Hacker News Reader

It is ok for others to fail, don't put pressure on them. It isn't ok for you yourself to fail, put pressure on yourself, at least if you want to outdo others.

Failure was never alright despite what people claim.

They say "you need to fail to succeed". The key thing is that it is not enough to fail, you also have to reflect on why you failed, and this is the reflection which has you progress.

It is not the failure itself which is progress, it is the act of failing, then feeling BAD, and then thinking about how not to feel BAD anymore. Failure without feedback is pointless failure. (This is the same idea than deliberate practice.)

I think that's "fail" in a way that's different from "blunder".

Let's say I'm a programmer. I try an approach. It doesn't work. I realize it doesn't work and back out my changes. That's a failure.

Let's say instead I try an approach. It' doesn't work. I keep trying to force it to work, distorting the overall architecture and still leaving an unreliable, unmaintainable mess. That's a blunder.