Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

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I wonder if there's not a more basic reason for the observations of the author. When I code as a hobby, my main goal is to make sure that no effort is wasted. I get precious little free time to hobby code as it is, so every minute spent in front of a text editor that's not driving forward to the desired goal feels almost physically painful.

The last thing I want to do in my off time is fiddle endlessly with all the endless layers of friction.

To hobby is to demand instant gratification. The land of hobby seems to want to be connected to the land of research. But research is only truly useful when the desire for instant gratification can be dispelled.

If I'm reading the author correctly, computer modeling might be that magical land where hobby and research can commingle. Where instant gratification can produce tangible research results.

I'm not convinced. Is it really a matter of tooling? Because it seems to me that any kind of modeling that would actually have research potential is going to have to be invented. So now my hobby involves research and invention?

Maybe after I retire.

Hopefully I didn't misunderstand what you meant, but I'd argue that a hobby is exactly not instant gratification. That I would call entertainment.

In my opinion the gratification of a hobby comes from enjoyment of the process itself. For example, if you play music, drilling through the same couple of measures until it sounds right might not pay off until the end, which might take hours and hours of work across many days. If you don't enjoy the process then you won't take it up as a hobby, but that doesn't mean there is constant gratification. Even more, the end result might not be as good as a professional product -- but it's yours and it's the journey that counts.

I say that instant gratification is entertainment because I would compare that to playing games or watching a movie. There's no process there, it's just gratification.

An example would be the people that make emulators as a hobby. Across their journey they find so many special cases and undocumented behaviour that it is certainly a lot of work riddled with unexpected obstacles. But exactly that is the process of problem solving and ultimately what they enjoy.

Music is a great example. I used to play guitar, I don't now because the time investment needed to get to fulfillment is too heavy. I can pick up a guitar and noodle around with it, but the impetus to take it seriously as a hobby is just no longer there, because of all the perceived friction.

Of course, if I'd taken it seriously as a kid, I wouldn't have that friction and I could count the guitar among my regular hobbies. I don't have that same attitude towards the keyboard, which requires far less finger dexterity and thus practice. I'll probably never pick up a guitar for more than a few minutes ever again, but I can see myself buying a keyboard and stand and going at a piece of music for ten minutes or so every day. (it's a bit of a contrived example, the real reason I don't play my guitars at the moment is because I don't like what it does to my fingers.)

This is what I mean by instant gratification. Everybody draws their line differently, but it's hard to argue that the line doesn't or shouldn't exist. A hobby is what you spend your excess time and money on without expecting a financial return from it. Having an impact is fine, but commerce it isn't, otherwise you call it a side project.

>> Maybe after I retire.

Or before you began working. I think having kids model things is a great idea - they'll learn a lot that you just can't get from school. I agree that as a working adult there is a lot less time for such things, but rather than focus on instant gratification I've just narrowed the number of projects I work on to 1 immediate and 1 planned (which may start before the immediate one is done). Wanting to do anything else is just more reason to finish the thing currently underway.

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