hnthrowaway0315

If you are lucky and got in early, then probably yes, it could be a lifetime career. It's like all careers, when you joined early, you got a lot of opportunities, you also rode the wave, you eventually rose to the top if you grit through.

It's a lot easier to be early than to be smart or quick.

Calculators and CAD tools do not give you non-deterministic answers. Both of them simply automate part of the manual work for them without creating anything "new". I haven't used CAD tools but I did use some level editors such as Trenchbroom -- I think what is automated is the 3d shapes that you want to make -- e.g. back in the day of '96, when ID Software is creating Quake, there was very little pre-drawn shapes in the level editor and they have to make the blocks by themselves, thus it is very difficult and time consuming to make complex shapes such as curved walls and tunnels. Then better tools were invented and now it is much easier to create a complex shape. But you don't type "a Quake level with theme A, and blah blah" and then you get a more or less working level -- this is what AI is doing right now.

I think the right analogy to calculators and CAD tools, is IDE with Intellisense for SWE -- instead of typing code one char by one char, we can tab to automate some part of it.

But I agree with your consensus -- SWE is changing, whether we like it or not. We need to adapt, or find a niche and grit to retirement.

I think OP was saying that he/she only watches movies made before 2010.

Coincidentally, I'm doing the same thing with movies, TV shows and games, and 2010 still feels too modern for me. I try to make it before 2005.

The super riches are already winning so many times. The US is missing regulations, and at the same time over-regulate areas that it should not.

Yeah I think this makes more sense. After all they need some domain knowledge but the key is to write and deliver that payload.

No I haven't found it yet. AFAIK MalwareBazaar (right now I cannot access the website) only has two files, one .exe and another one some 30K.

Download link for anyone who is curious enough:

https://bazaar.abuse.ch/sample/9a10e1faa86a5d39417cae44da5ad...

I'll probably build a Windows XP VM first.

Does that mean that three-letter agencies were/are able to recruit from the fields for each type of malware? For example, fast16 might actually be written by someone who used to write scientific calculation software, while Stunex was written by someone who used to work for Siemens?

I tried to ask ChatGPT the same question last year. Unfortunately it didn't give me a meaningful answer.

Nowadays true native app work is very limited and many companies just use Electron. Oh well.

I was a bit skeptical about “do it well or don’t do it at all.” but then I realized my father is like that and then I understand. He might be a bit messy about very small things in life, but he is dead serious about anything else. The "smart" part is just NOT do anything you don't care, it seems.

For me, I wish I could be like that. I definitely need to work harder to achieve that. I tend to gloss over anything I don't like. Maybe that's why I never learned to grit through in my 40 or so years of life.

Yeah I do hold this attitude and try to side brush "mood", which I believe is a mere suggestion, not a command. However I noticed a completely different "mode" when I'm operating IN project and BETWEEN projects.

When I'm IN project, "just do it" works very well. But when I'm BETWEEN projects (this is when I completed a project, and dived into the next project, but found out that I did not enjoy it or got lost or whatever), "just do it" only works when "just do it" -- it doesn't really create a focus needed to move the projects forward. What I got frustrated is that this IN BETWEEN period could take multiple months to get out, which is a super waste of time. If only I could figure out as soon as I completed the previous project, I'd achieve so much more -- you see, for the type of projects I'm working on, I could not afford to wait for several months, or even several weeks -- because this is not my daily job, so if I wait for too long I'm going to lose the knowledge -- it's like muscle training, you can't stop for several weeks and hope muscle retains.

Yeah. It's so hard to get them. The people I look up to (John Carmack, David Cutler) all have these traits.

I think they want an app, but prefer to use web stack, so that's the result. The reason they want an app instead of a web application, is maybe an app gives them more control.

Yes you are right, he was quoting from the Bible.

I agree. It's just a tool that may or may not be useful. I also found that getting rid of caffeine for a couple of weeks, and then take up a cup, gives a much larger boosts to the mood.

Have you been to therapy? What did it look like? I'm thinking about getting one, but I'm not sure whether anyone could fix me when I'm fundamentally unhappy about life -- but definitely not to the point to consider suicide.

For me there is definitely a blocking factor, like awaiting for a click, before I can move into exercises and healthier food and such. Maybe it is a rare case and I do wish it is the other way around.

Actually now that I think about it, "The Soul of the New Machine" / "Showstopper" both describe this kind of mental (although I'm far from a good engineer) when engineers are done with a project, they get frustrated during the waiting period between two projects. This is pretty similar to what I felt -- whenever I finished a project, I tried to find new projects to work on immediately, not want to lose the momentum, but frustration quickly mounts among 1) I was burnt out temporarily but could not take a break, and 2) It's hard to find projects suitable for my level. It usually took a few months for this frustration to pass, which is frustrating by itself.

I wish I could be like that. I'm more or less a result-driven person, but whenever a result is achieved (e.g. complete all xv6 labs) I became lost and frustrated, and was eager to find the next one. But my mind was usually burnt out during the previous process, so it usually takes a few months of frustration to get everything settled so that I could move on.

The "pinball" concept in "The Soul of a New Machine" rings very true to me -- "The motivational system is akin to the game of pinball, the analogy being that if you win this round, you get to play the game again." -- this is exactly what I feel. But the pinball game is more and more difficult, sometimes too difficult for my fragile mind -- and I still have a day job and a family to take care of.

Yep that's what I feel when I have lost my purpose. "Man shall not live by bread alone", so said Dostoevsky.

It's definitely my fault to overgeneralize from a sample size of 1. Perhaps it would be better if I simply try to reach out for similar cases.

I wish you figure it out eventually. At least you have the financial buffer to try things :D

I'm actually neither smart nor winning, at least from my perspective. The only winners are those who can do whatever they want and can say No to anything they don't enjoy. There are very few of them. The majority of the rest of us are similar, regardless of whether you are making 100K or 500K. Then there are the homeless/jobless people who are struggling with basic needs.

I'm not sure which half you are talking about, but I'm really bad at giving advice, especially to people in different situations. I do not have the authority or capacity to help others genuinely.

> A lot of mine focuses on career things. I've got a bank of knowledge and skills that aren't easy to replicate and a career track circled around those things, but lack (I think) the passion for that career track.

I think maybe you can move into a managerial position that doesn't need to do much in the trench, or become a trainer in that field.

> That doesn't mean that I don't want a career or have aspirations, but there's so much less clarity.

Yeah. I figured there is a lot of ambiguity in life objectives, and there is no one there to help you. You just have yourself in this game.

> What do you do to work through these challenges?

TBH, I do not know what to do. I have a toolbox for the "down" time, but neither of them really solves it. Sometimes I listen to "Napoleon Hill" episodes to give me some motivation (this one I listened to today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u5jAzHpI3w). Sometimes I talked to myself and tried to sort out something. Sometimes I talked to ChatGPT and asked it to give me a list of something.

I kinda think there is no magic pills for such situations and one just has to grit through.

That could definitely the case. I can't really tell which one comes first, mood or objective.

I have a kid and I get it. I'm actually a bit scared about long vacations and weekends nowadays. But I hope we will figure out a way when kid grows up a bit. Right now, it's all luck. I'm even thinking about getting rid of my hobbies and find new ones that match kid's education and activity, but not sure about that.

Yeah I think that helps, too. Unfortunately most of us cannot do that. I found a few days is not enough. At least 2 weeks.

I think a lot of it has to do with mental status, which can be concluded with one sentence -- "Are you happy with your life, and if not do you have a clear path to reach that?".

People who say no probably has a lot of trouble to get fit, get enough sleep -- sometimes NOT because they do not have the resources, but because they are not happy. They hate life, so why makes it better? I have observed this in myself so I wonder whether it is universally true.

I have observed that whenever I have a clear target in my life (e.g. I need to pursue this girl I like, or, I need to figure out Linux 1.0 VFS and I have a clear path before me), I immediately take care to do exercises, eat more healthy food, and try to get good sleep -- but if I cannot find an objective, or I have lost interests and are in the middle of finding a new one, I find myself a lot more obnoxious, and sometimes I "proactively" destroy my health because I don't care about it. Unfortunately I rarely find a clear path before me so the later status is more or less permanent while the former one is rare, maybe once per year -- but when I reach the first status it usually grabbed me for 2-3 months.

Mental stability is probably one of the reasons different people have vastly different productivity or achievements. It is mental stability that brings focus, not the other way around.

It's different. Electron apps all look the same without actually making much efforts to make them "personal" -- they just want to release an app ASAP so they chose Electron.

On the other hand, the Win32 era "skins" like they ones used in Video Player and Winamp are very personal -- they have distinct styles. Maybe we don't like the styles, but at least they are trying to make a unique taste.

Electron apps do not have tastes. Unless you count flat design + as little UI as possible as a taste.

Modern operating systems are for servers, for corporations. They are not personal. Linux was for hackers and sysadmins then, not power users, and for servers now. Linux does make a come back for desktop because Windows team makes such a herculean effort to trash its own product. The Win 3.1 - Win XP era are the real "personal" era.

I wonder what is the memory foot print of the notepad application in NT 3.1/3.5? The OS is supposed to run on 16MB systems so 1.8MB is definitely a LOT.