598 karma · joined December 2, 2013
Joke aside, it was not shoeing horses but also working on the carts, etc. Probably bikes too. So at least he reused some mechanical skills, and probably tools, he already had. Only the engine was really new.
And many people living in small villages back then had basic knowledge in many disciplines, including electricity. When you had a farm for instance, you needed to be able to repair yourself anything.
It's mostly a personal story. You can see it as a kind of tribute to a great-great-grandfather I never met, partly because I'd never heard a story like it before. It's banal but still a big adventure in the family. I find it fascinating that he grew up in a completely different world from mine and still felt some of the same doubts and anxieties I do today. And I'm really proud of him, because his "pivot" let my family stay in the village instead of maybe leaving to work in factories in the city. My father loved his job, and in a way that's thanks to him.
I was vp of engineering at a Series A startup when my kid was born. It was a challenging job, but one that felt increasingly devoid of any meaning for me (maybe also because I'd been there for 5 years). I was compensating by working on side-projects at night and on weekends. I even wrote a novel that took me 4 years to finish.
Then my son was born, and nights and weekends disappeared! Suddenly, all my non-father activity was dedicated to a job that was boring me more and more. So what did i do? I started a company, so I could decide what to work on during the day!. Basically, I took a side project and put it at the center of my working life. Now my days feel rewarding enough that when I disconnect, I can completely devote myself to my son and my wife and ignore everything else.
Of course, I don’t have side projects anymore. I barely even have hobbies: I completely stopped watching movies, which used to be the love of my life. I read books before bed and on the subway, and work out occasionally to stay sane. My life = my startup, my son, my wife. That’s pretty much it.
But I feel much more balanced than before, when I was always chasing something.
What I love:
- the speed, of course
- the high consistency between features, tabs, and panes, while Cursor looks like a crumbly assemblage of plugins. At first I was worried about the lack of plugins, but Zed made me realize you don't need many
- the visual elegance: the padding, the proportions... It reminds me of the best of JetBrains (though I haven't used their products in years). It feels closer to the IDEs I used in the past (for Java or C#), in the sense that it seems to encompass everything you need, without the heaviness.
- the numerous keyboard shortcuts, often displayed visibly, which makes them easier to remember
- the transparency of their roadmap and their velocity: now that we finally have the vertical git diff as promised, my doubts are gone!
Truly one of my favorite pieces of dev software in 15 years.
Also, as a software engineer, I wasn't afraid of the development part of the game, but I was very skeptical of my capacities to draw characters or levels. Pico-8 helped me to achieve something without feeling ashamed. Because I knew that I was, by nature, limited in my sprites, it helped me releasing my inhibitions and drawing as if I was a 5 years-old boy proud of his drawings. Same thing for the music and sounds.
Another cool thing is that even when writing code, I didn't feel like I was doing the same thing as during the day. Just writing code, in a closed and stable environment, with a very modest API, and finally the ability to release and convert your game into a JS file in just one command is infinitely satisfying. After a day spent struggling with CloudFormation on AWS, it was a blessing!
Just to clarify: I founded a company a few years ago from a side project I had started three years before, and this year I released two projects, so I can say that I love side projects. I simply regret this tendency to start so many shallow side projects (which are little more than tutorials) just to build a portfolio instead of focusing on creating something really substantial, or something that at least you really like. It's a waste and an illusion to think that it could help to be hired. I know too many developers stuck into this pipe dream.
The only thing I'm really missing from Google is the integration with Maps, Google Search is so convenient for finding a good restaurant, shop or bar around you. There were alternatives in the past (like Yelp) but Google killed them all, at least in France.
Even if landscapes are very urban, I like this feeling of driving that I don't really have anymore since I'm living in Paris. I'm often playing to Euro Truck Simulator just for getting out of the narrow streets and watching the horizon.
If you like videos like this, I recommend you this YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK3HAx-5XIRrWzpFziOQY0Q The highways, the acceleration effect, and the acid jazz music will give Ridge Racer memories to some of you!
A few weeks ago, I shared on the quarantine side-projects thread my idea of a recommendation engine based on famous directors tastes (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23185673 ). At this time, I was procrastinating, but your warm messages motivated me to complete it, so thank you HN!
I had for a long time this idea of a movie recommendation engine built not on the tastes of people like you or peoples you follow but on favorite film director tastes. I became a film buff with starting watching Tarantino movies, then watching movies of directors that influenced Tarantino (Melville, Godard, Woo), and so on. It helped me to become aware of all the phases, periods in film history and to develop a critical approach to movies. Conversely, I'm often frustrated by movies recommendation systems today. Most of the recommendations I get are often the same, too out of context, too cold. This is why I made this small website, to generate recommendations based on the favorite movies of the directors you like the most.
To use it, you just have to export your Letterboxd profile to CSV ("Settings" > "Export your data") and import it here: http://theylovepictures.com/
It'll generate you recommendations like this: http://theylovepictures.com/recommendation/33241372-cc7e-4fe... (they're mine!)
I also develop a Directors section, where you can access to a "family tree" of a director. For instance, here is Martin Scorsese's: http://theylovepictures.com/director/Martin%20Scorsese
Feel free to give me some feedback, but please keep in mind that I don't really plan to make it more than just a side project. I know that the UI/UX is very basic and that having to import a CSV is not user-friendly, and I don't really know if it will scale or if it will work for all kind of profiles, but again, it's nothing more than a toy project, and if it gives some good idea of movies to watch to a couple of film buffs, I'll be happy!
Actually, I didn't become a movie buff with tools like this but with watching the movies liked by the directors of my favorite films. For instance: Pulp Fiction -> Quentin Tarantino -> Bande à part -> Jean-Luc Godard -> Robert Bresson -> ...
In addition to giving you some ideas about films that you could like, this helps you to better see the big picture (no pun intended). You learn about the important movie periods and movements (French New Wave, Italian neorealism, New Hollywood...), you develop a more serious approach to film, and you can live these mind-blowing moments when you notice similarities between two movies done 50 years apart and that looked at first glance totally different.
I already created the engine (which is giving good results for my profile! It recommends me movies that I never thought of). The challenge was mostly to found all the data required by the engine. Now, I must admit I'm procrastinating a little bit for developing the actual web app!
(and thank you everyone for your messages, your projects are awesome!)
- 2009: 35K - software engineer
- 2010: 37K - software engineer
- 2011: 39K - software engineer
- 2012: 41K - software engineer
- 2013: 47K - software engineer
- 2014: 50K - software engineer
- 2015: 55K - software engineer
- 2016/2017: 35K - unemployment system salary, while I was an entrepreneur
- 2018: 65K - senior software engineer
- 2019: ? (I'm now a manager)
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Some thoughts:
- my salary is very low compared to some mentioned in this thread, and yet I don't have the impression to be underpaid, in comparison to other engineers in Paris, and of course, in comparison to other French people. I'm the best paid among my Parisian friends (and probably among all those who where within my school class in high school, when I lived in a small French city, where 2000€/month is already great) Of course, I could do a lot more but before this year I wasn't a manager. To earn more as a software engineer without leadership responsibilities, you have to be part of the bests. Not my case I think.
- I feel it's very hard to exceed 90/100K. I know a few VP at 120K/130K but it's an elite. It's even hard for them to find a job position.
- retrospectively, the tech job market in Paris was very depressing before 2011. No start-ups (so no equity), very few tech companies, low salaries. I've been hired at a low 35K, as almost all the fellows from my engineering school. Today, an engineer in Paris started at 40 and is at 50 in two years.
- sometimes, I regret that all my "VIE" contracts (a program that allows french people to go work in French companies abroad) collapsed in the month of January 2009, just after the beginning of the financial crisis... But it would have been to work for the Societe Generale in New-York or for Safran in Houston, not for Google or Facebook. And I wouldn't have met my wife, so really no regrets.
- I also admit that in my first years in Paris, I was almost more in bars and movie theaters than in an office. Maybe it'd have been different if there was already a startup scene at this time.
- the start-up when I worked today tried often to hire foreign engineers. Everyone is generally very excited to come work in Paris, but has difficulties to get past the salary barrier. In these moments, I have to be the best advocate for the French health and unemployment system, which is great but, let's be honest, doesn't replace the crazy salaries I see on this thread. I like our system mostly because it helps my grand-mothers to live in a decent way, but if I was alone here, without a sense of solidarity, and without the desire to make my life here, I'd think it's a waste.
- in 2016-2017, I was an entrepreneur. It's been tough and it's been a failure (not a big failure, but still a failure). But thanks to the unemployment system, I was paid around 35K/year.
(By the way, I have a familial anecdote (really not significant, it's just pretty fun) on was I said about confidence in technological progress : my great grandfather was a blacksmith, as his father, grandfather, great grandfather, and so on. And what did he do when automobile replaced horses ? He became a car mechanic.)