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Bing Crosby gave the necessary 'VC' funding to start production of tape recorders with sufficient fidelity to pre-record his radio show. He was motivated by 'l

Bing Crosby gave the necessary 'VC' funding to start production of tape recorders with sufficient fidelity to pre-record his radio show. He was motivated by 'laziness': he wanted to spend more time at home or playing golf than the strict schedules of a weekly live radio broadcast permitted.

siffland 8y ago
Ever notice a lot of automation and innovations are motivated by laziness. Maybe not laziness in the sense of to lazy to do something, but in the sense of it is so mundane i don't want to do it.
- creeble 8y ago
  I have frequently pondered the relationship between programming and laziness. Programmers do not like doing the same thing twice; it is axiomatic that whatever it is should be, e.g., a function call. Once this notion becomes deep-seated, programmers will spend endless time being lazy :)
- krylon 8y ago
  I have been telling people this for a while now, but I either fail to get my point across properly, or people think I am just making excuses. Either way, I wholeheartedly agree with you!
  - moftz 8y ago
    You need to compare it to someone inventing something like a windmill. In ancient times, someone was crushing grain with a rock. Pretty tedious work for little reward. Then someone figured out a way to use a bigger rock by rolling it. Then they hooked a mule up to it. Then they hooked up bunch of vanes so the entire process was automated. No on had to feed the mule or move the rock. The process isn't really a product of laziness, its a product of how you can be more productive with your resources. The time you put into building better tools is an investment into your productivity. You could sit there and manually edit spreadsheets for eight hours or you could spend a couple hours writing a tool to crank through them in ten seconds and you can move on to another task. As long as it takes less time to build the tool than the cumulative time of completing that task and any future similar tasks the tool could be used for, you have progressed just the same as early man did making tools.
- SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
  > According to Larry Wall, the original author of the Perl programming language, there are three great virtues of a programmer; Laziness, Impatience and Hubris > Laziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. http://threevirtues.com/ http://threevirtues.com/ > 1996
agumonkey 8y ago
hyperlaziness, 20th century ekename

siffland 8y ago

Ever notice a lot of automation and innovations are motivated by laziness. Maybe not laziness in the sense of to lazy to do something, but in the sense of it is so mundane i don't want to do it.

creeble 8y ago
I have frequently pondered the relationship between programming and laziness. Programmers do not like doing the same thing twice; it is axiomatic that whatever it is should be, e.g., a function call. Once this notion becomes deep-seated, programmers will spend endless time being lazy :)
krylon 8y ago
I have been telling people this for a while now, but I either fail to get my point across properly, or people think I am just making excuses. Either way, I wholeheartedly agree with you!
- moftz 8y ago
  You need to compare it to someone inventing something like a windmill. In ancient times, someone was crushing grain with a rock. Pretty tedious work for little reward. Then someone figured out a way to use a bigger rock by rolling it. Then they hooked a mule up to it. Then they hooked up bunch of vanes so the entire process was automated. No on had to feed the mule or move the rock. The process isn't really a product of laziness, its a product of how you can be more productive with your resources. The time you put into building better tools is an investment into your productivity. You could sit there and manually edit spreadsheets for eight hours or you could spend a couple hours writing a tool to crank through them in ten seconds and you can move on to another task. As long as it takes less time to build the tool than the cumulative time of completing that task and any future similar tasks the tool could be used for, you have progressed just the same as early man did making tools.
SideburnsOfDoom 8y ago
> According to Larry Wall, the original author of the Perl programming language, there are three great virtues of a programmer; Laziness, Impatience and Hubris > Laziness: The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. http://threevirtues.com/ http://threevirtues.com/ > 1996

agumonkey 8y ago

hyperlaziness, 20th century ekename