I blame the internet. Back in the days before it, we had to learn to live with those around us, now you can just go out and find someone as equally stupid as yourself.
I call it the toaster fucker problem. Man wakes up in 1980, tells his friends "I want to fuck a toaster"
Friends quite rightly berate and laugh at him, guy deals with it, maybe gets some therapy and goes on a bit better adjusted.
Guy in 2021 tells his friends that he wants to fuck a toaster, gets laughed at, immediately jumps on facebook and finds "Toaster Fucker Support group" where he reads that he's actually oppressed and he needs to cut out everyone around him and should only listen to his fellow toaster fuckers.
Apply this analogy to literally any insular bubble, it applies as equally to /r/thedonald as it does to the emaciated Che Guevara larpers that cry thinking about ringing their favourite pizza place.
> Invention. Invention is the root of our success. We’ve done crazy things together, and then made them normal... If you get it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. And that yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive.
Jeff speaking about innovation, invention (based on first principles), making data-driven decisions (and also when to not trust data), learned helplessness at Stanford (2005): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhnDvvNS8zQ
I've had similar thoughts. The problem to me is that a huge portion of the people who say they want to "change the world" really mean they want to get rich quick with loose morals or they want to change the world in mostly trivial ways for young urban professionals. On the flip side, there are plenty of people and companies who legitimately are trying to change the world for the better for large segments of the population, but they're not paying FAANG salaries with cushy offices and benefits.
It comes down to your own priorities - if you want to actually help make the world a better place, you're probably going to have to suck it up and take a salary and career trajectory hit to work at a non-profit or a help-oriented company with low comp structure not based in a sexy city. If you're unwilling to give up some lifestyle points for that, you'll always be faced with companies that are really only paying lip service to positive change while actually being driven by profits.
For years I struggled to become financially independent (as Mr Money Mustache). Years upon years of watching the clock until it hit 17:30, hating the dumb coders who made a mess for me to clean up (because I know FP, and if we had types these bugs wouldn’t be here in the first place!).
A year ago, I pulled the plug, and retired. Finally, I could work on my dream project every day.
I did so for 6 months, and travelled, and had fun.
But the following six months were full of waking late, getting stoned (sometimes waking and baking), having a liter beer a day (Germany), being bored all day, and obviously falling into depression. Lounging around in long johns waiting for the evening so a friend would be off work and meet for dinner.
Then I answered a recruiter who contacted me about a job in a big boring government office. A place with endless dumb scrum bullshit processes (wasn’t it about having less process?), suits, good bye cakes, clueless managers, and all what I earlier resented.
But without that I was depressed. So now I go to my boring government job with a huge smile, and I honestly love the phony agile coach, coffee machine talk, and coding up things the stakeholder wants. Legacy code - what a joyous load to lift.
No one of my coworkers know I don’t have to be there, they just know me as the smiling guy.
I don’t know what to spend my salary on - I guess I can invest more maybe? I make sure to treat my friends to rounds at the bar, and concert tickets, and pay for dinner with this girl I asked out.
I learned that it is good to have something to aim your bow at, and a place to go every morning, and a heavy load to carry with your mates.
Maybe too many people are trying to find all their meaning in life through their work. It's not a recipe for success for most people, I think the media plays it up a bit too much. They're only covering the success stories in terms of people who are single minded and who make their work everything.
The author of the article doesn't mention any relationships or other interests in life, no passion for anything but work. Maybe that wasn't the case but you can't tell from the article.
Lots of people do something in the arts, music, physical fitness, etc.. on the side along with family & relationships or faith/religion to find meaning. If you're happy from that aspect work becomes just something you do to pay the bills. It doesn't mean you're not passionate about work but the other things can make up for times when work isn't so great.
I used to like arguing over the Internet about this subject. There are many good technical and management/organizational arguments you can make for and against macros. What I've come to realize is they're all pretty much irrelevant.
The entire point of programming is automation. The question that immediately comes to mind after you learn this fact is - why not program a computer to program itself? Macros are a simple mechanism for generating code, in other words, automating programming. Unless your system includes a better mechanism for automating programming (so far, I have not seen any such mechanisms), _not_ having macros means that you basically don't understand _why_ you are writing code.
This is why it is not surprising that most software sucks - a lot of programmers only have a very shallow understanding of why they are programming. Even many hackers just hack because it's fun. So is masturbation.
This is also the reason why functional programming languages ignore macros. The people behind them are not interested in programming automation. Wadler created ML to help automate proofs. The Haskell gang is primarily interested in advancing applied type theory.
Which brings me to my last point: as you probably know, the reputation of the functional programming people as intelligent is not baseless. You don't need macros if you know what you are doing (your domain), and your system is already targeted at your domain. Adding macros to ML will have no impact on its usefulness for building theorem provers. You can't make APL or Matlab better languages for working with arrays by adding macros. But as soon as you need to express new domain concepts in a language that does not natively support them, macros become essential to maintaining good, concise code. This IMO is the largest missing piece in most projects based around domain-driven design.
I call it the toaster fucker problem. Man wakes up in 1980, tells his friends "I want to fuck a toaster" Friends quite rightly berate and laugh at him, guy deals with it, maybe gets some therapy and goes on a bit better adjusted.
Guy in 2021 tells his friends that he wants to fuck a toaster, gets laughed at, immediately jumps on facebook and finds "Toaster Fucker Support group" where he reads that he's actually oppressed and he needs to cut out everyone around him and should only listen to his fellow toaster fuckers.
Apply this analogy to literally any insular bubble, it applies as equally to /r/thedonald as it does to the emaciated Che Guevara larpers that cry thinking about ringing their favourite pizza place.