Dreamers
tom.posterous.com
tom.posterous.com
Jonny looks around, confused, his train of thought disrupted. He collects himself, and stares at the teacher with a steady eye. "I want to code demos," he says, his words becoming stronger and more confidant as he speaks. "I want to write something that will change peoples perception of reality. I want them to walk away from the computer dazed, unsure of their footing and eyesight. I want to write something that will reach out of the screen and grab them, making heartbeats and breathing slow to almost a halt. I want to write something that, when it is finished, they are reluctant to leave, knowing that nothing they experience that day will be quite as real, as insightful, as good. I want to write demos." Silence. The class and the teacher stare at Jonny, stunned. It is the teachers turn to be confused. Jonny blushes, feeling that something more is required. "Either that or I want to be a fireman." --Grant Smith
I would argue that demosceners (like little Johnny) are the dreamers while much of HN consists of internet hucksters. Back when I was writing demoscene code I bent my computer over my knee and made it beg (Wrote a flat real mode extension for borland pascal). Phong shading on a 486? Check. realtime raytracing on that same 486, in the same demo? Check. (10fps btw).
These days people struggle to handle a few thousand users of a text based website on a quad core system with gigabytes of ram.
PS: Sorry this was a little off topic. Follow your dreams, don't let the man get you down!
N.B. Although the S/N here is often quite poor, it is at least an order of magnitude better than other places I know about. At least once a day I read an article that is very much worth my time.
The guys building big rigs care about performance - but never to the same tune as the guys designing F-1 racing cars. Different goals demand different approaches.
If you want to design jet fighters, go do that - and push the hardware to the absolute limits of human ability, but there is a glory in designing commuter jets too, you know.
This is something that bothers me a lot. We've made huge, massive, spectacular progress in hardware. We know what the characteristics of our problems are (usually they're quite simple like CRM), yet software seems to ge slower, and more complex. With more layers of added complexity.
I simply do not see why continue to produce such bad software as a society. We continue to build on quicksand when a few hundred yards to the side is solid bedrock (lisps, ada, smalltalk, erlang, etc).
Back in the 50's we had teahouses in england [1] that fully automated their accounting/payroll system. On 50's hardware. Yet today we still need quad xeons to do even a fraction of that. It makes me very very angry to throw more hardware at a problem that has already been solved with orders of magnitude less.
Well, you're a victim of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias if I've ever seen one. People here are into Lisp. ;)
These days people struggle to handle a few thousand (ed. concurrent?) users of a text based website on a quad core system with gigabytes of ram.
Which is subject to completely different requirements and restrictions. I think just flatly comparing that to 'writing demoscene code' constitutes a 'disregard of substance'.
BTW, reminiscing about writing demoscene code or actually returning to it may very well be the latest fad.
As far as I can see, HN is populated by desperate prisoners (of the 9-to-5 cube farm variety) driven mad by fantasies of escape (through earning "fuck-you money".) In that light, I find it somewhat easier to forgive the universal obsession with get-rich-quick nonsense.
> Back when I was writing demoscene code
If we can bring the Age of Cruft to an end, these days could come back.
> These days people struggle to handle a few thousand users of a text based website on a quad core system with gigabytes of ram.
http://www.loper-os.org/?cat=19
> Although the S/N here is often quite poor, it is at least an order of magnitude better than other places I know about
I'm still looking for the secret pure thinking-people haven which surely lurks somewhere on the net. I might eventually take a crack at building it myself.
If anything, my take-away is to recognize that those things aren't bad in it of themselves, but just don't mistake the dreams of others for your own.
So yes, take care when choosing your dreams.
(No one looks on the flip-side..)
There is nothing glorious in this, though entrepreneurs you will still be.
"When I grow up, I want to create failing businesses that I can convince people to pay me tens of millions of dollars to buy!"
I think its a little more apt to figure out what you want to do with your life when you're 18, 21, 30, 40, 50, etc.