This is a great goal to strive for. But to play devil's advocate, not all ideas and scopes are clear until several iterations in. Furthermore, some software projects carry around specific dependencies necessarily. If these dependencies are prone to change then there goes your stability. Given enough dependency incongruity, all projects die after a long enough period of non-maintenance.
You are totally correct by the way. I do agree that most software creators hand wave away the potential for their dependencies change faster than they can maintain their own product.
I wish interfaces were more straight up about their intentions and made it easier to implement account level partitions. For work I love Google's magic tracking effects, but at 1 am, hell no.
Right. I'm just saying it should be clearer. Ex: I want to have a list of accounts, netflix style, that I'm presented with on an empty chrome window. If in fact multiple identities don't merge data implicitly in anyway than this is just a UI issue.
But I have a hard time believing google truly partitions everything in a multi account setup.
It would be immensely useful if Google understood that normal people have multiple facades that they use in different contexts. Probably several professional (which project / component was I working on again), private but family friendly (planning gifts for relatives, etc), and private but clearly out there (stuff you don't want to shock 60 year old parents / young kids / etc with) profiles.
Also, for incognito stuff, it'd be nice to have read-only basing on stock profiles related to various activities or people.
I append "reddit" to any query not meant for a productive task. Except now the internet is mostly reddit for me, which kinda bums me out. Especially given the new js-heavy design. In 2019, if I want reliable search about something I know nothing about I must first search on google, then try again with "reddit" appended, then change www.reddit.com to old.reddit.com, then parse through what are often questionable answers from anon users, possibly still influenced by marketers, and then maybe, I get the answer or next lead that I was looking for.
Most of the times I Google something I get content farm rubbish.
Know also that low paid "freelance writers" are often writing a lot of this information that so many people rely on.
I use reddit queries for things that aren't really critical, say a video game recommendation (try Googling that and see how many "top 17 adventure games" you get)
For more serious things like "do I have lactose intolerance?", I google something like [wiki lactose intolerance]
I do wonder why one of the world's most advanced intelligent systems built by thousands of the world's most intelligent people employed by a company which pretty much explodes in a burst of millions of dollar bills when you tap it lightly can't seem to show us results that aren't full of rubbish.
It's like Google's "discover" feed - it shows me trash news from a tabloid.
Google knows _A LOT_ about me, don't they know I despise tabloid news? Gossip about Kylie's breast cancer? No.
You can opt-out of the redesign in your settings so www.reddit.com and old.reddit.com both show the old reddit, and you can use new.reddit.com to view new-only pages.
I'm logged out by default and only log in to comment, which is rare. I don't like leaving my username up for display if a friend/family member has to borrow my laptop for something. I've engaged in a couple of communities that are a little more counter-cultural than my peers.
Done this. Eventually one account always becomes my main account and I'm back to square one. I don't care enough about reddit to keep up with 2 separate accounts.
Google used to have a filter to only show discussions which I used constantly until they removed it. It's the only way to find actual reviews of some products without a million pages of blogspam
I use ddg, and I use site:reddit.com. Reddit's internal search engine isn't as good for general web searches like this (which is what the ! redirects to).
The front page of Youtube is going to be like the front page of Youtube...full of lowest-denominator stuff like awful memes, Youtuber drama, superhero movies and video games.
But it is maybe the only major site online where you can at least get a real person's opinion on common questions, like recipes and cooking methods, without the fluff of the productized, Adsense-driven sites that exist only to make money.
Case in point: r/gifrecipes. Recipes shown in gif form, so 60 seconds or less. Discussion can happen in the comments, but there won't be any inane babble about how the recipe has been passed down their family for generations. The lengthy pre-ambles on recipe blogs exist only to circumvent Google's penalties for "thin content", i.e. pages with less than 500 words.
Content is being written to serve Google's requirements, not the users.
I was really late to the reddit party and only made an account a few years ago. Thought it would be a great technical resource... Every time I had a more advanced question the place seemed to fall flat. You'd go to a very specific sub thinking there should be some informative people but you come to find it's full of people in the same boat as you. They wind up guessing or throwing out whatever to get karma simply being unhelpful. One answer to a question I had about data recovery was replied to with "your approach is very amateurish" I reply with "please explain to me how it is amateurish" and get no response. It's just a big fuck you waste of time.
I tried helping in some subs but was met with hostility. Tried directing someone to the proper channels (mailing lists) to search for help with a openbsd hardware issue and I get insulted in return because they didn't like my answer. And it wasn't a rude "RTFM" reply but an honest helpful post explaining the mailing lists and how to search and ask. Fuck that noise. I got better shit to do.
The real purpose of reddit is to aggregate people around faux community to sell ads. You have nothing but circle jerks and fanboyism but no actual meat and potatoes. Even after deleting every single worthless default main sub the subs I try to watch are all "look what I did!". Actual questions are never answered. It's all about showcasing to get circle jerks going so people can live vicariously through the achievements of others. That keeps the eyeballs on the ads.
I find myself going back to IRC where the barrier of entry is much higher so you wind up with people who know a thing or two.
As always: It depends. There are great communities and in-depth discussions on niche topics to be found on reddit, but of course there's a lot of low quality content. Particularly when it comes to product recommendations, many reddit communities seem to have become an echo chamber and settled on the same few products they have been suggesting for a while. Often those aren't necessarily bad recommendations, but they are far from in-depth and rarely backed by any actual experience with or tests of the product in question - instead it's become a popularity contest.
I do visit some niche Discord channels which are well guarded and the help is certainly there. Though, as another poster mentioned and I have said before is Discord allows too much distracting visual fluff. IRC keeps the conversation focused thanks to the lack of said visual fluff. It's also extremely cross platform and isn't hostile to community made clients.
Reddit has a lot good communities sharing good info for niche subjects. The top 100 or so subreddits are as you say, but there are some good ones further down. And the reason to not use reddits search engine is that it still is very bad.
> It's a cesspool of kiddie memes, shock, ill informed opinion and political posturing.
You could make the same generalization about the internet as a whole. Reddit has so many communities and there is a lot of variety. r/fountainpens for example has none of the ills you describe.
The people here aren't talking about finding a meme that contains words in their search.
Reddit is simply the largest site that disincentivises content-for-contents sake. When you find someone asking a complex question, the person answering it does it because they have a real answer- not because they can make some money by googling the answer and rewording it. That's what the rest of Google's content often devolves to. For certain topics.
Browsing reddit is as described, I never go to r/all for that reason, not do I feel obliged to login, comment or vote in most cases but if you limit your consumption of reddit to a few subs, the difference is huge.
Most of reddit does suck. There are still really useful communities—my go-to example is /r/askhistorians, which has some of the highest quality analysis and research on the internet.
Which couldn't be more ok. Hacker news comes down hard on people who casually throw out their unrealistic work hours, but for some of us it's the only way we'd stay competitive. I'm 26 with 5 years development experience and frankly, not the smartest man in the world. Things don't come easy to me. I take longer than my peers to learn concepts in software and business. But where I win is in my ability to work harder than my peers and compound the knowledge I do have. Sometimes even, I am perceived as "smart" by those who haven't worked 1 on 1 with me. Watching someone learn something in a week that took you almost a month; or building a reasonably successful company without doing the 80 hour week thing kills me a little inside. But that's life. You're given some amount intellect and if you want success you will have to pay your own costs to reach success, which may or may not be as much as what your peers have to pay.
The only golden rule I follow, never expect another human to work as hard as me for something that mostly benefits me. I do not believe in shaming employees that only put in their 40 and get out. That's great, they care about different things in life. Some of them have hobbies, families, responsibilities, etc, and I respect that. But for the rest of us who have chosen personal business success as our long term goal and aren't particularly intelligent, we should not feel guilty for our 80 hour weeks. Sometimes it is just plain necessary. Stupid if it doesn't work out. But necessary if it is to work out.
Thank you for sharing your honest, unvarnished perspective. A prediction: if you do earn a ton of money and become really wealthy, lots and lots of people will think you are brilliant or even a genius.
In the mean time: how do you stay motivated to work the long hours? How do you maintain mental focus for extended durations?
Ha, I'm sure it's different for different folks but I attribute my lack of burning out (knock on wood) to caring about what I do beyond a paycheck. That and leaving town for a weekend every month or so to tune everything out and evaluate my progress really helps. I get down when I'm unsure that my time is being well spent. Re-evaluating my trajectory often does wonders to keep those emotions in check.
Going through this now and boy is this true. Nothing like rewriting a 1k+ lib the day before a feature is supposed to be ready and then praying you didn't blow up some other lesser documented part of the code.
Like all lessons, it depends on the student. Personally, the author's way of thinking has been immensely helpful. I grew up an optimist, not able to understand why others couldn't see things the way that I did. After a few failed product/content launches and a few years of grinding later my self-bullshit meter is way more sensitive. This has led to me producing better products, features, and generally more success in my work life. Like the author, I assume no one wants to use my stuff at the outset, and this forces me to fight to overcome this.
But again, it's probably more a function of who this advice is given to. I've seen plenty of people get discouraged after making this realization. The key is to be aware that no one cares and then do it anyways.
As an optimist, you could realize that nobody wanting to read your stuff isn't because you suck, it's just because everybody's too busy to give a shit, and not about you personally. (It doesn't rule out you sucking, but nobody wanting to read your stuff isn't a reason to get discouraged.)
Right, this is how I think about it. For the most part, when people ignore you or are apathetic to what you’re doing, it’s not because they have any negative feeings toward you or your creation, but because they are busy and self-absorbed (like all of us), and are likely bombarded by ads and pitches from all angles. Plus everyone is already using 20 saas tools and has 100 books on their reading list and replies to 50 emails per day and so on. Our attention is extremely over-saturated.
Being is this state creates a strong bias against even considering adding another new thing to the pile, so the bar is just very high to get a typical person to care. That’s why it’s better to not seek out typical people in the beginning, but early adopter types who actually like trying all the new things.
Passing judgments ('no one care') on others, has it's own costs down the line. You make it harder for yourself to respect or trust people if it is your starting point.
You can rephrase your approach to - searching for people who meet my needs, while I am able to meet theirs. No judgements required.
But then how do I sell my mvp startup newsletter to all the people not capable of actually building a quality product? /s
In all seriousness, it is comical how often people apply revisionist explanations for the rise of certain companies. Its simple really. Great product + big market. You must have both, no exceptions.
I have 'worked' both a 19 hour day and a 21 hour day on separate occasions. The latter coming shortly after joking about 'that time we worked 19 hours'.
I assume you're suggesting it is impossible to do it regularly, which I'd agree with. The definition of 'work' also broadens profoundly. You will also pay for it by sleeping away more of your free time than you already donated to your work for free.
Have you ever worked in the service industry? I know from personal experience its very possible. I did not always have the luxury that a software dev allows me to have.
A one-person craft bakery opened next to my home 3 months ago. Since opening, the owner-baker has put in 20 hour days, 6 days per week every week. No lunch break either, he makes a diy version of Soylent he came up with himself. On Mondays he takes a rest day so he can work for about 12 hours with the door closed to the public.
My observation is that he is does this by being upto his neck in debt, being aggressively resilient,having memorized the mechanics down to his bones, and intrinsically valuing hard work. Crazy but there he is baking bread 130 hours a week.
When I used to work in the restaurant/catering industry I'd sometimes pull 20-odd hour shifts. If we were doing a wedding I'd do 8 AM until 4 AM the next day.
It was strangely rewarding, but then you'd get your measly paycheque and it was quite disheartening to see how little you made for the effort you put in.
That depends strongly on the work and the frequency.
The ACGME rules require only that a medical resident work no more than 24 continuous hours with at least a 14-hour break after a 24-hour shift. Many residency programs had difficulty adjusting their programs to comply with these rules when they went into effect in 2011.
My wife regularly works 24-hour ER shifts; and used to do 8-hour clinic shifts immediately after. There's another doctor in the same ER who usually works one or two 60-hour shifts per month.
Work in a small ER is bursty. You might see one or two patients with minor problems in a 24-hour shift, and get to sleep a full night. Or you might get woken up after 4 hours of sleep. Or you might get to take a series of 2 hour naps. Or you might not sleep.
After 18 hours without sleep, you're functioning at the level of a person with two drinks in them. It only gets worse from there. We trust these people with our lives.
Yes, it absolutely is. It's not even terribly uncommon at rock shows.
Source: I'm a stagehand. I can show you a pay stub from a couple months ago when I worked 20 hours in one day. We were the band's first stop on the tour, so the load-in started at 4am, and the load-out finished at 3am. I had 3 hours off during the show itself, though some people got to work straight through.
I couldn't do it every day, of course, but I'd gladly do it a couple times a week. It was a tremendous experience, and one of my all time favorite days at work.
when I was 18 I worked a 24 hour shift at a 24 hour diner - breakfast shift, lunch shift, dinner shift, and graveyard shift. I waited tables all four shifts. during graveyard I cooked too when the graveyard line cook would take his breaks. it wasn't that hard though obviously I was haggard by the end of it.
I was referring to anyone who works 20 hour days... That's just not a life worth living at that point. All they do is work and sleep. Also, not sure why you got defensive and brought up my profession. We're both agreeing on the same thing here.
That's simply not true. You don't work 20 hour days every day.
I apologize for coming off as overly defensive, but I do occasionally work 20 hour days, and I love it. I can't help but feel like it's a bit of an attack when you suggest that someone else's life isn't worth living, but yours is.
I never claimed that my life was worth living. I contemplate ending it every day. I'm sorry if you thought I attacked anyone, that was never my intention.
You are totally correct by the way. I do agree that most software creators hand wave away the potential for their dependencies change faster than they can maintain their own product.