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It amuses and pleases me to see that pg will continue to play around with lisp presumably forever, regardless of how wealthy he becomes. I hope I'll never stop

• golemiprague 7y ago
  we got life you know
• p4bl0 7y ago
  > regardless of how wealthy he becomes It may be the reverse that happens here: he is wealthy enough to have time to play with Lisp.
  • dang 7y ago
    He was playing with Lisp before he was wealthy and also while becoming wealthy. HN's software, which runs on Arc, used to run YC too. It was all one codebase. Only after pg retired did YC move the business parts of the software out of Lisp, and it got a lot bigger and more complicated in the process—as any Lisper would expect.
    • pg 7y ago
      At first it was not just all one codebase, but all one thread. If HN was busy, all our internal software would run a little slower.
      • mattknox 7y ago
        have you thought about publishing the full source from then? The HN source was dense but very educational, and it would be really interesting to see internal tools written in arc.
        • pg 7y ago
          You wouldn't learn much more from reading it, because (to an almost comical extent in retrospect) the internal code was just like HN. In fact, not just like; it was mostly the same code.
      • arthurcolle 7y ago
        Interesting, am I reading this the right way that the larger YC organization's codebase is an outgrowth of the message board tech? You guys post updates on investments/ideas for what startups should be doing just like news links are shared on HN, but actually on HN/not visible to other normal-HN users?
        • pg 7y ago
          That was once true, but it's all been rewritten.
          • deleted 7y ago
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    • lonelappde 7y ago
      Bigger and more complicated and handled many more users.
      • dang 7y ago
        I was in the room when the decision was made, and it wasn't about more users. That's the kind of thing people say because they assume it must be so. If you do that about unconventional things, which this software was/is, you'll simply reproduce the conventional view.
  • braythwayt 7y ago
    There are a LOT of things like that. Travel is a good example. For people making a living wage, some think “I don’t have the money to travel.” Then when they have the money, they think “I don’t have the time to travel.” They don’t really travel until they retire, and then they have trouble going anywhere that isn’t friendly to their knees and faltering eyesight, so they buy an RV. Others travel in college from hostel to hostel. When they get work, they negotiate longer vacations to travel, or they deliberately become giggers so they can travel. I met a couple in Thailand who climbed, they worked five months a year around the clock as nurses, and climbed seven months a year literally everywhere. They lived on the cheap so they would have more climbing days. I have similar stories about people who ride bicycles and dive. If you are passionate, don’t wait for some magical day when you can fly the Concorde to go climbing in Europe with your friends (true story about some Yosemite dirtbags who came into illicit cash). If you’re passionate about a thing, go do that thing. Now.
    • mikepurvis 7y ago
      Link for the lazy: https://www.thecannachronicles.com/the-dirtbags-of-dope-lake-1976/ https://www.thecannachronicles.com/the-dirtbags-of-dope-lake... This is discussed in the Valley Uprising documentary as well (the whole doc is amazing and definitely worth your time).
      • braythwayt 7y ago
        I haven't checked your link, but John Long told the story in one of his many autobiographical books. He also was credited with the story idea that became the Sylvester Stallone climbing action movie "Cliffhanger," and that is loosely based on the incident.
        • mikepurvis 7y ago
          Oh yeah, I'm definitely not providing the definitive or original account, just throwing out a decent overview for anyone interested in more details.
  • acomjean 7y ago
    A rule devised on college summers from a state school. Students had money or time, depending on if they had a summer job. Seems to hold true to most peoples existence. until you have enough money to make more money without adding much time..
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  • HeavyStorm 7y ago
    Completely agree. While I have no idea what I'd actually do if I was this wealthy (maybe just enjoy life and give into time consuming addictions), but I have numerous projects that are "on hold" from lack of time.
• gus_massa 7y ago
  > I wonder if Bill Gates ever codes anything anymore, I emailed to him ask once but never got a reply. I don't have any inside information, but looking at this old post of Joel Spolsky https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-rev... I guess that Bill Gates is still coding.
  • MiroF 7y ago
    I love this. I'm definitely appropriating the phrase "MBA-type." Seems to have fallen out of fashion as MBA-types become increasingly common in tech.
• sramsay 7y ago
  My father, who is about to turn 80, is still knee deep in code every day -- having retired (many years ago) after 45 years in the industry. The guy remembers paper tape, and is still going strong. And often, he's way into whatever the latest language is. He builds games, software for organizing pills and bills, and has designed and rebuilt his own editor several times. Honestly, the guy's my hero.
  • ryanar 7y ago
    Does your dad have a website or github with his work? Would be cool to check it out.
    • sramsay 7y ago
      No, honestly. He contributes little bugfix patches to projects here and there to various projects, but he doesn't want to maintain software for anyone else (fair, I think -- he did spend an entire career doing that). He makes (pretty cool) side-scrollers for this grandchildren, tools for himself. He sometimes complains that he's not sure what to build, but he figures it out. He also has a Mac and a Linux box (running Gentoo, I think). That keeps him busy!
  • ALittleLight 7y ago
    This is encouraging for me to hear. I hope to still be hacking away on my projects when I reach that age. (and beyond ideally).
  • hwillis 7y ago
    damn, that's amazing. I don't think my hands or eyes will keep up with me at that age. Hell, they carp is already getting my wrists. At least I'll still have metalworking!
    • sramsay 7y ago
      Maybe you won't (alas)! He is also a master-level woodworker, but had to stop due to spinal stenosis. Being a geek, he has his Apple watch set up to remind him to go walk around every hour, and that tends to keep it at bay. But he really can't work in the shop any more. And honestly (just to brag on my dad a bit more) the way he said goodbye to all that struck me as really impressive. He loved woodworking, but he didn't weep and mourn or go into a depression when he couldn't do it anymore. He just shrugged and said, "Well, I guess it's on to my other hobbies!" That's how I want to be.
• shaklee3 7y ago
  If you follow John in Twitter you'll occasionally see him mention c++ quirks he ran into.
• farhanhubble 7y ago
  Amen
• yahnu 7y ago
  Stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld mentioned in an interview that he still goes to comedy clubs to perform every week. Obviously he isn't doing it for the money. It's the process of testing out meterials before big shows that makes him good at his acts. My takeaway from such stories is that Passion for work and keeping in touch with the path that lead them to success helps them stay relevant and successful.
  • CharlesW 7y ago
    BTW, comedians literally call this "working out"—it's understood that if you don't use it, even for a week, you start to lose it. So along with a need to do it, part of it is that it's more difficult to get back into comedic shape than it is to stay in shape.
    • yahnu 7y ago
      It's very similar to programming, right? I guess we can generalize it to any specialized skills/expertise. Use it or you start losing it.
      • rictic 7y ago
        It's fortunate that taking only a week off programming doesn't dull your edge. That sounds nerve wracking!
        • randallsquared 7y ago
          I bet it does. It's just that most programmers are used to working at 25% or less of their actual capacity due to constant interruptions, so it's less apparent.
  • breck 7y ago
    He talks about this in the Comedians in cars getting coffee Obama episode (worth a watch!). He basically says he fell in love with the work and that’s what keeps him grounded.
  • 7y ago
• aswanson 7y ago
  That's when you know you've found a passion. A lot of guys work on cars on weekends and it's not a job. My dad was into it, I always found it a pain in the ass when something went wrong with a vehicle. He didnt, it always got him going full bore with equipment, wrenches, lifts, etc. He was an accountant by trade, but cars brought him to life.
• lifeisstillgood 7y ago
  I always argue the software is a new form of literacy - and if you think of it like that, it is not at all unusual that someone will keep reading and writing well into retirement. Have fun with your unproductive beautiful coding :-)
• lanius 7y ago
  >I wonder if Bill Gates ever codes anything anymore, I emailed to him ask once but never got a reply. He does (at least as of 2013): https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18bhme/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates/c8dcvve/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/18bhme/im_bill_gates_...
• wyclif 7y ago
  I'll bet Bill Gates can still code some mean, lean C.
• SomeOtherThrow 7y ago
  Man it’s much easier to code if you don’t do it at work.
• tombert 7y ago
  My dad isn't a software engineer, but more of a combination mechanical/aerospace engineer (MA in mechanical, PhD in aerospace), but his official job is a tech-lead right now, which he likes, but he misses "real" engineering". Pretty much every evening and weekend, he's mucking around with something in FreeCAD and knee-deep in equations that I don't fully understand, because he genuinely loves this stuff, and doesn't want to ever become rusty. He's 58 now, but I get the impression that he'll be doing this until his deathbed.
• philjohn 7y ago
  I'm spending the weekend making a set of custom sleeved PSU cables - I'm in the middle of a crunch at work and writing code is the last thing I want to do ... so instead I'm doing something that's monotonous, but relaxing because of it. Don't need to engage higher brain functions, just cut, crimp, cut, melt, crimp, into the connector, next. Whilst I do extoll the virtues of working on "passion projects" with programming, sometimes you need to do something else so that you can go back recharged, and that's OK too.