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Comment by Pkeod | Hacker News Reader

To complain. He could change his life. He could code fun games. It's his own choice to code things uninspiring. Many people work in careers not right for them. Why is he doing something he doesn't enjoy when there is so much other opportunity for him to enjoy his life.

Making things come to life through code is a joyful delight. Writing an entire complex programming at once in a rush, compiling it, running it, and it actually works... first few times, hundredth, thousandth time sometimes it's still amazing. And I'm no expert programmer. I mostly paint.

Based on his writing, I believe this Smith is at risk for burnout.

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As someone who quit his fancy tech job and started a video game company, I can say with certainty that games are not as fun to code as you would think =). The fun part (gameplay, game balance, story-telling, level creation) all happen near the end. In fact, they happen so close to the end that games often don't finish. They will have one third great story, two thirds great levels, and the rest is just rushed and crap.

The reason for this is the tools we made -- game engine for rendering & AI, level editors, resource packers, art post processors, etc, this is how the game really is put together. You don't make a game, you make a series of tools that help other people (game designers, artists, writers, AI scriptors) make a game. Now it is a blast making a work of collaborative art -- because writing and art are awesome -- but making a tool for a game is VERY similar to making an office suite or a complex website. It is all just data and interfaces. All the same usability/complexity tradeoffs apply.

I guess what I'm saying is the author's attitude made sense to me, and I know for sure that I'm not not at risk for burnout -- I love this shit. I love making games, but really it is because I love to program. Stories and art and gameplay are all bonuses, but if I didn't love the code it would still be terrible. That makes me wonder if coding is for everyone. I would love for it to be, but I'm really not sure.

Lastly, I recently taught someone to code from the ground up and the biggest single lesson was this: You will spend most of your day not knowing the answer. You will think and think and wonder and wonder. Is there even an answer to find? Is rails just too slow or are my queries crap? Can the iOS animation engine handle what you are doing or did you just add too many quartz-level effects and that is why it is super slow? You won't know the answer, you will doubt yourself, but over time you will actually become comfortable with not knowing. And even then, you will still be surprised (and pleased) when you figure it out. It is unending and I think it takes a special someone to enjoy that sort of life.

tl;dr Changing your life isn't always the answer. Coding is hard, doubt is hard, and games aren't as fun to write as you would think.

I never had a fancy tech job, or really any fancy job. I've had jobs. I moved industrial pipe for a few years in my teens. Not my favorite thing, but it was a choice. I worked for Sears for a few years up until I was 18. Worst years of my life. Also a choice. I've been making games since I was 11 and I'm just about 25. When I was 18 I decided to take it seriously and now here I am. I choose to do this. I can do programming, but I like art more, and I work with people who are just as passionate as I am. I love programming when I do it. I have a game on Steam, games on iOS and Android. I am dead set on doing great things not just with games but with culture and the future of humanity.

>The fun part (gameplay, game balance, story-telling, level creation) all happen near the end.

Then you are doing it wrong. There are so many tools available which allow you to skip so much of the technical parts and get to the parts you like. You can choose to use them, or you can choose to build your own.

>You don't make a game, you make a series of tools

That's a choice, and a huge thing newbies to game development are cautioned against. Don't make tools - make games! The tools are already made, don't reinvent the wheel. Yet so many insist on doing just that, and I have no sympathy for them.

To be fair, whilst the poster might be able to quit and write fun games (although based on anecdotes from people I know who have worked in the games industry it's not as fun as one might imagine) by necessity not everyone in programmer can be a game developer or work at a startup.

Some % of programming jobs (probably a fairly high %) is going to be writing the boring crap. So if you want to work as a programmer you have to accept that there is a chance that this is what you end up doing for at least some or maybe all of your career.

I'm an indie game developer and the way I see it is a choice for anyone to work independently. Some people are adamant about working for others and accepting whatever boring job they can get. Making games isn't the perfect thing to do, but it is possible, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. Yes, working at a AAA studio can suck, but that's a choice also.

Boring crap to you doesn't mean it's boring to everyone. Who are we to impose our value system upon others. Some people just love modeling 3d crates all day and that's their mission in life to create the perfect 3d crate. Other people walk by and wonder why he's wasting his life creating crate after crate. It's not cool to me to rationalize something someone doesn't like doing just because someone has to do it. Let someone who actually likes it do it.

> you have to accept that

Only if you are not in control of your own life. There is no rule which say what you must ultimately do. If your goal is to do x and that requires ultimately doing a lot of y, you can still change what you want to do to z and immediately go for it. So many of my friends are insistently passionate about wanting to work for AAA game companies and I know their glamorous dreams are going to put them through a lot of potential slog, but that's not the only choice. It is their choice to go in that direction and accept the outcome of that direction. There are plenty of other options.

Smith is idealizing coding games and working on programming projects which inspire him. He should go do either of those instead.

It depends on supply and demand, ultimately there is only so much demand for video games, social networks or whatever types of things people might want to work on even if they weren't being paid.

Then the rest of the demand is for jobs that people basically only do for money (think TPS report generators or whatever). So ultimately some people end up being allocated to jobs that they would not choose for themselves unless they were being paid.

So you only get a "choice" in so much as there is unsatisfied demand for the thing that you really want to do.

Supply and demand? Really? There is no limit, no ceiling for things that truly inspire. If you make something with passion and skill - something that inspires others - you are probably going to do very well in life.

That sounds nice, but is a little empty. There are plenty of people who we now consider incredibly important figures (artists etc) who died broke.

And many who lived extremely fulfilling lives outside of accepting money for work.

Everything is a choice. The people who refuse to not be smart about business refuse to take what they need - so they get what they get much like people who only work when a job is offered to them. Money is rarely made by accident. It is more likely to be made when you mix choice with opportunity.

It's a choice to "choose to be smart", you can try to be smart but fail.

There's no such thing as a smart person. Only people who are more well informed. What you do is what you become. When I say smart I mean a willingness to do what it takes based on informed decisions.

Creativity is only the body of material you have to draw from. Your visual or intellectual library of things you have already made a part of yourself through direct exposure. No invention or creation is made independently, it's all made with a clear path from one to another. Anyone can invent or create great things. Anyone can be great. All it takes is choice.

Success favors perseverance. Failure is necessary to reach what works. Those who are unwilling to fail never succeed.

There certainly are people who are smarter than others, all research into human intelligence backs this up.

Well informed is also a sticky concept, there is a lot of information out there. Much of it conflicting, it requires skill,time and a certain amount of luck to use the right information to make the right decisions.

Sadly not everyone can be great, if everyone were great then nobody would be great. Though you could argue that we are already all "great" in comparison to the bacteria that we evolved from :)

There are people who can play chess better than I can, who have higher "IQs", and yet I make more money than they do. Intelligence is not a magic number which increases in one way which allows you to do great things automatically with no effort. An average person (based on IQ points, which do NOT measure all the the ways for people to have potential for intelligence) can do far greater, meaningful things through willpower, and willpower is something we all have only still most people do not understand how to use it effectively. It's just knowledge, not innate ability. We are all very similar genetically and we all have very similar with our potential for greatness. Sure we all cannot be great in the same ways... like many of us here couldn't be NFL quarterbackers if we wanted to, but still ultimately with the things we want and the things we want to do the only thing holding us back are our beliefs.

Any kind of creative person who is great is not born that way. It is not innate ability. Watch and listen to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnflBERf2zM It is the same with anyone who has "intelligence" - like I said, there is no smart people, only people who are exposed to more and work harder to learn more. Yes, people can be brain damaged with real limits, but even they can be greater than lazy people who waste their potential. Even people with extremely limiting abilities can use what brain tissue they have, expand their mind, and blow away all we thought we knew as impossible.

>Well informed is also a sticky concept, there is a lot of information out there. Much of it conflicting, it requires skill,time and a certain amount of luck to use the right information to make the right decisions.

Yes, so, be exposed to as much as possible, and think. That's what I'm saying it takes.

>Sadly not everyone can be great, if everyone were great then nobody would be great.

Yeah, no. Wow. This is like saying not everyone can be happy, because we need some unhappy people for the rest of us to have some perspective. Or that we need ugly people to feel good about how good we look. Or that we need gold stars to gloat over how others don't have gold stars. No.

People are measured relative to others, if everyone were what we currently deem as attractive then many who are currently attractive would certainly seem ugly for example.

You suggest that willpower is important, which all things being equal innate ability is still important. If 2 people dedicate their lives to running 100 metres in the fastest time then eventually one will be faster than the other due to innate genetic factors.

>People are measured relative to others, if everyone were what we currently deem as attractive then many who are currently attractive would certainly seem ugly for example.

Nope. It is not that others must suffer for you to have a good life much the same as it not be required for your neighbor to be ugly for you to be beautiful. Much of what you think as really true is not.

>If 2 people dedicate their lives to running 100 metres in the fastest time then eventually one will be faster than the other due to innate genetic factors.

This is the world you live in: I have a predisposition and I'm going to stick to it and within my natural limits.

This is the world I live in: fuck the rules.

> innate ability is still important

To be the very best that no one ever was? Sure it is, but it is largely inconsequential in the reality we live in! Like I said before: probably no one here can be a NFL quarterback as they are now... but they can still achieve nearly everything within their desires still! The reality is that the majority of people will think like you do are held back by their beliefs, while less innate people blow past them. Even if you think there are limits... they really do not matter. There will always be opportunity for you to have as much success as you choose to have. If you deny this then you will remain one of the many who choose to stay as you are.

As far as the brain goes, the differences in innate ability are so very unimportant compared to choice. A person who is born one way with a healthy brain is not any better or worse in permanence than someone with an equally healthy brain. They both can be great if they through their lives choose to be.

This is very naive wishful thinking, I'm not quite sure what would change your mind but I wish you the best of luck.

Enjoy your limits.

Your two points are not incompatible; some people are naturally a little better at things; most "things that matter to general success as perceived in America" (ignoring if that matters to you personally) have some basis in the comparison of you to others; you can achieve almost anything that you really dedicate yourself to; limits are made to be broken.

> We are all very similar genetically and we all have very > similar with our potential for greatness.

Unfortunately, this is one of the biggest misconceptions in modern discourse. There is a whole "underground" (mostly online) current of thought called HBD (Human BioDiversity) which means to address this misconception. Google it, but with your attitude you will probably discard it right away.

You would think that, but the reality is there is a whole bunch of opportunity right now that is not being seized. Smith could change his life if he made the choice to. There is not an overflow of game developers, or people writing code worth being inspired about to the point where people who do it are not able to make money enough to live. People think what you are saying and assume it applies currently, and that they have no hope so they have to do the boring work they don't like. It does not apply right now, and it may never actually apply just because of what so many people are ingrained to believe.

>think TPS report generators or whatever

Value systems are not universal. You could take the most horrifying job you could think of and someone would take pleasure in it.

> being allocated

No one is ever forcibly allocated. Everyone has a choice to do what they want to do. If the ultimate horror reality of there being too many good games being made and not enough people to buy them all to the point where no one could make a living making games happened then people could still compromise and go down the list of things they genuinely enjoy and do those instead when they find something which can make them money. I don't know enough about Smith, but if he's not doing what he is doing as a temporary stopgap and he believes he is stuck forever doing code he hates then he is absolutely doing it wrong.

You can't have an economy where everybody gets to do their first (or probably 2nd or 3rd or 4th) choice of career unless you are people's desires happen to coincide with market demand.

In fact I imagine that the majority of people employed in the workforce can think of a whole list of jobs that they would rather do.

Otherwise we would have a huge oversupply of porn stars and rock stars but nobody to collect the trash.

>In fact

Yes, absolutely, and so many people lack willpower to do greater things. That's not because they are not good enough people forever unable to summon the willpower to do it, but simply because they don't know the knowledge necessary. So many people believe so many absurd things which hold them back from what is possible.

>You can't have an economy

Sure you can. How long before the majority of all manual labor, all service jobs are done by computers and robots? Jobs which humans can do, but don't have to do. All of that uninspiring, boring drudge work which doesn't require any creativity or real problem solving. When those jobs are left we trend toward more of a gift economy where the value you have is what you do for others, what you inspire in them, what you delight them with. Some people already do things which do these things, others collect the trash. People are not forced to pick up your trash, and everyone could decide to refuse to take up that job, and yet people choose to still. Eventually it won't be a choice to put anyone's trash because it will all be automated.

I doubt that we will see the total loss of all manual drudge work within our lifetimes, things change slowly and the our economy will be structured to incentivise doing work that is not enjoyed for quite some time.

It's simply a fact that the most desirable jobs are always the most competitive so you are far more likely to have to a take a job that you would not necessarily choose.

The choice is not between taking out the trash and being a rock star, the choice is usually between taking out the trash, working some other low wage job or being unemployed and unable to support yourself financially.

So, if you decide to train in some particular area, it is worth thinking about the whole spectrum of jobs that might entail. I would discourage somebody from fixating on a programming career if they were only interested in programming because they wanted to work at facebook for example.

>the choice is usually between

Or doing your own thing on your own on your own terms following the rules you make up. Hey, stop waiting for people to tell you what to do and create your own opportunity!

My alternate future where robots do everything absolutely no one wants to do (I wouldn't believe for a second that there are absolutely no people who love their job picking up trash) is more likely to become reality than your future where it's impossible to make money making games because too many people are making too many amazing games so no one wants to pay for them.

>I would discourage somebody from fixating on a programming career if they were only interested in programming because they wanted to work at facebook for example.

Yeah, same with wanting to work for a random AAA game company. Unfortunately most people don't appreciate wisdom until they have already failed (reality check when someone is doing work they hate at their "dream job" - if they hate it then they made a mistake), and some people never learn from their mistakes.

That's not really how economics works. The games market (for example) isn't capped by how many amazing games people could potentially play.

It's capped by the amount of money people have available to spend on games. So that money necessarily has to come from other parts of the economy. So when other parts of the economy suffer there is less money to pay for games. Games are going to be a fairly elastic good, in that as much as I might love video games I'm not going to spend money on them if I'm struggling to afford food and rent. So in a bad market either games have to either become cheaper, or there will be less titles on the market.

Thus the demand for game developers either goes down or they will make less money each and the wages can only go so low before they will be forced to defect to other industries because their game salary won't make the rent.

Other jobs like trash collection will have a more steady supply/demand because even in a bad economy someone needs to take the crap away. I'm sure there are people who love trash collecting, but they are probably a minority of the workforce vs people who would prefer to get a trash collection salary for watching TV or playing video games.

The problem with telling people to "create opportunity" is that starting a business (as I have learned myself) is something that requires more capital than you think it does even if you are frugal. So unless you happen to be independently wealthy you are going to need to take that capital by either working at some other job or persuading an investor that your business will generate them a return.

So you have to find something that is the best compromise between "what I like to do" and "what do I think will make money" and usually the second one becomes the dominant factor.

You have so many self limiting beliefs.

Not really, I simply took an econ class.

I think realistic management of expectations is important, the world simply doesn't work in the way you suggest it does though I agree it would be preferable if it did.

I think that Pkoed's advice is unrealistic if everyone attempted to apply it to their lives, but this of course is never going to happen. On an individual scale, for the few hundred people who read his point of view here, it strikes me as a valid and reasonable way of seeing the world.

Starting a business is by no means an easy road, but it is something that is definitely possible without capital or investors. e.g. bootstrapping.

Even a bootstrapped business requires some cash to start, unless you are fortunate enough to be cashflow positive first month.

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