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Comment by ogou | Hacker News Reader

Some the comments here are disheartening. So much crass dismissal of anything not monetized. A lot of what we use on regular basis got started with simple ideas for things with limited usefulness at the time. I remember when there was much more creative energy in this industry. Obviously, tech is a major economic force now. But, that pretense of creativity and exploration is still being exploited. That's why we are funneling entire generations into coding classes, maker spaces, and youth empowering tech initiatives. They are being told, "learn to love coding. explore your dreams". Very quickly they get redirected into conformist production paths so they become tools. What a shame.

Long live creativity and self-determination.

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It's ironic. Where do software companies get their highly technically competent developers? Most of them don't train people, nor do they give enough time for developing deep technical skills. They rely on people who picked up most of the necessary experience prior to joining, and then maybe transferring some of their knowledge to others. But where do those original knowledgeable people gain their skills, if not at their jobs? By doing useless side projects.

> But where do those original knowledgeable people gain their skills, if not at their jobs? By doing useless side projects.

So much this.

The time you have is a finite resource, and technical expertise is a function of how you invest your time in activities that enable you to learn and grow.

More often than not, your job is not aligned with your career plan or growth path.

So how is it possible to bridge that gap? Well, through your own persona projects, projects whose goals are set by you and are not encumbered by third party requirements and don't even have to have a business model. Just coding.

Corporations want the reward of investing time in learning and exploring, but they don't want to foot the bill.

They don’t sound so useless to me then :)

They clearly led to the development of skills that produce great economic value.

> So much crass dismissal of anything not monetized.

And yet, so much of what is being monetized these days is being built on top of technologies that their creators gave away for free.

Off the top of my head, I can think of three very influential technologies that their creators (initially one person) gave away for free:

- The world wide web

- Linux

- Python

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