple. Now you don't have random "drive-throughs", who really don't care about your project, but are ready to give unsolicited advice.
No point to have public issue tracker, when developers are known and small group.
I like Drew DeVault projects, like sourcehut - doing things simple and off from big corp infra.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#924Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right, of course. But I am so, so tired of having to "sell" over and over just to have the value of my contributions recognized. And I think gp would agree. The poster, marak, is a founder [0]. They definitely understand product-ization. Yet two weeks ago they suffered an apartment fire and have been struggling to keep a roof over their head [1]. I can definitely understand the kind of bitterness that comes ou…
Surely home insurance is going to make it whole?
That's assuming he could pay for a plan that covered his assets. I'm guessing that since he said "apartment" that he is renting, and the owners probably only cover the structure with their insurance and not the contents of said apartment.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#925Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's because you need to understand the difference between a project and a product. If you want your product to succeed, it must target decision-makers with a budget to buy your license, and it must make enough difference to them to justify the costs. Most software libraries aren't products. They target other software developers who are not responsible for allocating funds. Furthermore, if there wasn't a library, m…
You're right, of course. But I am so, so tired of having to "sell" over and over just to have the value of my contributions recognized. And I think gp would agree. The poster, marak, is a founder [0]. They definitely understand product-ization. Yet two weeks ago they suffered an apartment fire and have been struggling to keep a roof over their head [1]. I can definitely understand the kind of bitterness that comes ou…
"take more than you give" is not an accurate description. free exchange is a positive sum game.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#926Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are explaining how a person can deal with the world as it is. But if you think of yourself as a builder, then you really ought to know better than to accept the world as it is. Are there probably choices available to a skilled software developer where they could make more money than just working on something that they love and that provides value to the world? Sure. But why is that an acceptable world to live in?…
The problem is 'feeling entitled to just compensation'; it is not a good concept. Lets imagine you favourite fast-food joint offers all menu items for 1cent. Then one week later they ask for more money, because:'If a work adds value to the world, shouldn't the worker rightly feel entitled to just compensation". And lets not make it about the company, lets say it has to close down and leave the workers unemployed if p…
The difference with software is, for many reasons users most often need to know the recipe (code), but knowing the recipe is enough to trivially replicate the software for free. And incidentally, that's also the expected mode of acquisition (vs. feature films for instance, which are almost as trivial to copy for free but discouraged culturally).
With physical goods or services, knowing the recipe or at least composition is also often desirable, but the actual product/service itself is hard to replicate and brand inertia is heavier.
I believe some small changes in the delivery methods associated with a decent cultural shift could bring open-source software development into a position more similar to older creative professions. For instance, stronger security concerns could incentivize users to subscribe to privileged, paid update channels directly from the developers (like done by Unreal Engine or the TradingView charting library).
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#927Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually not a good analogy because most mechanics nowadays specialize. You don't have an engine guy do an automatic transmission rebuild and you don't have your local car dealer do a coil-over 4 link suspension upgrade on your Jeep. This is exactly analogous to software in that you don't need to know deep algorithms to build CRUD web apps. They are a different part of the machine and closer to the business doma…
>The guy knows fuel maps, timing and compression ratios like the back of his hand, but I keep insisting that he tell me how the sun gear of the transmission engages the planetaries and in what sequence because he has to know this to be any good as an engine guy and come to the conclusion in my head that if he does not know transmissions it is a signal that he is not fit to be an engine guy. Sure, but that's not what…
I hate to entertain this bad analogy further than necessary, but knowing what a gearbox is in the field of cars is not even remotely near the same level as knowing what a b-tree is in the field of software engineering.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#928Earlier quoted context omitted.
It pleases me when corporations use D to make money with, even if they don't contribute. After all, D is licensed to specifically allow this - I have no business complaining about it.
Thanks for the D lang. My younger brother used it for his final year project. He got an A. He has nothing, but praise for it. Fast, small executable size, etc.
Glad to have helped him!
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#929Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's actually not a good analogy because most mechanics nowadays specialize. You don't have an engine guy do an automatic transmission rebuild and you don't have your local car dealer do a coil-over 4 link suspension upgrade on your Jeep. This is exactly analogous to software in that you don't need to know deep algorithms to build CRUD web apps. They are a different part of the machine and closer to the business doma…
>The guy knows fuel maps, timing and compression ratios like the back of his hand, but I keep insisting that he tell me how the sun gear of the transmission engages the planetaries and in what sequence because he has to know this to be any good as an engine guy and come to the conclusion in my head that if he does not know transmissions it is a signal that he is not fit to be an engine guy. Sure, but that's not what…
Agreed and I don't know what he was applying for, I was just highlighting that this happens a lot in our industry where we misapply (not saying everyone in the tech industry) what we do with the ritual of insisting that applicants are worthy via a cargo cult process of ensuring that they too have the smartest guy in the room mentality.
Re: No More Free Work from Marak: Pay Me or Fork This
#930Earlier quoted context omitted.
No interviewer has demonstrated anything but perfunctory interest in my open source work, popular or not. It's a myth, like 'nobody cares where you went to school so long as you can do the work'.
> No interviewer has demonstrated anything but perfunctory interest in my open source work, popular or not. In he past when I did candidate screening I used floss work extensively to evaluate a candidate. To me, personal projects are an excellent way to assess skillsets at multiple levels. Perhaps you've been interviewed by people who place a greater focus on soft skills, or HR headhunters who can only read CVs?
I've been a software developer for 15+ years now. It's been the same, every place I've ever interviewed. People place a lower priority on things they can't easily quantify.