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Pots of Gold

blog.aaronkharris.com

94 pointsadora14 comments

This logic can also apply to hobby projects and interests. "There are amazing artists or software programmers building world class stuff, what can I add?" is a common enough refrain I've encountered here on HN.

It's not just about the end results, it's about being the person or seeking the experiences you want to have.

Maybe you want to be the person who builds companies. Go build one. Maybe you want to make 3d designs or game engines or hack on circuits. Buy the book and get started. You're not likely to be the next maestro, no one is. But you do bring your unique identity and a fresh perspective which those before did not have.

Even if you don't build a world changing something or other at least you did the things you wanted to do and were the person you wanted to be. Even getting close to that is a life well lived, and lucky and privileged in many eyes.

Will this work if you just want to make lots of money?

If you enjoyed the effort but ultimately failed anyway... I guess it works if you manage to die relatively happy instead of miserable.

Yeah I feel the same about the hobby stuff, I know it's a piece of crap but I had fun figuring out how to make it.

Or the usual "has already been done" comment on a Show HN. Add "written in Rust" and you are guaranteed to disturb a beehive.

It's a lot of fun to build something yourself. It's not very fun to spend days wading through an old opensource code base only to get told that your change won't be merged. The only people who go through that process are those that absolutely need the patch.

The thought of contributing to Freecad hasn't crossed my mind because of that.

Meanwhile some people swim against the stream and create something beautiful. Just take a look at Kicad vs Horizon EDA. The world is better off by having both.

It feels like there's been one truly transformational wave every decade or so... but it also feels like there are currently a lot of really important shifts going on.

Are we living in a unique time period where there are truly going to be multiple game-changers? Or will one end up vastly outshining the rest in retrospect? (Just like 3D printing and IoT seemed to fizzle last decade.)

1980s PCs 1990s Internet 2000s Web 2.0 & Social 2010s Mobile 2020s... {AI, Crypto, Metaverse, Synthetic Biology}

(I was going to add quantum computing & nuclear fusion on there as well but IMO their impact is more likely to be further out.)

I agree that there's quite a lot going on now, but you could have said the same of many other periods. The 80s saw PCs, but also new kinds of music, the fall of the Iron Curtain, and more. That's always going to be true (hopefully), and each of those shifts creates opportunities.

But I do think you're right that the trend is accelerating and will most likely continue to do so. It's that compounding trick, applied to history.

Did IoT really fizzle out though? In my mind it just became more mainstream expected. Yes, silly things like connected refrigerators / toasters / whatever were a gimmick but the watch I'm wearing, the earphones I'm wearing, the scale on my bathroom floor, the blood pressure cuff under my sink – so many of the things I use each day are now connected (sometimes indirectly) to the Internet and it really is just "normal."

(I do think the 3D printing craze was premature given the state of the tech then and now. I did just see a video of 3D printed full-size boat though so who knows...)

An article that came in at the right time.

I have been feeling really down lately about how my life has turned out, which sounds a little ridiculous and self-indulgent given how much I earn in my day job. I'm really grateful for it, and grateful to remain employed, but I live in San Francisco and am a stone's throw from friends and former coworkers who are swimming in the ocean while I'm playing in the kiddie pool. In fact, just yesterday I found out that a former classmate of mine is the co-founder of a startup that recently raised between $10 and $20 million.

I know intellectually that I'm also in a fortunate position at a fairly sizable company; I know intellectually that he has a long road ahead of him and success isn't guaranteed (so my sizable company earnings might look better in the long run); I know intellectually all of these things and more, but I also have to admit that I still feel awful about it--jealous, for sure, and maybe even a little resentful.

Lately I've been thinking of a small idea to build, but then I think to myself that there's no point to doing so--scrounging together customers (if I can even manage to) only to build something for a handful of people, etc.--why bother?

I don't have an answer, but this article helps.

I think part of the answer is to spend some of your hobby time building tiny little toys with no expectation that they will become companies.

https://blog.aaronkharris.com/why-build-toys

> Have confidence that either you or the smart people you know can build something significantly bigger than seems reasonable

Reality generally goes to par with math. So look for good math, and then actualize it.

I get caught up in this kind of thinking a lot! To me, everywhere I look, there is so, so, so many cool things being created on a daily basis, if you have thought of an idea, it has most certainly already been tried. I sometimes think of people in previous centuries and how they had so much innovation ahead of them.

But they also didn't know what was ahead of them, just as we don't know what is ahead of us. Then I think of all the amazing tools and cross-specializations that can create novel endeavors for our time, and it is very exciting. What helps me is trying to imagine a world 20 years away and then thinking about the steps that can be taken to get there. Also, reading science fiction!

And yet - our public culture feels, in many ways, so trapped in discussions about the past rather than creating positive visions for the future. Even much of our popular science fiction appears trapped in pessimism or soulless, futurelessness.

I do think public discourse is often rooted in either people or events, which are a product of the past(even current events/living people). It does take special types of people to discuss and dissect ideas and think about the future.

In fiction writing I think happy-go-lucky stories don't evoke that much of a response. There needs to be conflict and resolution, or some kind of tension. On that note, I just watched the new Dune movie and would love to read through the series now!

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