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Comment by glofish | Hacker News Reader

but maybe in ten years, you'll regret your choice

or maybe you won't because you won't even know what you are missing out

not judging you, I program and sit in an office, but I can understand the magic of being in the middle of the pulse of the world. It is a world that I only look at as a bystander.

perhaps being a journalist is paid little because it is you are more alive, instead of programming the next punch-the-monkey, you are tracking the money that rich people hide, investigate the dark side, with that you basically "live longer"

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Even in a hundred years he wouldn’t regret the choice. Nothing you described sounds appealing. Journalists see most technology like a black box that does mysterious things and produces an output, just like a bystander. If you don’t want to be a bystander to those processes, you become a programmer.

Why are you so sure you can't be both ?

Because there are only 24 hours in a day and roughly a third of those are already spent sleeping and eating.

Edit: I see down vote bots are in full effect.

you are conflating the job of journalist with a journalist's relationship with technology - even at that, you are both generalizing and oversimplifying.

What I specifically referred to is that programming a computer as a day job (for example as the poster said their job is optimizing ads for a website) is probably far less fulfilling than following and analyzing world events and doing journalism. That's all.

Why do you think world events are inherently more fulfilling?

A long time ago I realized there’s nothing interesting about world events. Most will have little to no effect on me and most of it is just like one big reality show. I now actively avoid learning about world events and am much happier. I’d rather learn about events local to me or stories about people I may be able to relate to, and none of those really require journalists.

The things you can do with software and computers are far more interesting than reading about how corrupt some rich guy is. I don’t give a shit about him or his corruption.

I don't follow why you equate journalism with covering corruption - that's just a small fraction of all news.

Overall I am not sure what point are you trying to make. That today you feel happier as a programmer? Sure, good for you.

I am only calling out the naive and frankly childishly simplistic arguments made in this thread that state things along the line: "It must suck to be a journalist, thank god I program ads for a website"

I have come believe that jobs that are hard to do but don't pay well are such because are more fulfilling and people are willing to trade monetary remuneration for a more interesting line of work. Many people (and it seems that you feel that way too) take this as a critique of their choices: "No way that a job that pays less than what I do is more interesting! Especially not a journalist/teacher/policeman etc."

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