4 ms·

I like writing programming languages. No, I love writing programming languages. However, I don't expect that people would ever pay me to do it because there ar

by drblast 16y ago

I like writing programming languages. No, I love writing programming languages. However, I don't expect that people would ever pay me to do it because there are so many people passionate about it that it gets done for free. I believe I would feel the same way if my passion were English literature. The barrier to entry is so low that if that's your thing, after some initial training you can accomplish whatever it is you want to do absent the assistance of a highly-paid professor. I don't understand why you would eschew the monetary value of something in one breath and then complain with the next that nobody is willing to pay you to teach it. If you're that passionate about it, screw the money and do it anyway. Either that or what you have is a hobby, not a profession. Or maybe I'm wrong and society is lacking that final breakthrough deconstruction of Proust before we all happily move forward toward enlightenment. But I doubt it.

sophacles 16y ago
So you write programming languages as an aside from your job of negotiating deliveries of livestock feed? Or are you maybe actually getting paid for your programming language work in the form of useful contacts, better reputation, better experience, and so on which increase your salary? I'd place money on the later -- so you don't do it for free, you just don't do it for direct money. I doubt you would write programming languages nearly as intensely if you were the aforementioned negotiator. The reward would be less and you would instead be going for drinks with clients and otherwise networking, it is a hobby people like that also ends up in professional payout...
- drblast 16y ago
  It's closer to the former. My job is managerial and has nothing to do with writing code. There is not a single person at my office who knows, or cares, about my hobby.
derefr 16y ago
Something struck me about this statement: > Or maybe I'm wrong and society is lacking that final breakthrough deconstruction of Proust before we all happily move forward toward enlightenment. We already do have a group of people in our society who believe something similar: priests. They've survived quite a long while as a group without needing to be paid for any actions that directly benefit the people paying them; churchgoers just keep them alive and fed through donations, from a moral sense of obligation to the church itself. Perhaps, then, the readers of quality English literature need to form a religion (or, at least, a cult) around it, and pay tithes to the professors? Heck, that could probably also pay to get the literature itself written in a much more sensible way than publishing houses manage... ;)

by drblast 16y ago

sophacles 16y ago

So you write programming languages as an aside from your job of negotiating deliveries of livestock feed? Or are you maybe actually getting paid for your programming language work in the form of useful contacts, better reputation, better experience, and so on which increase your salary? I'd place money on the later -- so you don't do it for free, you just don't do it for direct money. I doubt you would write programming languages nearly as intensely if you were the aforementioned negotiator. The reward would be less and you would instead be going for drinks with clients and otherwise networking, it is a hobby people like that also ends up in professional payout...

drblast 16y ago
It's closer to the former. My job is managerial and has nothing to do with writing code. There is not a single person at my office who knows, or cares, about my hobby.

derefr 16y ago

Something struck me about this statement: > Or maybe I'm wrong and society is lacking that final breakthrough deconstruction of Proust before we all happily move forward toward enlightenment. We already do have a group of people in our society who believe something similar: priests. They've survived quite a long while as a group without needing to be paid for any actions that directly benefit the people paying them; churchgoers just keep them alive and fed through donations, from a moral sense of obligation to the church itself. Perhaps, then, the readers of quality English literature need to form a religion (or, at least, a cult) around it, and pay tithes to the professors? Heck, that could probably also pay to get the literature itself written in a much more sensible way than publishing houses manage... ;)