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Comment by pelagicAustral | Hacker News Reader

Not long ago I had a dream about becoming a butcher, and so then I bought half a cow with a friend and after a week trying to cut it out in pieces I realised maybe I was too old to make the move... so im still a programmer.

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I worked in a grocery store meat department in high school. I wasn’t a butcher, my main job was wrapping the meat for the counter, weighing and pricing it, but over time I learned to do basic meat cutting, still nowhere near a full butcher but getting some basic experience.

Point is it’s an apprenticeship that takes years and starts with helping a butcher do low value stuff. Grabbing half a cow and trying to cut it up probably isn’t the best entry point or test of aptitude.

I have a family member who has been a butcher for nearly 40 years.. if you'd want some tips on this to try it again I'm sure he'd be willing to tell you how to go about it properly.

That's grand! thanks for offering!

Imagine the reverse. A butcher buys a Linux computer and tries to become a programmer in a week. Struggles with getting nested loops to work, so quits.

Not saying you should be a butcher, but a week and no training is a difficult approach.

I think, to be honest, even with more training, I was already too old... A hindquarter is heavy as hell, I think I kind permanently busted my back just shuffling it around, nevermind cutting a shin bone...

I don't know... start smaller maybe. Homeostasis swings both ways and the body will adapt. Fwiw, I think it's worthwhile to explore a little more before "calling it" completely

Unless you're like 70 or crippled, you are able to train your deadlift to 300 pounds at the very least. Strength is not reserved for the young

There are schools. For example, in Bentonville AR I know the head butcher instructor at Brightwater. https://brightwater.nwacc.edu/

While its not something I would like doing myself, what made it so difficult if I may ask?

Cows are heavy. Really heavy. And then after you've got things more or less sorted, you still need to know how to cut it in pieces, this is a lot of manual labor... It's painful slow if you dont know exactly where to cut, and you can spoil the meat if you dont know what you're doing... You need tools and you need to know how to use them... It's just a whole different world. Lets not even go on to actually killing the animal and cleaning it, or all that dance, which I have witnessed and its something else... bah! maybe in another life.

That makes sense, thank you for replying.

Can’t think of a worse time to go into beef production anyway

Good news! Thats the cow's job, not a butcher's.

What inspired you to attempt pursuing butchery?

Their github stats said they deleted more lines of code than they added

Christ, someone hire this guy. He obviously knows what he's doing. Going against the trend (moar lines!), trimming out the fat (I mean software, but maybe he has a future in butchering ... ), making code slimmer, tightening abstractions ... it's hard to find these craftsmen anymore.

I just always had an interest into it. Cant explain much past that... I spend summers in a farm as a child and I guess I was always fascinated by the ritual of butchering animals, not the killing part particularly, the elegant splitting and portioning of an animal for storage and consumption.

Of course, then I just grew up and you just get on with things...

Some years ago, I got so sick of spending endless hours at my desk writing rspec automation tests that I suddenly had a strong urge to become a forest ranger.

I have a feeling you would spend a few weeks as a forest ranger. Then slowly you'd notice all the things you could optimise or automate. A few months later you would be working for the rangers IT department

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