kamaal

>>lots of quality (to me) content that I find educational (history, science) and entertaining.

This seems to be a tug of war- that is- information vs distraction

I remember in the 1990s India it was quite common to view kids from homes that had TV/Cable TV as kids who were bad at academics, and distracted without focus.

OTOH, as time passed people realised those kids had better english speaking skills, vocabulary and general awareness of the world. So extreme focus didn't quite work out as well as people though it would.

In the modern context I know quite a few people with laser sharp productivity and get lots of work done. But here's what 'wasting' time on Twitter has led me down rabbit holes in the Stock market that has opened up newer earning opportunities. So its not as simple as saying social media is distracting.

Extreme focus does work when your work is individually measured and judged. And the pay off is immense. Other wise you are better off doing something to keep the wheels spinning while finding more things that can be rewarding.

>>Perl died because other languages starting having an equivalent to CPAN

Last time I checked apart from npm, no other language has anything similar to CPAN.

>>I'm having to pick up some perl now, and while I don't interact with the community, it surely _feels_ like it was written by wizards, for wizards.

Those days were different. You could say what people are doing in months to years today, in many ways people back then were doing in days to weeks.

Pace and ambition of shipping has not only faded, that very culture is non existent. You don't see people building the next Facebook or Amazon these days, do you?

I remember managers asking Java programmers how much time it would take to get something done, and get timelines on months and years. They would come to us Perl programmers and get it done in a week.

The era didn't last long. I would joke around our team saying, ideally a Java programmer with 10 years experience was somewhat like like a Perl programmer with 1 year experience. This was one of the big reasons, most of these enterprise coders wanted Perl gone.

>>In tech a customer with an annual contact value of tens to hundreds of millions of dollars will get a dedicated team of sales reps

In many Indian outsourcing firms, they permanently place a 'program manager' at big client's offices. Like for eg- Bank of America.

These managers also get a unlimited American express card, to spend on lunches, outings etc. You are expected to build 'relationships' so that when a project is needed to be won, you are just a call away from making it happen.

This is because a good percentage of the sales, projects, staffing, profits come from these big clients.

Looks like the complaining and protesting on Twitter helped, even if was serious, and some just memes. Somethings to note-

1. Most Indian bureaucracy is clueless about tech things, and just goes by whatever somebody who sounds like techy enough is selling them. Which in this case I'm guessing is a data mining company/lobby.

2. The information derived can be used for various purposes. Plotting election trends, economics, spotting general trends pro/against politics and other nefarious causes. etc.

3. Spying.

4. Using information to go after political opponents.

5. Demographic targeting, which in Indian context almost always means a pogrom against groups, which other groups don't like.

6. Selling data to commercial entities for better targeting, or even social engineering buying choices etc.

There could be many others. But its kind of nice that it was taken back. Having said this, it will be pushed again at some point when people are busy with a crisis and this will be sold as a fix.

That and of course- If you are using a tool to solve a problem. Your focus should be on the problem. If you are spending more time fixing or inventing the tool, than spending time solving the problem, then you are better off using a paid tool which takes care of all that helping you focus on the problem.

>>apps without maintenance

This is perhaps what most non-dev people don't get. Maintenance is a far more harder thing than building something. So you want to go slow when building things, not fast. Either way building things fast has been a solved problem for a while, people don't go fast not because we don't have tools, but there are other fairly valid reasons to go slow. This is true with so many other things outside of software. I guess its called 'haste'.

This is true for most things. Especially where money and life are at stake. But Im guessing you could extend this to anything where reputation is at stake.

Im guessing it doesn't apply to some start ups, but other wise every one is subject to this.

>>Literally the worst job you can find as a programmer today (if you lower you standards and particularly, stay away from cryptocurrency jobs) is 10x better than the non-programmer jobs you can find.

A lot of non-programmer jobs have a kind of union protection, pension plans and other perks even with health care. That makes a crappy salary and work environment bearable.

There was this VP of HR, in a Indian outsourcing firm, and she something to the effect that Software jobs appear like would pay to the moon, have an employee generate tremendous value for the company and general appeal that only smart people work these jobs. None of this happens with the majority of the people. So after 10-15 years you actually kind of begin to see why some one might want to work a manufacturing job.

Life is long, job guarantee, pensions etc matter far more than 'move fast and break thing' glory as you age.

>>As a CTO of a number of small startups, I am still struggling to understand what exactly AWS and other cloud providers give you to justify the markup.

If you are having a company that warrants building a data center, then AWS does not add much.

Other wise you face the 'if you want to build apple pie from scratch, you need to first invent the universe' problem. Simply put you can get started right on day one, in a pay as you go model. Like you can write code, deploy and ship from the very first day, instead of having to go deep down the infrastructure rabbit hole.

Plus shutting down things is easy as well. Things don't workout? Good news! You can shut down the infrastructure that very day instead of having to worry about the capital expenditure spent to build infrastructure, and without having to worry about its use later.

Simply put, AWS is infrastructure you can hire and fire at will.

>>Between 1951 and 1992, the United States conducted 928 atomic tests at the Nevada Test Site about 65 miles (105 km) northwest of the city of Las Vegas.

Just how nuclear waste polluted is Nevada?

Surely ~1000 tests in one place can't be good. Wouldn't be surprised if people around there do get cancers.

>>Why are women considered to be people who "wont contribute anything back"?

Not women in specific, but India has a huge informal economy sector, where payments, salaries, spending are done outside of the tax system. Most people who take these buses work in that economy. So you end up enabling that part of the economy. At the expense of people paying taxes. It wouldn't be any different, if men got free rides as well.

>>But also, why are women specifically traveling for free? What was the original argument?

Women as a vote bank, has been a growing trend in Indian politics. In a lot of states far more generous perks are given to women. For eg- https://cleartax.in/s/ladli-behna-yojana

By offering these perks, you are basically buying votes from 50% of the net voting population. So a lot of states offer these perks.

You want us(Indians) and Chinese to go to war. We stubbornly refuse to.

Both countries, have now have growing economies with stable politics, and social direction. Things can only get better from here, and will.

Whatever issues exist, we resolve by talking. Often, a few give and take moves are needed, which are mostly ok. Because way bigger good things await these both nations. And we want them.

Either way there is no theatre. The Himalayas make a large wall and ensure no big border conflict can even happen. Even through missiles. The remainder is irrelevant, and both parties are more than happy to just keep talking until some agreement is in place, which even without isn't much of an issue with regards to economy, resources or anything.

Much ado about nothing!

Speaking as an Indian. Most of these are just diplomatic flexing of muscles which mostly reduce to literally nothing.

There is not going to a be a war in the modern context.

Secondly, only one war has happened between China and India, in which arguably we Indians kind of started it- Read here- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_policy_(Sino-Indian_co...

""" The forward policy had Nehru identify a set of strategies designed with the ultimate goal of effectively forcing the Chinese from territory that the Indian government claimed. The doctrine was based on a theory that China would not likely launch an all-out war if India began to occupy territory that China considered to be its own. India's thinking was partly based on the fact that China had many external problems in early 1962, especially with one of the Taiwan Strait Crises. Also, Chinese leaders had insisted they did not wish a war.[18]

"""

Bangalore(+State of Karnataka) is currently having free transit, but only for women.

Which seems to have drawn anger from Meninist circles.

People who support this say, it gives more mobility to women from poor and lower middle class households, and hence better employment opportunities, increased family incomes and by the effect taxes as well.

People who criticise this say, the expenses for free rides are offloaded to already burdened tax payers, who quite honestly in the Indian system get nothing in return. These forever increasing free perks for sets of people who won't contribute anything back, at the expense of ever increasing burden on people who are expected to pay without expecting anything in return, won't end well.

>>conveyor belt

And keeping the conveyor belt running seamlessly for years, requires showing up for years too.

There are no replacements for sticking to one thing for long.

More like Dave has been pushing up sacks of really valuable things up a hill, for years.

Jack who just arrived and pushed ONE sack up slightly faster than Dave, in the first week, thinks he must be promoted above Dave right then and there. Or its oppression.

To start with accept this thing first. Its human fallacy to confuse making rapid changes to a process as making fast progress. In reality sticking to one thing for long is what brings the big progress.

You might want to talk to martial arts people, stock investors/traders, musicians, surgeons, or anyone for that matter.

Someone who shows up on the 10001th morning, is not the same as some one who showed up on the 100th morning, even if the latter is some performing better creating a his own personal local maxima.

>>The real cause of our dysfunctional system is the debris of nehruvian socialism (he was a covert communist masking himself as a Fabian socialist).

It has been 50 years since his time. And most of what he did now has largely faded out to nothingness. OTOH, his time wasn't all that bad either. Even till 2000s cities in South India were very liveable, with decent quality of life.

Most of Indias problem come from a brutal zero sum game society, where population is too large, and there isn't enough affluence going around.

Everyone, every community and sub group, down the individual has to do anything in takes to snatch, hoard and then deny as many resources they can. Even if it means wrecking everything that exists to get there.

Nothing good comes out of these things.

To begin with fixing India, you must work towards having affluence of a few decades atleast. A generation or two need to live through this to wash away behaviours of a scarcity game.

>>You're a high performer, one year into the role. A colleague, who's been around longer but struggled, gets promoted not necessarily on merit, but on their ability to manage up.

Its honestly mostly like a queue, you can't see why people who came before should get a early exit. But those people had people before them too, and thought the same. Now that you arrived, you think your specific case be prioritised above them for merits you think count above theirs and not necessarily their place in the queue.

As much as we all think we are special, we mostly aren't, time and queue position plays a huge role in most things in the society.

Its pointless to fight the queue system, most events in life happen in an order, and its pointless to fight cause-effect sequences. Some exceptions to this absolutely exist, but this is the general rule.

>>At year-end reviews, client recognition turned into a liability, not an asset.

    Do not outshine the master - 48 laws of power

Remember the system is a part of the game, if you threaten someone you will take their job, its in their interest now to see through the end of you.

In India loyalties run deep. It can come along the lines of religion, region, caste, family, color, class etc.

Many times novices to this game, work mad hours, only to realise a year or two down the lane, some guy who practically did no work but comes from the same state your manager does, is now promoted above you.

The deal about India is this.

Its a brutal zero/negative sum game, at a country level, but plays out in every individual's life, and at a punishing pace, intensity and frequency.

Anybody who doesn't prioritise their self interests at any and all costs, suffers.

Just stubbornly refuse to do a thing that isn't beneficial to you. You will come out fine.

>>the manager is not politely savvy enough to ensure their team is being recognized for work that grows or is valuable to the business.

Actually in most companies, no ones watching whats happening, no ones watching who performs, who slacks, or anything for that matter.

Companies are basically a kind of a loosely assembled random crowd, where no one cares a thing about anything. In this kind of a set up both hardwork and laziness go unnoticed, which is why a persistent level of mediocrity is all pervasive. People do the bare minimum needed to keep lights on.

Getting rewards, or not getting punished in this kind of set up, largely depends on who you know, how they view you and what they are willing to do for you.

>>While Ruby is more alive than Perl it's nowhere near as popular as Python.

Haven't seen anybody start a Ruby project in more than a decade. Whereas Perl still has held its fort i.e Automation/Glue work on Unix systems.

>>Nothing forced anyone to abandon Perl 5 code, and I suspect most Perl 5 wasn't abandoned for its own sake;

Perl, Lisp, Haskell, Prolog etc.

I was there when Perl ruled the world, I used it myself to rule the world. The scene was always managers going to the C++/Java teams and asking them an estimate to a get a project done. They would often come back with timeline spanning 1 - 3 years.

Perl teams would get it done in like a week.

Needless to say most non-Perl programmers wanted Perl gone for this one reason alone. Too powerful, people who know how to use it make too much progress compared to everyone else. Smaller teams making larger progress shrinking the head counts, which top bosses didn't like.

Programming world is a sea of mediocrity, good things mostly don't make it here.

>>Is that really something you can go to school and study?

School can teach you a lot about how not to make big mistakes, that given, its up to you to figure out how to go up from there.

Its in the nature of men to work and provide. That's how men seek fulfilment in life.

But if you dial up the pain in the process men will bail. This shouldn't be surprising.

Perhaps the most primal biological set up of all, the very basis of evolution is response to stimulus.

Well that's the point, men are refusing to suffer.

There is little incentive to walking in a contract, where you are working all the time, no appreciation, love, gratitude or even a thank you. All the time being made to feel like you are not measuring up. And they'd rather be with somebody else apart from you. That done, you also come back from work and do all the chores you would if you remained single.

And if a few years later the other party decided to break the contract, now they take your home, get monthly pensions(with raises), and get to start the process all over again with somebody else at your expense.

Plus these days kids don't stay back with aging parents to care for them, so having kids appears pointless as well.

By and large, let alone an incentive, marriage and children seem to a massive negative for men. Hence I wouldn't be surprised low marriage and birth rates all over the world.

Why would you want to do all this? When you can work, keep the money, and spend it for your pleasure by staying single?

Actually it is-

    s" rabbithole" .s" forth" .s" into" .s" deep" .s" too" .s" go" .s" not" .s" must" .

>>He is 87 and doesn't think recoding a super niche' software tool is the best use of what very well may be his last few years of life.

Know quite a few elderly men, were moving mountains until retirement, then at one age they wanted to simply step back and relax. It was a cognitive downhill from there on. Also there is something strange about men sitting at home doing nothing. For some reasons families start hating as little as a sentence from them. You have to sit quiet for most of your life. Which honestly speaking is nothing short of a punishment, because you are actually expected to behave like furniture, or at best like a vegetable.

Even other wise I do see men who retired early not having all that a great time sitting at home and doing nothing.

Without a purpose, you won't enjoy living life much.

Large metropolitan cities in India are purely for job reasons.

I do believe buying expensive real estate in a city like Bangalore is pointless. You can put the same money in a good mutual fund, and buy a home in a Tier 2 city around Bangalore. You can reach Bangalore in an hour for most of things.

The pollution, population density and pace are all a lot lower. Plus if the idea is to retire early, this is like the best plan you can come up with.

>>If you’re really finding yourself getting bored by not constantly interacting with the shiny new thing, then maybe the impediment of modern life is the problem.

The real question of modern life, or may be all life. How much wasted effort goes into acquiring things which one doesn't need? That includes need to be entertained by the minute.

In the context of a motorcycle, I realise how different riding a motorcycle is compared to say driving a car. When you are driving a motorcycle. You feel the sun, the air, the cold, the heat, the drizzle, you enjoy the perspectives and feelings of all kinds(mountains, sun, oceans, lakes, rivers, trees) now you don't feel the need for music as this is entertainment enough. Heck even stopping for food and restroom breaks feels enjoyable.

Compare this to say a car, where you need to play something like music or a podcast to act as fillers to replace all that feeling. Taking a break feels like stepping out of some boredom and tiresome activity.

I have come to realise the need for these constant background entertainment needs largely stem from being in a largely non-interactive, non-responsive, non-natural environments(equivalent of sensory deprivation) where engagement with things around is either 0, or not something that your instinct naturally enjoys.