Comment by FourthProtocol | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FourthProtocol | Hacker News Reader

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First, respect for taking the time to teach her. Second, I have difficulty writing this exctly because of the last sentence, will do so anyway -

I taught myself to program in 1984, two years before finishing high school. That and being on the chess team pretty much killed my social life and any chance at carnal activities until I turned 21 (high school was followed by compulsory consription for 2 years). I struggled with that.

Today I note that impressing friends and strangers has become very big business. Influencers. Looked at one this morning on Instagram. This dude had muscles, gave thed impression of owning a Bently, a curvy girlfriend and a house in Majorca. No clue as to how he eant a living or obtained that wealth. Assuming those material posessions are his.

These things are the antithesis of what I went through, even though today I have the means to aquire everything from the Bently to the large-breatsed blonde in a house on the Costa Del Sol.

And yet that prospect fills me with dread because it's vacuous. There's no meaning or value behind it. Same goes for teaching someone something for the purpose of becoming popular or impressing others. Seriously please don't take this as criticism. ANY time spent with kids is time well spent.

I guess where I'm going with all of this is that I hope to teach my 8y/o boy to seek out meaningful, rewarding relationships and experiences that build him up. Without a need for others' approval. And I have vague ideas how I might do that but in a practical sense I'm at a loss and that scares me. And I would LOVE to teach him how to program but so far I've made no progress.

Part of being a dad I guess. Happily I've discovered that if I want a thing enough I find a way. Patience...

Hello, I've stumbled across your comment and happy to see that enough time has passed that my reply is unlikely to be read by anyone but you. I am a very similar position as you, being a self-taught programmer, living a very "contained" lifestyle despite my past professional successes, and also in our calculus of what is meaningful and valuable. I completely agree with your sentiment about these things we see on Instagram conveying no inherent meaning, but I would like to suggest and warn you against the trap of thinking that we can possibly know what is "meaningful" to another human being, even a member of our immediate family or one of our children.

We are human, yes, and there will be inevitable similarities in the things in life from which we derive joy and sadness and meaning and love and hate, etc. But it is after all a subjective thing in the utmost, and trying to persuade or coerce our own subjective meaning and value judgments onto others will only ever result in conflict. That's not to say we shouldn't have our values challenged, as that is the only way we can grow as people. But your kid -- indeed, every human being that ever existed -- has to make this trek themselves. Nobody can do the hard work of finding meaning and purpose for us, and the older I get, the more I can see how damaging it is when we try to do this hard work for someone we care about. It's impossible to convey tacit knowledge, and it's from tacit knowledge that we derive meaning and construct our system of values. The world's languages are littered with empty platitudes as a result of this struggle. That's why the best answer is also the most challenging: Set a good example and be there to help those you care about to process their experiences (good and bad) intellectually so that they might gain that tacit knowledge. If you're still reading this, I'd like to suggest taking a look at the ancient Stoic philosophers (Epictetus, Seneca, etc), as the things they wrote thousands of years ago have been extremely helpful in my own journey.

Well there are different ways of looking at impressing your friends.

Funny but I have two replies to my comment, one saying they became proficient at programming by competing with their friends in games programming and discussing together how their work could improve. And your reply taking a completely different direction about showing off with cars and women.

It seems the morale is that youths like to show off, regardless if it's with a car or with their code.

You would enjoy a Bentley if you liked Bentleys or certain kind of cars and enjoyed driving them. You would love a big house in Majorca if you were from the area and had a big family -or plans for it- and you would love to be with the person you'd love to be. Those are just examples. There may be a thousand more reasons why you'd love those.

The fact that you don't like Bentleys, big houses in Majorca or a specific lady does not make them vacuous or meaningless; not to mention it would be 100% rewarding if those were your dreams and you've accomplished them.

That guy may or may not like those, but appeals to people that would love -or they think they would- those. The same goes for any other dreams we have.

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