abaracadab's comments

I have spent thousands of hours honing my software craft outside of work/school hours. I guarantee you most folks working those minimum wage jobs are not doing the same in their field. If they were passionate about it (whether front of house or in the kitchen) they would also hone their craft and work their way out of minimum wage.

The problem is that the turnover rate in restaurants is ALREADY very high. Most employees see it as a “stepping stone” while they get their careers on track.

Some folks would say the same thing about software development sucking.

I think it probably depends on which restaurant you work at and on your skill set and ability to thrive in that fast paced environment.

The difference is that software is easier money if you have the knack for that type of work.

But it’s like anything: you have folks who are passionate about cooking but not business savvy. They might be excellent cooks but the potential customers just eat greasy shit and don’t appreciate nuance of vegetables and spices—and so the chefs are at the mercy of substance-less customer demands. How can one be excited about that?

Anyway, I don’t think the folks quitting their jobs fit this category because talented chefs can make a lot more than minimum wage. But it’s still relevant as one must be excited to go to work in the morning.

Don’t forget your pentium and DOS collection! Air-gapped of course.

Technology is often simultaneously an art, science, and business.

Now, I’d imagine for any creator the art and science portions are the more interesting bits.

But what you’re talking about is technology as a means to some financial end (which likely ends in technological abandonment via sale the the highest bidder).

I personally believe the product should come first. All of the greatest products come from passion about building something; and then it takes partnerships with folks who have the business vision—after all, the art and science of business folks is turning something into a financial success.

If you enjoy tech but feel burnt out, I’d recommend playing with some retro computing. I find going back to the DOS era there was tons of passion. There’s plenty of books on Archive.org. Even though it’s lower level development the beauty is it’s just you and the machine (more or less) and none of these Python vs Ruby vs Go vs Rust vs Java vs Scala vs yadda-yadda. :)

And most likely there is limited way to make money selling DOS warez these days so it CANNOT be about money, just pure enjoyment, for the greater good.

Honestly a lot of folks should assess the value that big tech provides. We survived the 90’s running MSDOS backing stuff up to disks. And storage is cheap. Cloud this-and-that is great in theory but in practice it makes things too complicated. For instance, whenever I use a cloud-centric application I’m thinking okay… so where’s my files? And the answer is who knows!

More specifically I used to use OneNote when it used the local file system and I could get to my data. Then MSFT puts everything behind a cryptic ten-layer hashed URI…

The tech industry is like an insurance company now selling people on fear of losing files or productivity—but I’d wager more often than not technology gets in the way of folks productivity. By technology I mean fluffy clouds because obviously tech CAN help.

We need a better balance and a lot of that starts by keeping it simple.

So it sounds like skill + luck: key in the hole gives random chance of winning.

Honestly, these kind of lawsuits are ridiculous. People need to sue General Mills for false advertising instead because sugary cereals causing diabetes; or any other big-food company brainwashing children on YouTube kids.

This makes sense to be domain specific. But it’s all in the realm of what interests people.

Personally, I like to code, I like to draw, I enjoy maths, music and many other things. All of those skills actually augment each other: geometry aids art, art aids programming and so forth.

I don’t agree with Bret Victor though I think design and algorithms should actually be explored with pen and paper and through other means. And I think the current way of doing things is okay like in REPLs but understanding the design and ideas outside of the computer is crucial.