ubertoop

I believe the point is that the "main thread" for your iOS application, is not the main thread of the OS. They're totally decoupled.

> You are half-way through a change. Your old motivations have lost their appeal.

I think I'm in the same boat as the OP, and this comment resonated with me. When I started programming nearly a decade ago, I had an abundance of intrinsic motivation. I was so excited to learn about software, how to build websites, phone applications, server applications etc. That drive was a genuine passion and love for computers and software and it carried me nearly a decade in this industry through some amazing challenges. I've grown more than I could have imagined.

Yet now in my mid 30s... that passion has really dwindled. When I wake up on a Saturday, I'm not rushing to get to my computer to code. I'm more interested in relaxing, getting outside, or just doing something else. Yet in the back of my mind is a constant pressure, a constant reminder, that I should be productive.

There's always more to learn, and didn't I struggle to write that regex the other day? Didn't I want to finally dig deep into Tensor Flow? Wasn't I going to bust out the breadboard and get into some hardware design?

Why don't I feel like doing any of that now? Why is the only motivation, money?

Like the OP, the only thing that seems like it could light a fire under my ass would be some big monetary opportunity. I could get excited to build a new app, or a new server project, or website, if I knew I stood a good chance of really changing my life for the better.

I think that as the novelty of programming wore off, the only thing left was money. Initially I was motivated by wanting to understand everything. I truly didn't know how to make a phone application, and now I've made many. I didn't understand how to build and deploy a website, and now I've done that many times.

What's left? Where do I go from here? I really have more questions than answers. With another 25-30 years of "work" to do, I'm really confused about what I will do.

"Boudin was born in New York City to Jewish parents. His parents, Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, were Weather Underground members, both convicted of murder."[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chesa_Boudin

I'm really confused as to what point you're trying to make with this comment.

In order to secure religious freedoms, religious rights, and LGBTQ inclusion, we need to have a filthy city, filled with homelessness, drug addiction, and absurd policies?

Interesting but, I don't really think I understand what this is. Would you mind explaining it in lay terms?

> I just keep everything in memory in native data structures and flush to disk periodically;

Can you expand on what you mean by this? I am interpreting that to mean that you are actually writing to a file and reading from a file rather than using SQL?

Oh, derp. My mistake... I read the OPs comment as the opposite for some reason.

You know what can easily induce a 10+ heart rate increase? The perception of danger, aka, FEAR.

An entirely mental process.

xamber's point remains valid though -

while code may move to the frontend, the notion of scaling isn't a function of the number of users (as the original op erroneously states).

maybe they meant their front end code scales as complexity is moved from server to client? that would make sense.

Gosh, you know... I think you've left a very novel innovation from China off your list.

https://youtu.be/dnY2OtnTOcA

The scary thing is how much ones phone number (a somewhat ephemeral thing) is actually bound to your IDENTITY.

Considering your phone number is more and more being used in 2FA ... if you were to ever change your number and someone else got it, this would pose a serious security risk if you failed to change over ALL of your internet accounts 2FA to the new number.

edit: forgot i was done. damnit.

From what I can find, 5G wasn't invented in China, nor was the concept of electromagnetic information transfer. Nor were transitors. Nor were micro processors. Nor were personal cell phones...

The list goes on, and it goes DEEP right down to the fundamental physics of these innovations which all did NOT come out of China.

Devistating as this all is to your point, you'll probably never accept it. China has a long history of stealing from the West, where the true innovation has occurred over the years.

Yes, I do think this is starting to change and I applaud China where it has introduced improvements to technology instead of raw copying (which it has a long, long history of doing). The unfortunate reality is that cheating for years has tainted their image, and try as you might to point out one or two examples of how it's changed, doesn't make it so.

Most of the things you've listed here use WESTERN TECH just re-applied for a Chinese market, and you're calling that innovation? The fact that you had to list "Chinese based text input via keyboards" as a genuine Chinese innovation is telling.

Done with this discussion. You can't seem to come up with even 2 genuine Chinese innovations and instead refer to the reapplication of tech developed in the western world.

Nobody is saying China can't take what others have done and improve on it. That is happening more and more. It used to be China just straight up copied and stole intellectual property. I'll admit that line is beginning to blur. But genuine novel innovation is still very lacking.

This list includes no genuinely new innovations except for maybe 5G. You are listing that China is a major manufacturer, which is true. The OPs point was that China has a record of stealing IP from the US, which is also true. Listing manufacturers in China doesn't disprove this point.

So please, if you'd like, a list of genuine technologies who's origins can be traced to China... I'll be waiting.

You've listed literally 4 things.

You can't really believe that compares to the innovations to come out of Silicon Valley, right?

This is true in most languages really. It starts with people just wanting to speed up their development by turning common tasks into some macro, or annotation, or even library. But where does it end? It ends in a convoluted mess of dependencies, weird syntax, and hopeless stack traces.

So much work can be done with plain old Java. Or plain old JavaScript. Or plain old C + stdlib.

A very good point indeed.

I just find it amusing that the very source of the problem (humans) are themselves positing that they are also part of the solution.

Why kid ourselves? 8+ billion humans are going to consume, and keep consuming, endlessly. The ONLY actual solution that involves humans is expansion. We either expand to another planet / galaxy, or we ride this one out to its (and our) death.

That's why we should prioritize science more as a collective. We need more Elon Musks with giant aspirations to really move the needle.

> have as many kids as you can support

How ironic considering that the very source of earths problems are because of humans. Somehow, the solution is more. Never a better response from, a human.

I've clearly been doing this quarantine / pandemic wrong.

You have got to be kidding. SF, and California generally, has had systemic problems that have virtually nothing to do with the recent tech boom.

Come on dude. People aren't talking about the "weird" or quirky aspects of SF. We're talking about fucking needles, and human feces in the street. Stop protecting this shit by labeling it as something other than human suffering and a public health disaster.

> And ironically, restrictions here are less than in many hard hit areas

What did Atlantic Canada do then?

Wow. I would love to hear more about this. A lot of people on here suffer from burnout in some form or another, and I would imagine very view actually cut the cord. Do you have a writeup anywhere about your experience?

Alright, so now I'm left wondering: What about big agriculture?

There's a popular YouTube channel [1] with advocates for a plant based diet, low in fat, yet suspiciously says almost nothing about hydrogenated vegetable oils (canola, soy bean, sunflower, etc).

These oils - according to many studies - are THE leading source of heart disease, right up there with sugar. They're a highly unnatural food, heavily processed, never before in nature were you able to consume the oil extracted from a f*cking sunflower like you can today.

And yet? NutritionFacts.org almost never, and I mean 99.9% of the time never mentions how bad these oils are for you.

Coincidence? I mean really, what CAN you believe these days? There's a study for this, and a study for that. Everything is bad for you.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/user/NutritionFactsOrg

> for firms that write in functional languages

What does the language being a functional language have to do with it?

Pretty much. I only fly when driving would take 6 hours or more.

Ah yes because, correlation = causation. Come on.

Example: People are citing that birth rates decline in wealthier countries, yet fail to realize that wealth in those countries is a direct function of time. People exchange their time, for wealth.

It is not enough to simply have wealth. You also need time.

Most of these "studies" people keep linking, are looking at a single variable's correlation and not controlling for anything else. Amazing to me the "science" people will accept.

Wealth itself is a horrible predictor. What people really need, is a different form of wealth:

TIME.

That, I believe, is a function of one material: PLASTIC.

There's just something about plastic that feels cheap and replaceable even when used in a "high end" product. There are toasters from the 50s made in stainless steel that are timeless. Contrast that with the plastic enclosed toasters of the last few decades and it's just no contest.