121 karma · joined July 11, 2017
(/takes off devil's advocate hat and puts on flame suit)
People don't go mass free-climbing because it isn't something you do by accident. The danger is obvious. But this danger is abstract, and the ease of entering this type of system can happen with just a few clicks from the comfort of your home. And getting dollar signs in your eyes is a very psychologically influential pull.
If you take it for granted that you want to eschew typical hardware, and deliver experiences over the Internet, is the best way to do that really let someone rent 8GB of RAM in the cloud, and load Chrome and web pages into that cloud ram they rented? and then let the webpages paint in the cloud and draw it for the user over RDP?
This makes sense for Microsoft to use their desktop telemetry investments in the cloud era. But less sense for users doing basic productivity.
That's the biological firmware running in your brain. The Internet screws with this perception. It can be a "make yourself feel bad" machine under the right circumstances.
Hold those 0.0001% up as personal heroes (keeping in mind most people have no connection at all to writing Corkscrew Follies in Assembly) and use that inspiration to live your life to your own satisfaction. That's what Chris Sawyer was doing too.
What percentage of programmers would still be programmers if competitive salary was not a concern in life, and people were free to simply pursue their passions?