You can't just divide the world into people who believe fallacies and people who don't. They are rooted in fundamental cognitive biases, everyone falls for the "just try harder"/"just be better"/"just don't put any bugs in the code"/"just have excellent test coverage" thing sometimes.
Certainly all the most experienced engineers I work with, who should definitely know better, still haven't fully internalised the fact that all code is broken.
It's honestly a breath of fresh air to simply read a book that explains clearly how Unix works, with self-contained examples, and which is comprehensive and organized. (If you don't know C, that can be a barrier, but that's also a barrier reading blog posts)
I don't believe the equivalent information is anywhere on the web. (I have a lot of Unix trivia on my blog, which people still read, but it's not the same)
IMO there are some things for which it's really inefficient to use blog posts or Google or LLMs, and if you want to understand Unix signals that's probably one of them.
(This book isn't "cheap" even used, but IMO it survives with a high price precisely because the information is valuable. You get what you pay for, etc. And for a working programmer it is cheap, relatively speaking.)
I will humbly restate this advice slightly based on 2-3X the life experience: Don’t have “end goals”. There’s no way to be satisfied with that approach. Either you reach the end and haven’t achieved them (you’re a “failure”), or you achieve them but aren’t at the end (now what?).
Instead, have a direction, or preferably more than one. Strive to make progress in those directions and celebrate your progress. If you enjoy running the race, rather than just look to the finish line, you’ll have reason to be satisfied the whole time. And if you don’t have a goal, there’s no reason to ever stop being satisfied.
Bonus points if you can train yourself to be satisfied based on just one criterion: Did I learn something? Because then there are no “failures” to worry about, and you’ll be much more open to trying new things.
You sacrifice things - video games, TV, doomscrolling. There just isn't enough time to do all that and write. That's what most would-be writers are unwilling to give up.
Fun to imagine how a tidally-locked civilization would grow up seeing a lot more symmetry in their environment than we do, and how their myths might spring up as a result.
Also funny to imagine their scientists dismissing Earth as possibly habitable- "spinning around and around like that would result in impossibly complex weather systems - no way that's stable enough to sustain life!"
When I'm in that scenario, so much to do, so little time, what should I do ahhhh.
I love to ask myself - "What am I resisting?" and then doing that thing. It's the biggest momentum creator that I've found.
It's a highly accurate radar system into the fact that I know what I should be doing, and I just want to cover it over and pretend that I don't as a means of continuing on and amplifying my own exciting melodrama!
I was recently reading the book of Exodus, in particular where G-d tells Moses and the Jewish people about the construction of the tabernacle and the altar. The striking thing about the altar is the description of daily sacrifices that are required.
As a metaphor, this resonates to what we're talking about there. The nature of the universe is such that change happens much more through compounding than through one-time miracles (eg, if you want an extra 100K in the bank, the easiest way to do that is to have saved $27 every day over the last 10 years than somehow to wish for the 100K to land in your account in one shot, the way to lose 10 lbs is to cut out 100 calories a day for a year, etc.)
Back to Exodus - you can think of "$27/day" or "100 calories/day" as a form of sacrifice. You can always spend that money on something, you an always eat an extra treat - to not do that requires consistent, daily, sacrifice, albeit small.
That's why when someone does something consistently, we say he does it "religiously" - religion teaches you daily consistency in many ways. We don't sacrifice on the altar nowadays, but think about daily morning prayer for example - if you can be consistent with that you can be consistent with a lot of other things.
“Have you looked at a modern airplane? Have you followed from year to year the evolution of its lines? Have you ever thought, not only about the airplane but about whatever man builds, that all of man's industrial efforts, all his computations and calculations, all the nights spent over working draughts and blueprints, invariably culminate in the production of a thing whose sole and guiding principle is the ultimate principle of simplicity?
“It is as if there were a natural law which ordained that to achieve this end, to refine the curve of a piece of furniture, or a ship's keel, or the fuselage of an airplane, until gradually it partakes of the elementary purity of the curve of a human breast or shoulder, there must be the experimentation of several generations of craftsmen. It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.”
Reminds me of my favorite parables - When Alexander meet the sage
‘What is your purpose in life?’
‘I am Alexander and I am out to master the earth.’
‘What do you plan to do after that?’ asked the sadhu probingly.
‘I shall take all the wealth, horses and elephants from the conquered lands to Greece’.
‘Presuming you accomplish your goal, Emperor, what next?’
‘I shall take all the men from these wretched countries as my slaves and all the women to regale us in Greece’.
‘What a motivation! All the men as slaves and women as entertainers!’ commented the sadhu wryly.
Not stopping, he asked him further: ‘Assuming you accomplish even that, what will you do next?’
Contrary to his extrovert and energetic nature, Alexander was quiet for some time. Finally, he stated, with an exhalation: ‘After that, undoubtedly I will sit on my throne and relax’.
‘That’s what I am doing,’ said the ‘unusual Indian sadhu’ with a content smile.
Drawing from SDT (self-determination theory), one of the main predictors for motivation is a psychological need called 'competence' (perception of whether your actions lead to the feeling of growth or accomplishment). Different actions and situations can send either a positive competence signal to a person (and increase motivation) or a negative one (and decrease motivation). These things are measurable.
The main issue with competitions is that they send positive competence signal to one person (winner) and negative to everyone else. Like you trained for months, and now you've lost. This leads to increased dropout rates in sports, which are especially pronounced in kids. Norwegians asked the question – instead of spending money and effort to try to engage people and kids in sports, maybe we should ask a question, 'Why do they drop out in the first place' and prevent those? Competitions came as one of the strongest predictors of dropping out of sports, hence the policy.
(Not to knock the people who do that vs less high tech bullseye disciples, because they're also definitely better - they clean house in the lower tech competitions too)
I'm reminded of an excerpt from Ian Banks culture series, the game player one (player of games?). Really good games need some element of random, not just pure skill+gear.
I do express it as a Christian, and I don't believe I could any other way. After losing my sister and my nephew six years ago (today would have been her 36th birthday, actually), I tried mightily to come up with any other way through, and it just didn't, couldn't, happen.
There's a line at the end of the book A Song for Nagasaki where he says, "For all that has been, thank you. To all that will be, yes."
I think the journey of my life of faith is one of coming to mean that.
I have seen many people like you respond here, but I felt a need to talk to you. I have a different story. I have convinced 2 partners over my younger life to have abortions. I was young and stupid. I thought life would continue in the grandest way it seemed then, and got caught off guard and was terrified. I have since had 2 children, and the sorrow and devastation of my past choices now haunts me. The love I lost. Not getting to hold and care for them.
You might say "get over it and stop feeling bad - you have something good," and I know I do, but the past hangs over me like a never-ending storm. How can I ever forgive myself for what I did? The thought of them safe in their mother's wombs and being ripped out...I can hardly bear it. I carry this pain daily. I have since learned that having kids is the best thing that ever happened to me. It taught me how to love in a way I hadn't ever before. Having this knowledge makes the past even harder to accept. Who would those unborn have been today? What would they have taught me? How can I be a caring person to have done this?
I can't say I can relate to your situation, so please forgive any apparent glibness, but I would gladly sign up to go through what a lot of people here have done for their children with special needs just to have the chance to have known them. It may sound easy for me to say, but be glad you didn't make my choices. If someone else reads this who did, please know that there is also a part of me that realizes I thought things would be different, and I went on the information I had, which was bad. I'm not at all judging you. You did the best you could. Despite me sounding self condemning, I'm just very regretful that I didn't make a different choice.
All this to say: I hope you find a little more validation from my story that you are on a good path, and that you are not cursed, but rather have a gift. It's a gift I chose to throw away. It sounds like it's hard to manage at times but it's very much a gift. I know that sounds dismissive and cheesy, like everything everyone would say because it sounds good and doesn't acknowledge the real sacrifices you've had to make in comparison to friends who don't understand, but I want you to know that I truly mean it, and I understand, maybe unlike others who say it, what it really means, because I look at you and want so badly what you have, if it meant having all my children alive in my life. Your child taught you how to love - deeper and more alive than anything else possibly could have. It may seem like life/God used force to shape you like this, but I'm learning that's the only way it can work sometimes. You have to get to a point where you are willing to see it differently, and God will find a way to show you that. Maybe your child's presence forced you to make a choice to break through your own ego and be willing to love them. If so, it no doubt transformed you. Learning that is the greatest lesson life can teach. You are on a good path. It won't be evident for a time, but you absolutely are. I send you my best.
Man, I feel you. I'm not an academic, but I'm just feeling out of breath and defeated lately. I grew up loving to build software. Reading programming books, keeping up with tech. It's the closest thing to work + passion that I think I've ever felt. Joined the military to get out of my hometown. Worked in whatever field I could remotely relate to while I finished my BS:CS. Moved from non-IT fields into whatever IT-related field I could hoping it'd get my resume closer to what I wanted to do.
Now I'm just pigeon-holed into some boring bureaucratic IT admin gig with just enough perks to keep me around, and big enough dollar signs to prevent me from starting over in a junior capacity. Then I see all of the discussions from people that don't enjoy development after just a short time, get laid off, etc - and it makes the reality that I'm just destined to rot bored to death for 40hrs a week for the next 25+ years all the more real.
I also realize I am extremely fortunate compared to plenty of others, but that "tug" telling me I was destined for much more gets stronger the older I get.
I think that one of the problems of us humans is that we want to accomplish something, we tell our self storys about our self how we should have become that or done that. But in the end it really doesn't matter, even if you were Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman or Marie Curie, in a few billion years none of all the work any human ever did, everything accomplished, won't matter, no one will be here to remember anymore. I think the best one can do is to look at this world with some sort of an observer mindset and be curious about the things happening in this world, try not to judge the things happening, just think "Oh, that's interesting, I wonder why it is like that.". And of course, always try to be friendly to other living beings, even if there might be no afterlife after the end of the universe and you can't trade in your browniepoints anymore, ther is no excuse for making other peoples life worse than it already is. ;)
What's the best evidence on how companies should do layoffs these days? These instances where people announce they're going to be doing them over the coming few months seems so crazy to me because the culture goes to extremely depressed survival mode, and presumably everyone including the people you want to stay start looking for work?
I know it is inevitable, but I'm dreading the day when 100% of devices have fast broadband-level connectivity everywhere on the planet and there's truly nowhere you can go to just disconnect. Already in the last few years with satellite internet getting affordable you see people in remote RV camps or backcountry hikes or on boats in the middle of the ocean texting and video calling away, streaming the latest news and catching up on work emails. It's just going to keep getting worse.
Are video games actually fun? I used to spend a lot of time playing, until I had an epiphany and realized that it was more like working an unpaid part-time job. I was playing because I sort of felt obligated to reach the next level or finish the campaign or whatever, but I wasn't actually enjoying it and no one else cared about my achievements. So, I just quit and never looked back.
>I had an epiphany and realized that it was more like working an unpaid part-time job
I've had the reverse epiphany: That if I view aspects of my real life that seem difficult to make progress on as being more like a computer game, I can increase my motivation to tackle them.
> This image of Uranus from NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows the planet and its rings in new clarity. The planet’s seasonal north polar cap gleams in a bright white, and Webb’s exquisite sensitivity resolves Uranus’ dim inner and outer rings, including the Zeta ring—the extremely faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet.
> This Webb image also shows 14 of the planet’s 27 moons: Oberon, Titania, Umbriel, Juliet, Perdita, Rosalind, Puck, Belinda, Desdemona, Cressida, Ariel, Miranda, Bianca, and Portia.
> One day on Uranus is about 17 hours, so the planet’s rotation is relatively quick. This makes it supremely difficult for observatories with a sharp eye like Webb to capture one simple image of the entire planet – storms and other atmospheric features, and the planet’s moons, move visibly within minutes. This image combines several longer and shorter exposures of this dynamic system to correct for those slight changes throughout the observing time.
> Webb’s extreme sensitivity also picks up a smattering of background galaxies—most appear as orange smudges, and there are two larger, fuzzy white galaxies to the right of the planet in this field of view.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, in his philosophical discussions about language, argued that the concept of a "game" cannot be defined by a single set of characteristics. He suggested that games share a "family resemblance" rather than a strict definition, meaning they have overlapping features but no single feature is common to all.
A similar realization had a major impact on how Blizzard approached end-game raiding in WoW. In the first 2 expansions, only the most dedicated players were seeing the final boss and culmination of the storylines. It took 40 players working together to get there, and those 40 players had to execute complex fights in order to reach the end. Though a very rewarding experience for those who could do it, Blizzard did the math and realized they were excluding the VAST majority of their playerbase from the coolest content. They were spending tons of money creating this content and no one was experiencing it!
In the 3rd expansion and ever since then, end game content has been tuned to be a lot more forgiving and to require less people. There are still complex and rewarding fights, but ramping up the difficulty is "opt-in" generally speaking.
This is likely one of the reasons the game remained so successful for so long. Prior to this mentality shift, it was very common for end game MMO content to only be seen by a small minority of the players.
I think that this video should be considered mandatory viewing if you're a developer using Git — the whole lecture starts from the basic data structures involved and builds from there, as opposed to the way that it seems many people approach Git: "What command do I run?"
I get the sentiment but this reads more like an angry tirade than anything. I would probably be better off with my five minutes back. But now i feel obligated to respond.
As someone new to my organization and team I’ve greatly benefited from a partial rto mandate. There’s something about being able to quickly bounce ideas or questions off a team that physically sits around you that slack can’t quite emulate. There are productive discussions that happen which simply would not have otherwise happened. Teams become closer as they better understand each other and get to know what motivates one another (not always the paycheck, as in OP case). You become more empowered to take a step back out of your daily work and give consideration to the bigger picture when you’re surrounded by other groups.
I’ve worked remotely most of my life and am a proponent of it. I also think moving someone who was hired as a remote employee, to an in-person role, is a huge dick move. But to pretend like there are no benefits to occasionally being in-person seems like naivety bordering ignorance (For most team based roles which require strategic thinking).
Hiring can become a bigger challenge when your competition allows fully remote work, and companies should expect to increase compensation in one form or another, or otherwise lose talent. For some companies, e.g. mine, those steps have been worth taking. Small price to pay to preserve our awesome culture.
