Some perspective on a destroyed career | Hacker News Reader

Some perspective on a destroyed career

rondam.blogspot.com

126 pointslisper23 comments

> I've never learned Perl, but I've never learned how to run the deep fryer at a McDonalds either.

I think it is much less important which language you use, than what you create with it. Otherwise you have a shed full of brilliant tools that have never been used.

I've noticed that the people who actually create things tend to be less dogmatic about languages.

There is a parallel to this in music called Gear Acquisition Syndrome; when you crave new gear in hopes of stoking inspiration or improving your sound, even when this is a dubious proposition at best.

People with too much GAS tend to be much like language weenies. They will go to absurd lengths to defend the "pure/fat/warm/etc. sound" of their favorites, an ultimately pointless endeavor considering that after a certain minimum of instrument quality, playstyle and post processing effects will both have far more impact.

I think this is closely related to ones identity and many people bring some artifact very close to their hart just to be get a feeling of belonging.

To talk a little about myself, I'm a die hard libertarian, and I've spent countless hours being quietly angry about all the collectivists out there that wants to ruin our planet. Recently I've noticed though, that this rock-solid conviction of the superiority of a libertarian society isn't really productive for me in my relationships with others, and made it harder for me to intellectually appreciate good ideas from people who doesn't share my view.

I think the reason for this rigidity in my beliefs was that in my late teens, I felt as if I didn't belong anywhere, and getting an ideology to die for gave me a (false) sense of belonging.

I can't speak for this Lisp guy or the musicians but I can only assume that we perhaps share some similarities.

I placed the artifact close to my hart. It looked at me with a puzzled expression, then shook its antlers side to side before bowing its head once again to chew on the blades of grass. I felt a sense of belonging.

from gapingvoid: "10. The more talented somebody is, the less they need the props.

Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece on the back of a deli menu would not surprise me. Meeting a person who wrote a masterpiece with a silver Cartier fountain pen on an antique writing table in an airy SoHo loft would SERIOUSLY surprise me."

i guess the same thing can be said for those who use aeron, multi monitor, big screens, etc

the true hacker will just shut up and code, even using crappy computer / resources

The difference is that a fancy pen and a fancy writing table are functionally the same as a cheap pen and a cheap writing table. One is just a more expensive version of the other.

On the other hand, an aeron chair can be appreciably more comfortable than a cheap alternative, and multiple monitors can reduce the amount of friction a developer experiences (e.g., code in one window, documentation in another). While it's true that good people can make good with little, they can do better with more. If, of course, that "more" is something of actual productive value.

I don't know about you, but I can't look in more than one direction at once. I have never really needed multiple monitors, and when I've tried them, I find them a hindrance. I find it frustrating when monitors have different resolutions and things don't line up. I also lose the "edges" of desktops when I have multiple monitors. For example: I can't easily click something on the top right of the screen because if I move too far right, I'm on the other monitor. And not to mention the constant managing of windows and setting things up to open on the right monitor. I much prefer virtual desktops on my 1280x800 screen.

Some tools might reduce the "friction" but reduce functionality and usability in ways that you don't think of. As another example, I frequently see people creating huge hierarchies of folders in their home folders such as "/home/user/projects/school/year/class01/week_number/assignment_number/revision/". They think they're being organized, when really, they're just slowing themselves down. It makes it easier to classify things, but it makes it harder to actually get things done.

I have used twice monitors once, in a different office setup than mine, and I found it incredibly useful. After that experience, I wouldn't stop before, say, five monitors no less. But I keep using only one as I don't really care that much.

I don't use multiple monitors, but I know several people who use them, and feel they are more productive with them. Their reasons seem reasonable to me.

Multiple monitors is really handy for GUI development. Particularly on Windows. Visual Studio eats up tons of space, so your program overlaps the code you are stepping through, leading to a lot of repaint messages that can make tracing through code tedious. Plus, windows can't be moved, resized, minimized, or otherwise interacted with until Windows can call their wndproc. Debugging an always-on-top window (like a menu) is a pain.

Multiple monitors is less effective on Linux. X can unmap, move, etc. windows without their permission, so virtual desktops still work when a program is being debugged (like when you need to look up documentation). Plus, emacs is pretty slim, visually, so you can often fit your program right next to it. 'Course, if you use eclipse, it sucks up extra space like VS.

(Vista might be able to move windows without their permission, since the contents are redirected to a buffer. I don't have vista to try.)

I like using multiple monitors largely for the aforementioned reason that you can have code on one screen and documentation / web page output / forum discussions / IRC on another. In my opinion it is far easier to context switch by simply looking left and right as opposed to continuously switching between windows being in the foreground or background. I also think it's faster to look around than alt-tab, plus you don't lose your spot on the page you're reading / document you're writing as easily when compared to having the text completely disappear from view after switching window focus on a single monitor setup.

I use a crappy CTR monitor as a second. It's good for things you'd like to see but don't need to use at the same time - music player, tailing log files, etc. And keeping a todo list up on it keeps me from writing post-it notes all over my desk.

> The difference is that a fancy pen and a fancy writing table are functionally the same as a cheap pen and a cheap writing table. One is just a more expensive version of the other.

Actually, while some forms of the output may be functionally equivalent (it's hard to do good calligraphy with a ball-point), the experience isn't. (Some folks really enjoy using fine pens.)

It's unclear how the experience affects the output.

I sort of agree, Craigslist is written in Perl, and it has to be a perfect example of a spartan get-the-job done sort of site.

That said, the analogy made me smile. Perl really is one of those languages, that by learning, you only learn Perl. And maybe regular expressions, but I learned about those in theory of computation class. When I learned C I learned about the tenets of the OS: the call stack, virtual memory, system calls, interrupts, all the ugly stuff. Same with Java, it gave me good appreciation of OO, because it's so fundamentally OO. Basically, these languages were educational beyond themselves.

Perl, on the other hand, lets you get things done real fast in its problem domain. It also encourages some of the worst programming practices and an obsession with obscure brevity, code golf. More and more I'd just rather write everything in Python. Even though it may require 10 more lines of code, I can think about the problem in pretty much the same way I would in Perl. Plus, I can read the script afterwards, which really really helps.

A deep fryer is also super-utilitarian. Can you imagine McDonalds, or any burger chain, without fries? But it really is the nutritional equivalent of Perl.

Perl, like other scripting and late-binding languages, is very flexible ("duct tape of the internet"). Amazon is reputedly a Perl shop and it gives them agility to quickly experiment with new retailing ideas. But the knowledge they gained, and the site they built, wasn't due to Perl - it was due to them working on problems they found.

Here's someone else who solves problems: http://blog.plover.com (and who wrote Higher Order Perl).

All learning is commendable, including learning from a language. But to think that knowledge comes only from existing languages is to constrain one's knowledge, and for oneself to be defined by one's tools. Languages aren't the source of intellectual nutrition; they are a conduit to it (or how could they be created in the first place?). The source is creating solutions to problems.

Here's a little writeup on some ex-googlers including Ron Garret:

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-184506.html

A "destroyed career" after he made a tidy living at NASA, joined Google and got paid well, and is now doing VC?

I wish my career were similarly "destroyed".

I am confused - his "productivity" is being able to churn out academic papers of quality - but I am not sure what that has to do with a programming language (are the papers about some concrete application?).

Yes, take a look at the list: http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/cis?q=erann+gat+or+e+gat&sub...

He implemented something at NASA, then wrote a paper about it.

(And oddly enough, I just realized he got his PhD from the same department I'm in.)

probably not. Where he worked, programming was a tool more than a topic in itself i think.

There are very different meanings about 'knowing a language'. Some people think that they know some language while actually they were just memorized several hundred of common sentences. Other people claims that they know some language, because they can read with permanent use of a dictionary, other think that they are good, while they did not bother to learn correct pronunciation, and so on.

I think it is very hard to know more than two languages well, especially such different like western and eastern ones.

I have a dream, for example, to learn Japanese language, because I'm an anime fan, but I'm also realizing that this is almost impossible for me. Even my very weak English took several years of learning, because learning means practice, and this process is very slow. And if language is really difficult, like the Sanskrit it is impossible for sure.

So, when someone claims that he know some language, I assume that he should have at least 5 years of continuous practice, or it is just an empty claim.

It definitely does not take that long to become conversationally fluent, especially for related languages (english/spanish/italian/french, etc). In a few months of daily, hardcore practice with western languages, you can become definitely conversationally fluent (speaking and understanding w/out any problems). With eastern languages it might take longer---but it doesn't take as long as you think if you are sufficiently motivated.

I speak italian, portuguese, spanish, and english, and will be studying hindi later this year

So, if I get this right, the post on a "destroyed career" was pure fiction? Marketing to push a point of view?

It seems a bit dishonest to me.

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