I definitely identify with the author. A big mistake I made in the past was to assume that other software engineers are equally enthusiastic about these kind of projects, or the least bit impressed by them. I was asked for a job interview to prepare presentations on two projects I was particularly proud of. I chose a hobby Operating System kernel I'd developed from the ground up, and a fully-functional MIPS assembler I had written. The interviewers (senior developers within the company) really just did not get it. Responding with questions such as: "Is this going to make you any money?", and "When do you expect this to be complete?". They really couldn't understand my motivations. I did these projects for no other reason than that I love programming, and I have never stopped loving learning about it. I have never needed to consider, or justify to myself why I did these things. I do them because I enjoy what I do.
I ended up pivoting to discuss some comparatively banal professional project migrating a mid-sized financial product to a new tech-stack, which managed to captivate their attention. I found this experience extremely disheartening, however important a lesson it was to learn. I don't think it's changed my outlook in any way though, admittedly. I still work on the same kinds of projects, and I still think the best developers are the ones who do work on toy projects for their own enjoyment.
I strongly relate. I spent a couple of weekends working on some procedural art [0] and was pretty happy with the end result. When I showed it to some of my co-workers / manager, they were baffled. "Uhh.. OK. Why did you make this?"
I feel changes a lot between locations (“scenes”). Back when I lived in Berlin, we had entire meetups dedicated to talk about _useless but cool projects_. Moved to the Bay Area, and I could never find anything remotely similar. Maybe they exist, I just couldn’t find one.
I also experienced the same interviewing experience you had, many times: my “talk about something interesting you made” answer used to be “I made a twitter bot that makes poetry with ML and I spent months training it” - it always got radically different reactions, from blank stares to “why didn’t you use those to mine bitcoin?”
Well, statistically speaking, neither will the commercial project, no matter how useful.
It's too bad interesting but ultimately useless projects hold so little weight in interviews. But I don't know if it's clear cut that they will be less profitable than commercial projects, which fail more often than not. Expanding your skillset may be more profitable in the end.
I've been thinking of pivoting to useless myself. With projects of some commercial potential I have to have a novelty budget, usually ending up with Node.js and React because as boring as the stack is you can always Google a problem and have the solution handed to you on a platter. But so far none of them have made me any money. They have given me some business experience, though, but I get even more pushback from highlighting or trying to apply that in my day job. They want a good little worker bee, not someone who will be gunning for any business development positions.
That's a really disappointing reaction you got. If I was interviewing someone who described having implemented a kernel or an assembler for fun I would be thrilled!
An important lesson for me was that doing side projects during my free time didn't make me a better developer at work. Writing a video game or even a webapp without the constraints of working on a team and having business needs that you don't get to choose.
Partitioning "work programming" and "home programming" as two separate skills in my mind has been very useful.
Thanks: I'm now changing my interview process. If the company doesn't "get it", if they don't understand why _having fun programming_ doesn't make me a better programmer, it's time to leave.
A hobby OS kernel sounds effing amazing and super cool. I've also written an assembler and interpreter (8051 variant), which was mind-bending in a great way. Thanks for posting!
Sadly, some recruiters are looking for a cog to fill a specific hole, and they do not want someone more experienced or better than what they're looking for (ie. they dont want the Einstein, they just want a math teacher). The salary would also reflect that they are specifically looking for a cog. It's best that you didn't get that position.
I've found the same thing. I love working on projects in my spare time, a lot of them completely pointless, but fun. I've seen the reactions you describe and it feels like talking to an alien.
I've learned as well that not everyone enjoys working on code in their spare time, or if they think they might enjoy it, they just don't have the motivation to begin. On the flip side, when I do bring up a project I'm working on and see someone's face light up and they describe something they're working on, I feel an instant connection.
Wow, they are seriously missing a beat. If someone is making useless stuff, it shows they are passionate, which is hugely valuable because people will work hard and make great code because they enjoy themselves.
Maybe I've just got lucky but here in the UK whenever my passion has bled through in an interview it's been recognised and I've got an offer.
You've already got a bunch of replies, still like to add something. I'm in the "I never felt anything towards coding" category. Tried to grow passion for it, just doesn't work. But I'd still be thrilled (and possibly intimidated) to see a passionate developer showing up for an interview. That these interviewers didn't get that you have passion for the work itself and not its outcome, not a great sign.
Hope you found something more fitting for your personality.
I just want to say that I am the person that doesn't like doing anything unless it creates value. I am just wired differently. For me a useless project is a waste of time unless I'm trying to learn something new, and even then I try to find something that is going to be useful because otherwise I lose interest.
I don't know what it is. Maybe because I grew up relatively poor?
I also love programming but mostly when it solves an issue for a business. There is nothing better in the world as far as careers go. When I can make $150 an hour and create so much value for a business that they will gladly give me their money, its special.
In general I have hard time just relaxing, I prefer to do and build things around the house.
That's really tragic that people think like this. Not everything needs a "purpose", in fact many of the most beautiful things in life don't. Doing things for the intrinsic joy rather than for some end is a key to life actually imho. Those who must always do things with some future goal in mind, getting more money, power, stuff, prestige etc are missing out.
Ironically, tinkering for fun can lead to innovation. Many cases of this in maths, science and engineering.
If I'd have been interviewing you we'd have talked about those two projects a lot. Especially the OS kernel :)
I currently have two hobby projects "in development". An bot trader (it broke even over 6 months with pretend money).
And a logic analyser using a Raspberry Pi Pico board and the excellent sigrok software - this project took a baby step to being non hobby when another dev found it and raised some issues.
Kudos to you, for working on the stuff that you really like. These toy projects could teach us or the people that see them, a lot of stuff.
"Senior Developers" doesn't mean that they will relate to everything related to software development. Either, they stick to the domain they work on or, to the ones that makes money.
Personally, I've always been fascinated with systems programming, thought I'm not much proficient or put in much effort. Whether something is going to make money or not, like many personal stuff we do (art for example), isn't eventually going to make us money, rather it gives us a sense of satisfaction.
> The interviewers (senior developers within the company) really just did not get it. Responding with questions such as: "Is this going to make you any money?", and "When do you expect this to be complete?".
I would expect that to be followed by, "Just kidding! I have side projects of my own, and that's what my wife says, haha! Don't you hate that?"
Here's what I tell those who question projects like these: By designing and implementing a game engine or a compiler or a microkernel, you become the sort of person who can do those things, and you become the sort of person who can do all the things that they entail. The product is not the software but the mind that makes it.
I think your initial approach is a brilliant way to interview a company to see it they're "your kind of people". If they have no interest in creative inventions or fresh ideas, run for the hills. You'll never be happy there.
Well they were interviewing you for a job not having a chat at a meetup or at the pub. I don’t think it’s an indictment of your interests rather if you “get” the question they’re asking you
I totally understand that whether you were offered the position or not isn't the key take away of the story.... But for the sake of my own wondering, did they offer you the position?
That's funny, I had the inverse interaction of someone telling me all theh wanted to do was be useful and I just could not relate. Like you, I do it because I like it.
If you can afford choosing your employer, this is a good test. Who wants to work with people that wouldn't be enthousiastic about such cool hobby projects? :)
Since a little less than two years, I live from a website I built, and I have a lot more control over my schedule.
Since then, I built a lot more useless stuff. I'm the only user. I can hardcode things, introduce breaking changes, manually migrate data and so on. I can cut corners, or over-engineer everything. Other people can use it, but I don't care about what they think of my variable names, or which features they want.
The turning point for me was the concept of apps as home-cooked meals [0]. If a gardener can grow flowers only he will see, I can write code only I will run.
Genuinely curious - Are you saying here that you have a blog that runs on your own code or your income comes from the project?
I only ask as if you’ve discovered a way to produce an income from coding something your own way while still having no-one else to answer to then I too would like to reach Valhalla and you must show me the way.
I think of it as my in-house software. Most software businesses write never leave the business, with a lot of the remainder being written in a support role just to further other business needs, not to be sold (such as a bank's online banking phone app.)
But it might be even better than in-house software. I don't have to collaborate with anyone. I can observe "best practices" or not. I don't have to care about rough edges like bad error messages - I'm the programmer and user, so I know what the message means.
I'm calling it my return to hacker roots. Unix was written for hackers who cobbled together quick solutions to personal problems. I no longer feel pressure to share my creations - sometimes I think people get minimal benefit from what I share, but it's more work for me than it's usually worth. Sometimes I feel bad about "not giving back" but many people "giving back" have their own self-driven reasons, such as building their portfolio of work. I have a day job so these reasons don't exist for me.
My most useful software is my meal planning and grocery list system. I've been using it over ten years now. Occasionally I'm asked to share it but it's a very nasty personal creation. I have no desire to share it. I do need to overhaul it though.
Linus Torvalds says he uses some hacked-up abomination of a text editor because it works for him and he knows it. That's the hacker spirit.
A problem I experienced with this is future-me is another user. So some aspects of documentation, ease of use etc became more important. Of course, that's my decision whether to support future-me or not, so is consistent with your philosophy. But it's quite difficult if I do, to know how much, and what exactly, is really needed... because, well, I can't google for it.
I really enjoyed this post, thank you so much for writing it. It made me think of a lot of "personal app" ideas I've had over the years, almost all of them orbiting around the idea of sharing something with my family friends in a more simple and straightforward way than off the shelf apps.
The biggest reason to make useless stuff instead of useful stuff is to avoid harassment. If you have something useful on GitHub then entitled users will come out of the woodwork to request features, report "bugs" (read: the user is doing something wrong), or otherwise expect free work out of you.
Some the comments here are disheartening. So much crass dismissal of anything not monetized. A lot of what we use on regular basis got started with simple ideas for things with limited usefulness at the time. I remember when there was much more creative energy in this industry. Obviously, tech is a major economic force now. But, that pretense of creativity and exploration is still being exploited. That's why we are funneling entire generations into coding classes, maker spaces, and youth empowering tech initiatives. They are being told, "learn to love coding. explore your dreams". Very quickly they get redirected into conformist production paths so they become tools. What a shame.
I remember when I was in college and told my friend that I just spent a sizeable (for a student) amount of money on an electric guitar and couldn't be happier.
His reply was: so, how are you planning on making that money back with it?
I had no reply to that.
There are people who, as zombie fiction for teenage audiences author Jonathan Maberry put it "think like insects" - they have but one overriding goal in life: maximize their total wealth.
This is an approach to life so foreign to me yet so often rewarded that it makes me wonder who's really happier.
One thing I know is that I hate working with such people - reading their code feels like listening to muzak - it works, but there doesn't seem to be any actual thought or design behind it. Long term it becomes unmaintainable, but that usually doesn't matter much, because projects get rewritten all the time.
Sounds like this is how he keeps his interest in coding alive and his ability to enjoy it in spite of getting paid to do it. If you only do what you get paid to do as a coder, you may grow to hate it and this can be career-ending. You could suffer burnout or just decide to quit or get fired and no one wants you anymore.
The first rule of sustainable productivity is taking care of the thing doing the producing. If that's a human, that isn't limited to physical wellbeing, especially if they are producing knowledge work.
It’s funny, my favorite useless projects have also mostly been compilers and game engines!
+1 to this mindset. I would go even further and suggest that useless projects tend to be morally superior to useful ones. A lot (not all) of the useful software out there ends up being used to make the world worse, but useless software can only ever inspire joy (in yourself and, hopefully, in others).
A lot of people who insist on building only stuff they can sell have very little business sense. They rarely seem to know if what they're building has any real chance of making money. As a result, they end up building a lot of stuff that's both useless and boring.
Love the OP's attitude. It's perfect for anyone looking to explore computing as a medium.
The HN comments they quote (shipping for customers, and avoiding pointless homework) come from a very different perspective -- where the medium being explored is not computing, but rather the process of satisfying specific human needs in the context of a "market".
Both have their own value; it's just that they're completely orthogonal in intent and worth not conflating.
The number one reason at this point in my life (44 years old, fulltime programmer) that I tend to not have any side projects at all is my absolute disdain for physically being tethered to a computer.
After a full week of staring at a screen and sitting too much (I alternate between standing/sitting desks all day) and typing, the last thing in the world that I want to do is more of that. Which is unfortunate, because there are numerous fun programming projects that I'm itching to do.
So I play music and make elaborate chalk art with my kid and garden and ride my bike like a madman. And I suspect that I'm better for it. (Though I'd probably be better at my day job if I were doing those side projects.)
I've been building a useless app in my free time, an hour here or there, for the last 2 months. Then last week at work, I got a chance to contribute to a project that happened to use the same stack. It was random luck. And the useless project prepared me for the useful one that pays me a salary.
I came to the same conclusion over the time. Mainly because I figured out:
When you want to build stuff for profit, coding is an afterthought. There are so many tasks necessary that involve zero coding. You essentially become your own product manager that needs to talk to (potential) customers, completely reevaluate your value proposition, do marketing sales. The more time you spend on coding, the higher the chance your assumptions about what people want are wrong.
If you want to spend 100% coding I would argue that's impossible to make profitably.
> And if those aren't enough, I have several more useless projects planned! I can't wait to get started on them:
I feel like this is such a key technique for maintaining momentum with your personal projects -- always keep a list of things you want to work on next. I'll often find myself day-dreaming about the next thing on my list while I'm still tinkering away on my current project. After I realized how important this was for myself, I started noticing other people doing it too; apparently whenever Bob Dylan had an idea, he'd write it down and put it in a box. When it came time to create, he'd open the box.
I didn't know anything about compilers, but I figured out how to compile Piet programs, so I wrote a compiler[1]. The project has stalled out for (a) lack of free time and (b) some silly ambitions, but I don't care what the public thinks about my lack of updates, and that's great. In the meantime, I've been going down weird rabbit holes and learning aspects of computing that I missed in school.
I build a lot of "useless" stuff too. Where by useless I mean useful to me, but isn't ever going to have customers.
A. Educational value is a thing. Not everything needs to be a business with customers. Not every project needs to make money. Many of my projects teach me something about science, tech, or arts.
B. Fun is a thing. Building stuff is a way to enjoy life for me, similar to spending time on the beach.
There is a lot of sentiment on HN about how you should be making a side business or selling your own stuff or being your own boss or getting your first 100 paying customers or your $xxxxx MRR or whatever.
That is all fine, but I think that line of thought can be a little bit toxic at times: you don't have to be continually hustling for the next dollar all the time - it is ok to do stuff simply for the joy of it.
I love making tiny projects for fun and not for profit, using tools I enjoy working with and not tools I would need to scale to a trillion users, trying ideas I like and not ideas I can monetize. I almost forgot why I enjoyed coding.
The usefulness question is the a poison to discovery.
How many things we use in our daily life would have survived the first peer review for usefulness?
The printing press? Makes no sense, use scribes. The public cant even read.
The internet? Why would people use a computer to communicate and share data? Its super slow, just send a magnetic drive or even better, copy the images on paper.
Solar power? We have coal, oil, nuclear, that stuff has no future.
If something is not useful, in dubio assume, that it is, but you just are not capable of seeing the use or the market it will create.
[+] [-] ajxs|4 years ago|reply
I ended up pivoting to discuss some comparatively banal professional project migrating a mid-sized financial product to a new tech-stack, which managed to captivate their attention. I found this experience extremely disheartening, however important a lesson it was to learn. I don't think it's changed my outlook in any way though, admittedly. I still work on the same kinds of projects, and I still think the best developers are the ones who do work on toy projects for their own enjoyment.
[+] [-] andersource|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://andersource.dev/2020/10/10/procedural-butterfly.html
[+] [-] herval|4 years ago|reply
I also experienced the same interviewing experience you had, many times: my “talk about something interesting you made” answer used to be “I made a twitter bot that makes poetry with ML and I spent months training it” - it always got radically different reactions, from blank stares to “why didn’t you use those to mine bitcoin?”
[+] [-] Tabular-Iceberg|4 years ago|reply
Well, statistically speaking, neither will the commercial project, no matter how useful.
It's too bad interesting but ultimately useless projects hold so little weight in interviews. But I don't know if it's clear cut that they will be less profitable than commercial projects, which fail more often than not. Expanding your skillset may be more profitable in the end.
I've been thinking of pivoting to useless myself. With projects of some commercial potential I have to have a novelty budget, usually ending up with Node.js and React because as boring as the stack is you can always Google a problem and have the solution handed to you on a platter. But so far none of them have made me any money. They have given me some business experience, though, but I get even more pushback from highlighting or trying to apply that in my day job. They want a good little worker bee, not someone who will be gunning for any business development positions.
[+] [-] jefftk|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phendrenad2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] john-tells-all|4 years ago|reply
A hobby OS kernel sounds effing amazing and super cool. I've also written an assembler and interpreter (8051 variant), which was mind-bending in a great way. Thanks for posting!
[+] [-] scaramanga|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smallstepforman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] allenu|4 years ago|reply
I've learned as well that not everyone enjoys working on code in their spare time, or if they think they might enjoy it, they just don't have the motivation to begin. On the flip side, when I do bring up a project I'm working on and see someone's face light up and they describe something they're working on, I feel an instant connection.
[+] [-] antihero|4 years ago|reply
Wow, they are seriously missing a beat. If someone is making useless stuff, it shows they are passionate, which is hugely valuable because people will work hard and make great code because they enjoy themselves.
Maybe I've just got lucky but here in the UK whenever my passion has bled through in an interview it's been recognised and I've got an offer.
[+] [-] kharak|4 years ago|reply
Hope you found something more fitting for your personality.
[+] [-] john61|4 years ago|reply
The answer should be: yes, because you are hiring me now for the skills I learned doing this.
[+] [-] alpaca128|4 years ago|reply
"Yes, by motivating you to hire me"
Seriously, did they expect new hires to be working on their startup on the side?
[+] [-] avgDev|4 years ago|reply
I don't know what it is. Maybe because I grew up relatively poor?
I also love programming but mostly when it solves an issue for a business. There is nothing better in the world as far as careers go. When I can make $150 an hour and create so much value for a business that they will gladly give me their money, its special.
In general I have hard time just relaxing, I prefer to do and build things around the house.
[+] [-] jmfldn|4 years ago|reply
Ironically, tinkering for fun can lead to innovation. Many cases of this in maths, science and engineering.
[+] [-] markb139|4 years ago|reply
I currently have two hobby projects "in development". An bot trader (it broke even over 6 months with pretend money).
And a logic analyser using a Raspberry Pi Pico board and the excellent sigrok software - this project took a baby step to being non hobby when another dev found it and raised some issues.
Don't stop with the hobby projects
[+] [-] vms20591|4 years ago|reply
"Senior Developers" doesn't mean that they will relate to everything related to software development. Either, they stick to the domain they work on or, to the ones that makes money.
Personally, I've always been fascinated with systems programming, thought I'm not much proficient or put in much effort. Whether something is going to make money or not, like many personal stuff we do (art for example), isn't eventually going to make us money, rather it gives us a sense of satisfaction.
Keep doing what you do!
[+] [-] kazinator|4 years ago|reply
I would expect that to be followed by, "Just kidding! I have side projects of my own, and that's what my wife says, haha! Don't you hate that?"
[+] [-] kmstout|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] randcraw|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] killingtime74|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fuzzwah|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guerrilla|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forty|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nicbou|4 years ago|reply
Since then, I built a lot more useless stuff. I'm the only user. I can hardcode things, introduce breaking changes, manually migrate data and so on. I can cut corners, or over-engineer everything. Other people can use it, but I don't care about what they think of my variable names, or which features they want.
The turning point for me was the concept of apps as home-cooked meals [0]. If a gardener can grow flowers only he will see, I can write code only I will run.
[0] https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/home-cooked-app/
[+] [-] headmelted|4 years ago|reply
I only ask as if you’ve discovered a way to produce an income from coding something your own way while still having no-one else to answer to then I too would like to reach Valhalla and you must show me the way.
[+] [-] massysett|4 years ago|reply
But it might be even better than in-house software. I don't have to collaborate with anyone. I can observe "best practices" or not. I don't have to care about rough edges like bad error messages - I'm the programmer and user, so I know what the message means.
I'm calling it my return to hacker roots. Unix was written for hackers who cobbled together quick solutions to personal problems. I no longer feel pressure to share my creations - sometimes I think people get minimal benefit from what I share, but it's more work for me than it's usually worth. Sometimes I feel bad about "not giving back" but many people "giving back" have their own self-driven reasons, such as building their portfolio of work. I have a day job so these reasons don't exist for me.
My most useful software is my meal planning and grocery list system. I've been using it over ten years now. Occasionally I'm asked to share it but it's a very nasty personal creation. I have no desire to share it. I do need to overhaul it though.
Linus Torvalds says he uses some hacked-up abomination of a text editor because it works for him and he knows it. That's the hacker spirit.
[+] [-] hyperpallium2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1vuio0pswjnm7|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cco|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justin_oaks|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ogou|4 years ago|reply
Long live creativity and self-determination.
[+] [-] Tade0|4 years ago|reply
His reply was: so, how are you planning on making that money back with it?
I had no reply to that.
There are people who, as zombie fiction for teenage audiences author Jonathan Maberry put it "think like insects" - they have but one overriding goal in life: maximize their total wealth.
This is an approach to life so foreign to me yet so often rewarded that it makes me wonder who's really happier.
One thing I know is that I hate working with such people - reading their code feels like listening to muzak - it works, but there doesn't seem to be any actual thought or design behind it. Long term it becomes unmaintainable, but that usually doesn't matter much, because projects get rewritten all the time.
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|4 years ago|reply
The first rule of sustainable productivity is taking care of the thing doing the producing. If that's a human, that isn't limited to physical wellbeing, especially if they are producing knowledge work.
[+] [-] brundolf|4 years ago|reply
+1 to this mindset. I would go even further and suggest that useless projects tend to be morally superior to useful ones. A lot (not all) of the useful software out there ends up being used to make the world worse, but useless software can only ever inspire joy (in yourself and, hopefully, in others).
[+] [-] legerdemain|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ssivark|4 years ago|reply
The HN comments they quote (shipping for customers, and avoiding pointless homework) come from a very different perspective -- where the medium being explored is not computing, but rather the process of satisfying specific human needs in the context of a "market".
Both have their own value; it's just that they're completely orthogonal in intent and worth not conflating.
[+] [-] daviddaviddavid|4 years ago|reply
After a full week of staring at a screen and sitting too much (I alternate between standing/sitting desks all day) and typing, the last thing in the world that I want to do is more of that. Which is unfortunate, because there are numerous fun programming projects that I'm itching to do.
So I play music and make elaborate chalk art with my kid and garden and ride my bike like a madman. And I suspect that I'm better for it. (Though I'd probably be better at my day job if I were doing those side projects.)
[+] [-] stadium|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leifg|4 years ago|reply
When you want to build stuff for profit, coding is an afterthought. There are so many tasks necessary that involve zero coding. You essentially become your own product manager that needs to talk to (potential) customers, completely reevaluate your value proposition, do marketing sales. The more time you spend on coding, the higher the chance your assumptions about what people want are wrong.
If you want to spend 100% coding I would argue that's impossible to make profitably.
[+] [-] dorkwood|4 years ago|reply
I feel like this is such a key technique for maintaining momentum with your personal projects -- always keep a list of things you want to work on next. I'll often find myself day-dreaming about the next thing on my list while I'm still tinkering away on my current project. After I realized how important this was for myself, I started noticing other people doing it too; apparently whenever Bob Dylan had an idea, he'd write it down and put it in a box. When it came time to create, he'd open the box.
[+] [-] boothby|4 years ago|reply
[1] https://github.com/boothby/repiet
[+] [-] dheera|4 years ago|reply
A. Educational value is a thing. Not everything needs to be a business with customers. Not every project needs to make money. Many of my projects teach me something about science, tech, or arts.
B. Fun is a thing. Building stuff is a way to enjoy life for me, similar to spending time on the beach.
A couple of my more "useless" projects:
https://dheera.net/projects/4x5/
https://dheera.net/projects/mnist-clock/
https://dheera.net/projects/einkframe/
https://dheera.net/projects/shoji-lamps/
[+] [-] mattlondon|4 years ago|reply
There is a lot of sentiment on HN about how you should be making a side business or selling your own stuff or being your own boss or getting your first 100 paying customers or your $xxxxx MRR or whatever.
That is all fine, but I think that line of thought can be a little bit toxic at times: you don't have to be continually hustling for the next dollar all the time - it is ok to do stuff simply for the joy of it.
[+] [-] emptyparadise|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PicassoCTs|4 years ago|reply
How many things we use in our daily life would have survived the first peer review for usefulness?
The printing press? Makes no sense, use scribes. The public cant even read.
The internet? Why would people use a computer to communicate and share data? Its super slow, just send a magnetic drive or even better, copy the images on paper.
Solar power? We have coal, oil, nuclear, that stuff has no future.
If something is not useful, in dubio assume, that it is, but you just are not capable of seeing the use or the market it will create.
[+] [-] jack_riminton|4 years ago|reply
That’s the part about painting that I love the most too. You don’t understand it? I don’t care
[+] [-] ransom1538|4 years ago|reply
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