Agreed. This is why, when I'm tying into the anchors at the top of a climb so that I can clean the route, I say every action I'm doing out loud as a way to talk myself through it and confirm that I'm doing all of the actions. It becomes much clearer if I do something out of order or incorrect just by hearing myself say it.
> Deep Work, along with many other non-fiction "self help" books HN loves, could just be a couple of long blog posts.
Sure, they could be, but I would argue there is benefit to expanding them into longer books.
I haven't read this specific book, but have read several other "self-help" books and while the majority of them have shown repetitive themes, that same repetition is what ingrained the overall message the author is trying to disseminate. Reading a book over the course of weeks has a much more lasting effect on me, than probably any blog posts I've read.
It isn't necessarily analogous to compare the study of writing in college to that of learning to program. For one, by the time you are in college, you have been speaking, reading, and analyzing (via communication) your native language for ~15 years. Because we already have such a vast foundation to work from, we can venture into deeper parts of the language and meaning and interpreting how authors use it to create meaning.
I think programming is more analogous to learning a new language. Now I can imagine studying Spanish (a non-native language for me) without reading a ton of books, and analyzing and critiquing other Spanish writers, because I simply can't and it isn't that beneficial - from the beginning - to start that without have some foundation to work from. It is only after you learn some vocabulary, grammar, semantics, sentence structure and some cultural significance, that you venture into analyzing and critiquing their writing.
I think for beginner programmers, it isn't supremely beneficial to read a bunch of others code, because you don't really know what is good and what isn't or even what to really look for. However, when a programmer creeps into the intermediate level of things, I think reading other's code becomes amazing beneficial, because from that foundation, you can understand, analyze, critique, and maybe most importantly, internalize what that programmer is really trying to achieve and how you can use their methods going forward.
Now in reality, we don't really know the point we hit that intermediate level, and we will inevitably be reading other's code at the beginner level. I think it's just a matter of shifting the weight that we put on reading other's code as we mature as programmers.
Yeah I agree. I am single, healthy, and car-less. I pay $1500 a month rent for a pretty nice place, and have a avg software engineer salary, and I feel very comfortable, even paying for a large student loan. The real kicker is that I was living in this same situation for $50k salary before it doubled, and still felt I had some disposable income that I could save up. However, I can't imagine still feeling comfortable having all of the expenses that come with a family. I think that's what triggers the threshold for that extreme cost of living in SF. But again, for a young person with a tech salary and the very minimum in financial obligations, I think living here is easily doable.
Then oddly enough, it becomes less about you being challenged and more about those who believe you shouldn't exist being challenged. Colleges are great for exposure to peers with varying backgrounds and beliefs and are great for fostering understanding of each other's viewpoints. Isolating your group to spaces of the same people will probably strengthen that demarcation and lessen the incentive (and the ability) for those with hardened beliefs to understand the other side's viewpoints. Sometimes all it takes is befriending one LGBTQ to melt that belief.
I think the difference is that they are willingly trading suffering for some personal benefit, whereas you don't actively choose to suffer. While that's unfortunate, you are unfairly writing them off because you arbitrarily have to suffer. Sure, it's commendable that you don't give up, but that doesn't negate the testament to the human will that these individuals are going out of their way to test. It seems to me that you believe anyone who doesn't endure a chronic illness is a wimp.. well guess what, some sufferers don't get to choose to live and have to die in front of their friends and illness due to terminal disease. Does that make you a wimp relative to them?
That sounds pretty anecdotal, only because (also anecdotally) I was surrounded by many, many wealthy kids at my school whose parents put insane pressure on them due to the perceived status of telling others that their children go to "insert well-branded school here"
Every time I read about the original "hackers" of the modern computer era, it seems many were much more focused on refining their code, or "bumming" lines of code, into the smallest form possible due to the technological limitations of the time. It's not super surprising many developers aren't as conscientious about bloating software because computers have gotten fast enough to mask a lot of performance issues. Still, I think those who strive for less code show maturity as a developer. For one, you can't remove lots of code if you don't truly know how the code works, and furthermore, that process is a good way to learn how it does.
Yeah I think there is just a lot of friction when moving from the concise "ES6" to the lengthy, and somewhat awkward "ECMAScript2015". The fact that so many people still use the terms ES6 and ES7 gives others even less incentive to use the official naming scheme. Hopefully, it will iron itself out in the future.
Yeah, there are two ways to find value in your life's work. One is to continually perfect your craft (Jiro), which means dedicating yourself to primarily one skill/career/industry. The other is to continually diversify your skill set by trying new things and experiencing the breadth of activities life has to offer. I don't think you can say one is more meaningful than the other, but it does seem that they are mutually exclusive.
This sort of underminds the fact that, like any art, many authors write books because they actually enjoy the act of writing (perhaps not physically) and telling a story, and are doing so for their own sake. They aren't making their work convenient for you, but producing a work that they personally feel happy about. Sure, cut the Great Gatsby down to the bare essentials.. but then it probably wouldn't be the Great Gatsby.
It shot me forward to a time where people just click a button to generate music they want to listen to. If you really like the generation, you save it and share it. It wouldn't have all of the other aspects that we derive from human-produced music like soul/emotion (because we know it's coming from a human, not because of how it sounds), but it would be a cool application idea anyway.
Dang, I'm really happy you made this (event supports remapping 'esc' to 'jj' which is a must for me), but now I'm so waist deep in the atom environment that the switching costs are pretty steep. At this point the only reason I would switch is speed, and Atom is not slow enough to outweigh the switching costs for me. Great work and initiative though, maybe one day I'll switch because of this.
In my personal experience, this strategy has worked remarkably. One morning my friend and I were out eating breakfast and discussing the Pokemon Go craze. Then we started talking about our childhood experiences with pokemon on the gameboy, and how we didn't know any of the pokemon after the second generation, so the new games would be completely novel to us. We got so nostalgic that we decided right then that after we paid our bill, we would go to the nearest BestBuy and get a nintendo 3DS and Pokemon X and Y, so we could relive those childhood days. That was a great week. And we will probably get Sun and Moon when it comes out. Before this, I had not bought a game since xbox/ps2, but I have no problem supporting a company that has given me so many countless memories (NES/gameboy/N64).
> I don't think removing the headphone jack is going to be as big a deal as everyone here makes it out to be.
> I have a pair of bluetooth headphones I use for the gym and I love them.
Yeah, that's why you don't see it as a problem. The majority of people still use corded headphones, some of which are high-quality, pricey investments that you don't just want to stop using. If you end up misplacing that little dongle, you can't listen to music privately until it's replaced. Seems like a downgrade in functionality, with almost no improvement, considering you are already using your bluetooth headphones effectively.
I definitely agree with getting value from books about companies/people you admire. I think it's more memorable to read about real people's actions and lifestyles as opposed to reading "how-to" or "self-help" books, though I read those too and have received value from them as well.
Here are some books I'd recommend in the former vein:
1. Elon Musk - as mentioned, awesome, inspiring read
2. Creativity, Inc. - Ed Catmull's story of Pixar
3. Masters of Doom - Carmack is a boss
4. The Innovators - The people who created the computing world
5. Hackers - The people who created the computing world
6. Steve Jobs - obligatory, whether positive/negative
> Yeah, it's probably overly pessamistic; no, it's not fair. But I'm alive and uninjured.
Don't you think that's a little bit of survivorship bias? I'm sure there are plenty of cyclist who have been killed who 100% agreed and rode in that way, but they obviously can't speak on the matter.
Of course it is dangerous and potentially lethal when you get hit by a car, but how can you suggest that it's not beneficial to have measures in place that at least attempt to protect cyclist. It makes cyclist 'feel' safer, because it is in fact safer. Look at countries like the Netherlands that have excellent cycling lanes and safety measures. It makes drivers more aware that there are cyclist around them, and urges them to be more cognizant of their surroundings.
Honestly, it seems as if the article is just bending the definition of listening. It appears their idea of "the best listener" is the person who engages you the most in conversation. Sure, that person might be a more valuable person to talk to, but I fail to see why that has to be the definition of a great listener.
I lol'd at how true this is. And working on a team with multiple sub-groups means that only 2 or 3 out of the 8 person team knows the problem intimately, and it just becomes a problem-solving colloquium right there at standup until someone eventually says, "ok save that for after standup".
Just 5 years ago, as a freshman in college, I was alternating between Amazon and eBay to find the cheapest price for textbooks. This was the first time I ordered anything off of Amazon, and it was their bread and butter; a book. Fast-forward to present day and I order almost everything off of Amazon, even if I can get it at a store nearby. Why? Because products reviews have grown to be essential in my psychology for buying, and it's very easy to wait just two days for the product to arrive at your doorstep. And I haven't used eBay in years.
That's an interesting insight that I never really realized before. I think a lot of people try to pinpoint why Steve Jobs is and was so respected despite the negative ways he treated people. I may have lost respect for him through these accounts, but I don't think I've ever questioned his authenticity.
Honestly, I do the bare minimum. I keep it tucked under my bed.. so if anyone goes that far to invade my privacy, then that is their problem at that point.
When I started journaling, I promised myself that I would be honest with myself, because the purpose of journaling was to chronicle what I was thinking at that time in my life. I not only write out moments that stand out in that day, like things that went wrong or went well, but how I feel about those events. Most of the time this revolves around my interactions with people, or lack of interactions with people. I also write about what I am especially grateful for that day, what I'm looking forward to, and what I'm doing today to get me there. It is a very cathartic experience to go back months/years later and read it. You get such an insight into the person you were, but more notably, realize that you do actually change over time even if sometimes it doesn't feel like it.
I agree with your second paragraph very much. However, your third paragraph points out the adage that continually needs to be reiterated, and you kind of hint at it. If you are writing a basic app that fetches some json and displays it to a small group of users, then no, a framework stack like react/redux is not needed and you can stick to the basics. But when you have a complex application that needs to scale, react is a handy tool to help accomplish this task.
Furthermore, I think it's normal for react to bloat a little bit while programmers suss out new features and usage. However, hopefully paradigms will solidify over time and that bloat will start to deflate.. hopefully.
>The worst part is that just before the meeting ended, one of the managers told us that the worker who was allowed to disobey the dress code was a former soldier who lost her leg and was therefore given permission to wear whatever kind of shoes she could walk in. You can’t even tell, and if we had known about this we would have factored it into our argument.
The answer to your question is right there in the article