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Comment by nbashaw | Hacker News Reader

> "The minute someone offers some sort of compensation for work, the dynamic of the relationship changes"

That's the point. If you're doing something for free as a helper then there's no consequence for saying "hey sorry i haven't gotten around to the website yet, i've been really busy...". More often than not, that's exactly what we'll end up doing, because learning a foreign language makes our brain hurt.

> "What people need, instead, is to bring back our child sense of curiosity."

I'm really glad you are able to make that work, but I'm positive that curiosity is not as reliable as fear.

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>That's the point. If you're doing something for free as a helper then there's no consequence for saying "hey sorry i haven't gotten around to the website yet, i've been really busy...".

Agreed, but if you have no experience, nothing will turn you off faster to learning than a client who yells or berates you for your lack of experience. A teacher is there to nurture your love of learning -- a client doesn't give a damn about you wanting to learn, they just want the project done at a certain time/budget/capacity.

>I'm really glad you are able to make that work, but I'm positive that curiosity is not as reliable as fear.

The problem with fear that I've found, is that it only pushes you to slightly outrun that fear, not run miles ahead of it. I don't need to outrun a lion, for example, I just have to make sure that I run faster than the person next to me. When you use that for learning, you'll only learn what you need to complete the task, not use creativity to ask questions and learn and expand your knowledge.

When projects come from a question, or from a problem, I feel much more likely to keep asking questions and learn to fix my problem.

> "...nothing will turn you off faster to learning than a client who yells or berates you for your lack of experience"

I never got berated, because I made it clear up front that I was a beginner and that I was charging a very small fee. It motivated me to make something that was worth it. I'm confident that most people have the ability to make something good enough to justify a $100 fee, it's just that they don't have a reason to try hard enough.

> "The problem with fear that I've found, is that it only pushes you to slightly outrun that fear..."

This is a great point - in fact, when I was first starting out I was often ready to be done with projects. They were stressful! But they taught me skills that I don't think I'd have learned otherwise, that I could have more casual, curiosity-driven fun with later. I doubt anyone would put themselves in a stressful situation like that unless they had some genuine curiosity. It didn't permanently scar me. It just was an accelerator, like taking off the training wheels. Stressful and scary but a necessary push forward to learn faster and stretch myself.

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