7 ms·

Ask HN: Dead man coding.

• nandemo 16y ago
  I'd take the goddamn colostomy bag.
• uptown 16y ago
  Get away from the keyboard, and go experience the world. Photograph or write about it all, and share it with as many people as possible along the way.
  • drKarl 16y ago
    A 6-9 month trip around the world sounds good
    • blizkreeg 16y ago
      With Crohn's that's not an easy possibility. It would, in fact be miserable with surroundings, food, and weather changes. Please don't do that.
      • deadmancoding 16y ago
        I cant. Luckily I can work form home because its hard to leave home.
• cubes 16y ago
  Do something else. Travel. Go to Burning Man. Get away from the keyboard.
  • uptown 16y ago
    The guy's got Crohn's disease. I think he's already got first hand experience with burning man.
• maxdemarzi 16y ago
  Take art classes with local artists and get to know as many people as possible.
• kevinelliott 16y ago
  I'd take the colostomy bag, even if it's an extreme struggle. Then I'd spend the rest of my life doing what really intrigued and fascinated me, like traveling, and meeting new people. But, since Im not in your situation, I can only guess what I'd do. Also, keep your chin up, and don't be afraid to ask for help. Meaning, if you wanted to change the world, get to it and ask everyone around you to help you do it. What do you have to lose?
• deadmancoding 16y ago
  I guess the hard part is that I fee like I wasted my life. The plan was to do .com's and things until 30 then retire. I was well on that road and now this. Thanks for all the suggestions. I literally don't know anything but code. I have no friends only work colleagues. Even when I broke this news people wanted to make sure that all the projects were transferrable. I cant take the bag. I already have confidence issues and girls kind of think I am a loser. I cant imagine what they would think then (yes i now that is shallow and unreasonable logic.)
  • AmberShah 16y ago
    I know it sounds cheezy but when you find someone you love, things like that won't matter, she will only want to help you through it. It sounds like you haven't experienced that yet, which makes it all the better reason not to die. I think it's a lot of pressure to put on yourself to feel like you wasted your life so young. Give yourself a break. How about this: take the bag, for now. If life with the bag does end up sucking, you can always find a way out later. But leave your options open and give it a try?
  • zatara 16y ago
    Have you seen George Miller's 'Lorenzo's Oil'? You are a hacker. Take the bag and hack your away out of it. This your last project (or not) and you are more motivated than any other doctor to solve it. It will maybe require you to go very far from your comfort zone, deep into genetics, tissue engineering or molecular biology. So what? Your solution may benefit thousands. Maybe this is your mission in life.
  • tudorw 16y ago
    Please reconsider, the bag is technology after all of a kind, and it might buy enough time for a new solution to arise. We live in an unfair world, you should not be having to make this decision, every child knows that appearances are not the important thing, unfortunately as adults we unlearn that... Go find some women who are not so shallow as to judge a man by his limits, get online dating, it's worked for some my friends.
  • dminor 16y ago
• pook 16y ago
  Take the bag, fall in love, and do something worth staying around for. Have children, invest in singularity-inducing tech, fight pirates on the open seas. You'd be surprised how powerful the urge to live, despite daily I-can't-take-this-anymore frustrations, is when you've got a child's life to look forward to.
  • deadmancoding 16y ago
    I don't think any woman in the world would date a guy with a colostomy bag. So by taking one I am committing myself to a life of loneliness and pain (crones hurts like hell).
    • pook 16y ago
      Pro tip: every single man who ever married the woman he loves, has no fucking idea how he managed to attract her. We're all completely baffled when a woman decides to spend her life with a yog-shothoth like us.
      • nfnaaron 16y ago
        Abso-fucking-lutely. Let woman-kind make that decision, no reason you should pre-empt them.
    • BobbyH 16y ago
      There are websites that cater to people that have various conditions. Here's a great article on one: http://www.newsweek.com/2007/07/22/sick-single-seeking-same.html http://www.newsweek.com/2007/07/22/sick-single-seeking-same.... The site mentioned is http://prescription4love.com/ http://prescription4love.com/. Incidentally, this seems like a lucrative yet underserved niche in the dating market.
    • isleyaardvark 16y ago
      Men with worse conditions have found women.
    • run4yourlives 16y ago
• retube 16y ago
  Leave the computer. go see the world. walk, hike, swim, get drunk, chase girls, write it all down. enjoy yourself.
• adam-_- 16y ago
  Go traveling. Use CouchSurfing (or something similar) it would be impossible not to meet people and the people involved are generally unbelievably welcoming. Or join up with some of the group adventure holiday type things.
• jz 16y ago
  If you work for any employer that actually cares about you, convince them to keep you on their insurance and take a 6 month sabbatical. If they are not sympathetic to your situation, quit your job immediately since they have no regard for your well being. Try the bag and see how it goes. Make friends, travel, enjoy life. Do the things you always wanted to do. Then reassess in 6 months. Looking at my own life the things that I feel blessed for, have nothing to do with work. After falling in love and starting a family, being rich and changing the world are no longer important. As long as I can provide for my family and raise my children in a way that would make me proud, nothing else matters. Unplug and try the bag. There is much more to life than business success and $.
• famfam 16y ago
  This might sound harsh, but since you are okay with dying at 26 of a disease that rarely kills, my advice would be: have you sought out mental health counseling? Along with your comments about confidence, no friends, girls, and with the pain I'm sure you've been through with Crohn's, and if you've been "working" since 13, I would guess you could very well be depressed. Maybe you would reconsider the bag if you felt better.
  • deadmancoding 16y ago
    Thats not harsh at all. My Chron's is very severe and attacks my organs (kidney and heart) sometimes. I was committed when i was younger (go ahead and laugh) but it was just Asperger syndrome. I don't think counseling would help. I think I am just tired of fighting it. And I am going to take the advice given here.
    • expeditious 16y ago
      Not laughing -- nothing wrong with getting mental help. Foot doctors, heart doctors, brain doctors; they all help fix you up if there's a problem. If you haven't talked to a professional (psychologist or psychiatrist) lately, go (or have a friend or relative on your behalf) seek one out and make an appointment before you do anything else. If you explain your situation on the phone, they may be able to squeeze you in for an appointment right away.
• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• simon_ 16y ago
  Take the bag just to keep your options open. You can always die later if you still want to.
• nfnaaron 16y ago
  For fuck's sake, take the bag! There's no way at all that you can imagine what you might do with your life, what you might experience, what you might give other people. I'm not religious at all, but if there's anything in the universe that qualifies as a miraculous gift, it's your (you, I'm talking to you, dmc) life. The universe would be a lesser place without you. See what happens.
• blizkreeg 16y ago
  man, please don't think of life as being only code, .com's and retiring by 30s. I understand being passionate about your craft but you're too young to talk like this. I also understand what harm a chronic condition can do to your life, to your confidence, but please, don't give up. Perhaps you need to re-invent yourself. If that means taking the bag, do it. Think of this as a new life. Shed that old layer, leave that guy behind. Think beyond code, beyond .com. Life is precious, really. There are women out there who do go beyond physical appearance. You need some mental health therapy too. Your confidence needs a boost and that will surely help. Where is your family in all this? Bond more with some close friends, relatives, family. Have you tried any alternative, less-intrusive, natural remedies? I can tell from personal experience they can be a ray of light, more often than you think.
  • deadmancoding 16y ago
    I dont know my mom and my dad said just do what makes me happy. Reinventing yourself is easier said that done. My entire identity is based on being a .com wiz kid.
    • blizkreeg 16y ago
      Do what makes you happy. The best advice, indeed. Just don't give up.
• isleyaardvark 16y ago
  Suicide is one of the few mistakes you can make in life that you can never correct.
  • exit 16y ago
    it's also one of the few "mistakes" you'll never regret. death is the end of attachment.
• famfam 16y ago
  Women would rather have a colostomy bag than a douche bag.
  • exit 16y ago
    sadly this isn't true in most cases. women are very much attracted to type-a(sshole) personalities. there are certainly many exceptions though.
    • po 16y ago
      Luckily, you only need to find one exception.
• iwani 16y ago
  If you wouldn't consider taking the bag at all, I guess one final web project will be it. Make it a meaningful one. Make it reflect you as who you were in this life. Also make it useful for other people when you're gone. We'll all remember you. We'll all remember that there was this one kickass coder who just hadn't enough time to do even more amazing projects Good luck :)
• exit 16y ago
  are you at all angry at the world?
• shaunxcode 16y ago
  take the bag! There is a good chance that a permanent solution will be more than viable in your lifetime if not in the near future! Life is far far too precious to not take the risk.
• mburney 16y ago
  I would travel to many different places, and take lots of risks that people don't take when they're afraid of dying. And write an epic (semi) auto-biographical picaresque novel to document it.
• fleitz 16y ago
  Since you have elected to die rather than use a colostomy bag, have you considered infecting yourself with hookworm? http://gut.bmj.com/content/55/1/136.extract http://gut.bmj.com/content/55/1/136.extract http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/16/3408/66053 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2009/3/16/3408/66053 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/30/91945/8971 http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2006/4/30/91945/8971
  • po 16y ago
    Oh yeah! I read this on kuro5hin a long time ago (whatever happened to that site anyway? So much good stuff there…) and I wondered if it was quackery or not. I have a friend with crohns and I was going to show it to him but I couldn't figure out if the article was reputable or not. Has anyone read the full text of this (or any related) article?
• SingAlong 16y ago
  If you really love what you are doing, you'll just stop reading this comment here and take that bag. You said you refuse to take that bag, so now consider this situation... you have 3 more days to die and you just created something beautiful & awesome and you want to see it thru. Might be a business or even a time travel machine or even someone you love. Won't you regret that you didn't take that colostomy bag to live long enough to see the job thru and have fun? Still waiting to take that bag? Damn it! you are forcing yourself to be a loser. As for women, like everyone else said, i dunno how to blow them off their feet. And sadly so do people who have done it :) So take that bag and get lucky!!!
• starkfist 16y ago
  Crohn's disease is not fatal.
  • deadmancoding 16y ago
    No it's not but the complications caused by it can be. If you are willing to live a miserable life with a colostomy bag and tons of med's that make you feel like crap then no its not fatal. If you choose to live life on your own terms then it can kill you.
    • cianestro 16y ago
      If you're still alive read "The Tibetan Book of The Dead" (I'm not Buddhist but it will provide you with a deal of clarity if you can see past the metaphors). I'm not a fan of platitudes but I think taking responsibility for yourself and living on your own terms starts by ending self-pity; death is invariably linked to it--you must let it go out of scope before you do.
    • starkfist 16y ago
      Did your doctor say you have 6-9 months to live?
• evanwolf 16y ago
  DMC, if you're looking to borrow goals, try http://43things.com http://43things.com. You can see a wide range of what people have on their bucket lists and new years' resolutions. If you'd like to make a difference, try to doing at least one good deed every day, a mitzvah. Anonymously if possible. It's harder than it sounds, and will get harder as your physical options become more limited. Those of us with longer time horizons consider life a balancing act: mixing work, fun, education, beauty, family, community, religion, health. Since you're budgeting your time, consider what sort of mix you'd like. It's your story to write. Maybe 60 art museums in 60 days? Or go someplace where they don't speak much English (France and Spain come to mind) and learn the language? Last, and this may be the hard one, think of ways to leave this world better than when you came. Does freedom from long term consequences create an opportunity to do something extraordinary if perhaps unpleasant, taboo, or illegal? A dictator you can take down because your life is cheap? A government censorbot that needs a privacy countermeasure you can code because you're not afraid of jail? A homeless person you can take into your home and mainstream because the worst that can happen is they steal your property? Good luck with your life. Live well. Be decisive. Ask yourself always: "What's the best use of my time right now?"
• patrickmclaren 16y ago
  We're all given a time limit. No doubt that this isn't the first time you've come to terms with how long you have left. You've asked for suggestions on what you should do before you're gone, I think that's what the people commenting here should be addressing. My suggestion is make a difference. Change something that wouldn't otherwise be changed. You've made a reckless decision to cut decades off your life, perhaps an equally reckless decision will result in something that lasts a lot longer.
• kimfuh 16y ago
  No tomorrow means a limitless today. Read everything here, forget about it, then do absolutely anything you want until you die. Between now and then, you might find something to live for. Happy journey my friend.
• namagi 16y ago
  As someone who was diagnosed falsy with Crohn disease before please just make sure you have not a food intolerance of some kind if you haven't already - for example (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeliac_disease http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coeliac_disease).
• za 16y ago
  http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.h...