Build what you want. Create from the heart. | Hacker News Reader

Build what you want. Create from the heart.

zackshapiro.com

45 pointskine15 comments

I understand that this type of post is useful to many people, especially younger folks looking for career direction. I'm turning 43 this week and I've been down that road many times, so this post doesn't mean much to me.

This is not a complaint about the post, but about Hacker News. If Hacker News had subsections like Reddit does, this post would belong under inspiration/self-help. I would unsubscribe from that section and I wouldn't see it. As things stand, these posts take up too many slots on the one and only, one-size-fits-all front page of a site called Hacker News.

I find it a bit ironic that Hacker News is so unhackable / uncustomizable.

This is the prime pain point for me with Hacker News.

I'm not turning 43 this week, but I am exhausted to death of the inability to filter out categories/sub-cultures of content like this.

Agreed. I think the community could grow if this functionality was done properly. I believe the care exists and good moderators would be found / come into being.

Already 43. Also a primary pain point for me. Perhaps someone could write a browser add-on to tag headlines and filter-out headlines by tag?

Not every post is for everyone. This just isn't Reddit. HN is HN for exactly the things you'd like to change about it. There's a lot of stuff that I find totally uninteresting showing up often too (anything about Haskell, someone is "doing it wrong", big site X is down but apparently it's not big enough for us to know about it on our own so someone has to post it here and we have to debate how everyone is "doing the cloud wrong" again) but I wouldn't change it for the world because that would fundamentally change the site itself.

There are certainly some kinds of posts that objectively just don't belong here, I'll grant that. But if you want filters then just go to Reddit.

"The first time I held a build of Beeline RTD in my hand, after getting it from my developers, I literally jumped up and down at the though that this app had come out of my head and I could now put it in my pocket and use it whenever I wanted."

I find it contradictory that you use "my developers" and "out of my head" in the same sentence.

When I bring this idea up with the most successful business people I know, they say that making a successful business is what they want. Truly, they'll have no trouble pivoting with that opinion, since what they want is to make a winning company, not any particular company.

Great post! I build things often to fulfill the needs and wants that I have, and in doing so I learn, grown and happen across ideas I wouldn't have had without building something in the first place.

Thanks for reading, Josh!

"Scratch your own itch".

Exactly

"I’d be humbled if you followed me on Twitter."

Insta-followed. Can we please make THIS be the typical tagline at the end of every article instead of the aggressive "you should follow me"?

It's a good goal if you can support yourself while you do it. Otherwise, it remains but a dream.

You can still do the things you love part-time and support yourself with a job/contract work etc.

That's what I'm doing with Summon the Warrior: http://summonthewarrior.com

My interest is in hypnosis and self-improvement, and I want to use my imagination, so I carve out the time to do these things. My goal is to be able to walk away from contracting altogether and just work on hypnosis et al.

Just be prepared for possible economic hardships and be willing to sacrifice your free time to make your dream happen.

I need more problems in my life

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