21 ms·

Paul Graham’s thoughts, discoveries, and tricks on parenthood

382 points by k0stas 6y ago

amha 6y ago
I've really, really enjoyed pg's tweets on parenting and his kids. It's obvious he loves his kids and he loves being a dad. Given how much of parenting advice/writing is written by and for moms (rather than dads), and given how much of it is (separately) written by and for people who are both extremely anxious and not very analytical, reading pg's thoughtful and joyous takes on being a parent makes me want to be a parent, too.
- kqr 6y ago
  As a new father, it is crazy how little us fathers write for each other. Almost everything I read on parenting is directed at mothers, and in some ways, it is infuriating. Either way, seeing someone write about parenting and reference fatherhood is always a fresh breath of air. (In a way, I guess I have tasted what it can be like as a woman in engineering, with everything written for "him".)
  - steve_adams_86 6y ago
    Part of why it's like this could be because of how our dads and their dads handled being fathers. Perhaps too often they didn't own it, made child raising women's work, and created that gap in society that we see here today. I might be wrong. I used to get a little frustrated by how men are treated as parents though, and I've come to think it's no one's fault today. If some old lady congratulates me for spending time with my sons (something I do every day and while it is nice, I don't want people to think it's remarkable and novel), I shouldn't assume it's condescending or rude; it's more likely that her husband rarely spent time with their kids and/or her father never spend time with her. She could be totally sincere. Similarly, there could be very little written for us because in much of the world and recent history, raising kids has been largely placed on women. We might need to start writing if we want to see that change. Again, I could be wrong. I think about it quite a bit though. Being a 'single dad' was a real eye opener about how men and parenting are perceived in society.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    I was a stay-at-home parent with a Y chromosome. It was a deep and profound eye opener for me to (1) notice how most of the writing about the stuff I did all day was written specifically for people without Y chromosomes but more importantly (2) it made it much more clear to me what it must be like to be a woman who wants to be or is a part of a male-dominated field. Even though I was already aware of the concept of gendered literature as it pertains to a field of endeavor, wow, was it a totally different experience to have it apply directly to me and to my feelings. I used to be a bit cavalier about this - acknowledging that it was a real thing, but downplaying its significance. No more. The kid is now 25, and we talk gender politics every other week :)
    - watwut 6y ago
      Out od curiosity what we're biggest things that you noticed or annoyed you? (I am woman programmer who was stay-at-home few years and I am curious.)
      - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        It's been a while now :) Almost any book on raising young children (say birth to 5) would be written with the assumption that diapers, feeding, play arrangements, and what we might call "very early childhood education" were the responsibility of a mother. Many early children's books would feature mothers as the ones taking care of young children too, and that grated on me a bit. To be fair, there's a flip side to this which is almost as bad. By the time my child ended up at a (co-op) nursery school, I of course got huge karma from all the other stay-at-home mothers there for doing precisely what they did. That wasn't comfortable either, but at least it was an ego massage. A couple of decades later ... it all seems like water under the bridge now compared to the deeper gender politics that we still face, and I am only glad that it made me pay attention to what I had previously assumed was a trivial thing.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  > and not very analytical Yeah. Stuff that is written in an affective style drives me crazy. I want to scream "Stop trying to make me feel the emotions, and get to the point already!" I find it rather hard to read. For certain people, PG talks their language in a way that few others do. Not that others couldn't, but at the moment, very few do.
midoodj 6y ago
nice work @k0stas
someperson 6y ago
These are really great insights, thanks for taking the time to put this together. Which tool do Hacker News users recommend for reading everything ever written by a Twitter user in chronological order?
- lazydon 6y ago
  Reading everything from an account will usually give you quite low signal to noise ratio. Even for someone like pg's timeline. I usually use min_retweets and min_faves filter of Twitter advanced search to get to the best (crowd-sourced) tweets by someone. For example - https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Apaulg%20min_faves%3A200&src=typed_query&f=live https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Apaulg%20min_faves%3A200&...
  - soonix 6y ago
    I think GP asked more about ascending chronological order (i.e. "oldest first"). Of course, that's only conjecture, based on what I thought when reading the question. OTOH, your info about "best" vs. "everything" is of interest, too.
mister_hn 6y ago
3 thoughts: 1. Didn't he had already a personal website? 2. Why is he teaching Basic over Scratch? 3. Will it scale to Kubernetes one day?
- mdonahoe 6y ago
  my random guesses 1. Someone else made this site in order to centralize all of Paul's relevant parenting content in one place. 2. PG prefers the text-only purity of Basic. 3. Who cares.
- markdown 6y ago
  2. Why is he teaching Basic over Scratch? Scratch is too mainstream for Graham.
- DanBC 6y ago
  For 2, I'm guessing that BASIC is a step away from a visual drag-and-drop language towards something that you type in, and it's a stepping stone towards something like Python and other languages.
- tlarkworthy 6y ago
  My teaching path for youngens:- 1. electrical circuits (switch, button, battery), no reading necessary, and purely physical. 2. gcompris (computer skills + you can simulate circuits so it connects to 1.) 3. Scratch 4. something textual (e.g. Basic but maybe Python or JS)
- benhoyt 6y ago
  2. The real question is why Graham is teaching BASIC instead of Lisp.
cpach 6y ago
Very nice and interesting site! I like the texts and also the concept as a whole. Discovering old tweets is very cumbersome on twitter.com. So this site really meets a need that Twitter itself doesn’t.
hellofunk 6y ago
> The biggest division in work may be between jobs that involve making new stuff (science, engineering) and those that don't (administration, sales), and you'll be a lot happier if you end up on the side you're suited for. This is rather binary (and naive) distinction. There is a lot of room for creative work in any field.
- anonytrary 6y ago
  Furthermore, there is also a lot of non-creative work in science and engineering. Ask any grad student or entry/mid level engineer.
  - hellofunk 6y ago
    Exactly. I find so many of PG's musings to be pretentious in their short sightedness. As if these are great revelations that underscore a deep observation, when in reality they are often shallow or contrived points.
    - anonytrary 6y ago
      I like most of PG's musings, but I agree that they often pertain to a very thin slice of reality. If we conducted a taste test comparing randomly selected ideas/excerpts from PG and senior engineers who comment on HN, I doubt most people would be able to tell the difference. Most people in science and engineering can think of equally (if not more) clever and thought-provoking sentences, but PG's carry more weight because of who he is. We still live in a world where thought-leading is dominated by who has the most attention.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Ask any engineer. In software, to invent and make something work, you spend maybe 10% of the time actually inventing/creating things, and for the remaining 90% of the time, you try to "instantiate" your creation, which involves lots of drudgework, code bureaucracy (and sometimes real bureaucracy), dealing with irrelevant crap (e.g. tooling issues) and debugging.
- 6y ago
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
> Writing Basic programs (I'm teaching my son Basic) reminds me that there was once a time when I used to be impressed when my programs were long. Look at all the work I've done, I used to think. I am glad I am not alone I thinking that BASIC is still a great language to teach young kids to program. I love how there is not a lot of boilerplate (for example the parenthesis for the print call in python and indentation).
- DanBC 6y ago
  It's possible to use BASIC on the ESP8266 / NodeMCU boards: http://www.esp8266basic.com/# http://www.esp8266basic.com/# At the moment primary school age (5 to 10) children in the UK seem to learn some flavour of Scratch. And then (in the UK) they also tinker with boards like Crumble or CodeBug or BBC Micro:Bit (which use blockly or MS MakeCode or something a bit like Scratch). I don't know what the next step in progression is. I'm curious about what HN readers would think good stepping stones would be? Direct to Python, or something else then to python? BBC Micro:Bit https://microbit.org/ https://microbit.org/ Crumble https://redfernelectronics.co.uk/crumble/ https://redfernelectronics.co.uk/crumble/ Codebug http://www.codebug.org.uk/ http://www.codebug.org.uk/
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    Python seems to be what's chosen next; couple of years ago I did the UMich/Coursera course "Python for Everybody" as prep for parenting a high-schooler as I'd never done any Python, good level for that. I think if they're looking at the js behind the blocks in blockly that python isn't a very big step.
- kleiba 6y ago
  C64 BASIC was the first language I learned which is probably true for lots and lots of other people. However, I learned it by reading the book that came with the computer and trying it out. I cannot really imagine someone teaching me a programming language. Half the fun was trying to "get it". I think that if I had had someone teaching me BASIC back then, it would half felt like trying to solve a Sudoku with someone watching over your shoulder and telling you which numbers to put.
TheGrassyKnoll 6y ago
https://parenting.stackexchange.com/
- fapjacks 6y ago
  This, the Academia SE, and the Workplace SE are wonderful repositories full of shining examples of how many pedantic, bureaucratic sociopaths walk among us.
latte 6y ago
This has been discussed in the responses to the tweets, but still couldn't find a definitive answer - why Basic? I started with Basic too when I was a kid, but if I were to teach my child programming now in 2020, I would choose Python as a first language. It has many graphic tools, and it looks even more beginner-friendly than Basic.
- sideshowb 6y ago
  Especially the python turtle module, imo the best of all beginner teaching options I looked at
  - elric 6y ago
    Logo on the C64 was one of the foundational tools in my programming journey. It was part of a computing class in primary school, I think when we were 9 years old. For many in the class, this was a first opportunity to mess around with a computer (almost no one had any kind of computer at home back then). Getting that little triangular turtle to draw the shape of my house, simply by telling it how far to move and which way to turn, ended up being a life altering moment. I don't know if it's possible to enthrall children with it these days. The graphics must seem absolutely bland and boring compared to many things children these days get to tinker with.
    - ido 6y ago
      We got started with logo (on DOS PCs) at the same age in my school. It took me a long time to even realize it had anything to do with programming, just seemed like a wierd and cumbersome drawing program (compared to PC Paintbrush for example). A couple years later I started messing around with QBasic & that really pulled me in even tho it took me a long while to learn even the basics. Computer classes in school (until high school at least) seemed to have been generally be taught by teachers slightly less computer-literate than more advanced pupils in their class.
      - jecel 6y ago
        When I was testing a Logo implementation that had been released, I called my much younger cousin to look at it since he had been so good at Logo back in school that they had made him the "class monitor" the following year. I quickly typed in code to draw a recursive tree and ran it. His reaction was "What?!?! You mean Logo is a programming language like the Pascal I learned at the university?" Very sad.
kleiba 6y ago
Some of them are quite nice but being a parent myself I don't subscribe to all of them. Which is expected, of course. And then there are some tweets which are very situation/environment specific, like for instance the one about walking to school alone: 10 yo asked when I'd let him and his 7 yo brother walk to school by themselves. I told him the task was not to get himself to school safely, but to get his brother to school safely. I could practically hear his brain struggle to assimilate this paradigm shift. All of my class mates and I walked to school alone from first class on (6 yrs of age) simply because we used to live in a smaller town where that was no problem. I'd even think that a parent driving their elementary school kids to school would have been looked at funny by the other parents. Or this one: Explained to nervous 7 yo that me being on the floor above is the same as me being in the next room, just rotated 90 degrees. After trying various objections, he had to agree. While it might be true topologically, of course there are just practical every-day considerations why the are not exactly the same. So, yeah, I find a lot of the tweets entertaining, but not as deeply insightful than some other commenters here.
- qznc 6y ago
  Our older one goes to school himself from first grade on. The second is about to start school. Each one getting to school safely is not the problem. Getting them to school safely if they walk together is a problem.
  - kleiba 6y ago
    I used to walk with class mates most of the time, I don't remember that making much of a difference if any. But of course, that's the judgment of my 6-year old self. In any event, it just comes down to what I stated above: all of this is / can be very dependent on the specific situation / environment that you live in.
- mtreis86 6y ago
  Yeah, to someone who is wheelchair bound, that the room above them which is only accessible by stairs, is not even close to the same as the room next door.
fouc 6y ago
A lot of people in this thread keep wondering about the choice of Basic and end up suggesting other programming languages. Let me ask you though, what's the simplest plainest programming language for a preteen that won't have any patience for dealing with syntax?
- perilunar 6y ago
  Logo or Scratch.
- soonix 6y ago
  While I'm not a fan of "visual programming languages", I think Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu/ https://scratch.mit.edu/) and ScratchJr (http://scratchjr.org/ http://scratchjr.org/) are good. ScratchJr is made for the younger ones, "no reading required" (but knowing the digits/numbers is helpful)
- tlarkworthy 6y ago
  Yeah I have a couple of suggestions that come before that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22914598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22914598
- jl2718 6y ago
  Hammer and nails. Paintbrushes. Clay. This thread changed my perspective on teaching my kids to code. I won’t.
qqssccfftt 6y ago
if you get parenthood advice from paul graham you should go to prison
- asdkjh345fd 6y ago
  Luckily there isn't really any advice there, it is just a bunch of narcissistic rambling.
etiennemarcel 6y ago
I never really understood the whole thing around Paul Graham. His insights on startups and tech are somewhat interesting and legitimate, but at this point I feel like some people are taking his every thought, even mondaine, as gospel...
- a_bonobo 6y ago
  I've read a collection of his essays and outside of programming/startups, they are really mundane/black & white/binary division. I.e., the world is divided into nerds who are good, and bullies who are bad. I guess it's halo effect? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
- sidlls 6y ago
  There are a lot of “hackers” who think that the ability to code or build a successful business is synonymous with deep intellect and wisdom, and a forum such as this naturally attracts a greater number of them who engage in some vicarious glory seeking.
  - nogabebop23 6y ago
    You would think someone who said: I actually worry a lot that as I get "popular" I'll be able to get away with saying stupider stuff than I would have dared say before. This sort of thing happens to a lot of people, and I would really like to avoid it would probaly talk less or at least narrow his focus. replace artists with parents and re-read https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
- AlchemistCamp 6y ago
  It gets really repetitive and boring to see this sort of comment (and often much nastier ad homenim attacks) every single time any of pg's writing is on the front page. If you think his observations are mundane, then why not just move on to another link, hopefully one that you're interested in?
  - 6y ago
john_fushi 6y ago
This is, at best, mindless ego stroking. But then again, I did not really expect better from pg. Enjoy your jerk, hackers.
stripline 6y ago
I found his essay on kids [0] a lot more insightful than this collection of short tweets. In particular, he admits that having kids may actually make you less ambitious The fact is, once you have kids, you're probably going to care more about them than you do about yourself. And attention is a zero-sum game. I've noticed this in myself. As usual though, he has a hack for this as well: I have some hacks for sailing close to this wind. For example, when I write essays, I think about what I'd want my kids to know. That drives me to get things right. And when I was writing Bel, I told my kids that once I finished it I'd take them to Africa. When you say that sort of thing to a little kid, they treat it as a promise. Which meant I had to finish or I'd be taking away their trip to Africa. Maybe if I'm really lucky such tricks could put me net ahead. But the wind is there, no question. [0] http://paulgraham.com/kids.html http://paulgraham.com/kids.html
- eanzenberg 6y ago
  I guess it depends were you are in life. I’ve noticed since having kids that working and succeeding takes on a whole other meaningful level. Before, ambition was tied to abstract things I didn’t quite care too much about, i.e. money. Now, being my best self is the greatest teaching tool for our kids as they look to us as role models.
- toasterlovin 6y ago
  I agree, though I’ll add that my perspective has become much, much longer. I am laying plans for 20-40 years from now and continuously attend to their fruition. I don’t think that would have been possible without kids and, in light of the compounding nature of life (and capital), it feels like a super power.
  - dannykwells 6y ago
    I really like this point, and 100% agree having had a wee one recently. I've found I'm more discerning about opportunities, not jumping headlong into any new thing. If anything having a kid has helped me focus, by cutting out a lot of extraneous noise in other parts of life.
- 6y ago
pnako 6y ago
It's pretty cool that Paul Graham has reinvented the concept of parenting in such an innovative way. I'm looking forward to hearing his cooking advice next.
- dean177 6y ago
  This is unnecessarily snarky. Nobody is claiming to reinvent anything, just someone sharing their wisdom.
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
    But the snark has a point: Paul Graham is qualified to give advice about startups, but what qualifies him to dispense parenting advice? Like all other parents, it sounds like he's making it up as he goes along.
    - sideshowb 6y ago
      Meh. The vast majority of parenting advice lacks scientific evidence anyway. (I tried to find some with a proper evidence base as a new dad and honestly I'm amazed we don't have more for what is clearly such an important topic).
    - danenania 6y ago
      And what qualifies anyone here to discount his advice? He's not bringing down stone tablets from Mt. Sinai, just writing about his own thoughts and experiences. If you're not interested, don't read it.
    - slothtrop 6y ago
      There is no point, because he doesn't pretend to be anything than other than a parent, not an expert on parenting. It's like posting to a mommy blog. The call for industry professionals to "stay in their lane" when they want to talk about whatever they want to talk about is ridiculous.
      - nogabebop23 6y ago
Linkd 6y ago
I love to highlight text on my browser as I read. The fact that it auto-clicks into the tweets as I'm highlight is infuriating.
- micael_dias 6y ago
  I do too! I can't use Medium, it gets so annoying.
aidenn0 6y ago
I got down to the one where he says adults lecture kids on morality, but not other adults. Does he really not get regularly lectured on morality by other adults? I certainly do, and I get a tiny fraction of such lectures compared to my wife...
- heavenlyblue 6y ago
  Why does your wife get more lectures on morality?
  - aidenn0 6y ago
    My observations hint at two primary reasons: older women who would be uncomfortable telling men that they are "doing it wrong" Differing standards for moms and dads. I get kudos for doing anything with my kids. She gets told she is parenting wrong
    - downerending 6y ago
      I got suspicious staring for playing with my kids in public. She could play with other people's kids without even asking.
      - aidenn0 6y ago
        Yeah, I had a bit of a baby face when I first became a parent so got some of those same things. As soon as one of them called me "daddy" the ice melted
      - lonelappde 6y ago
        People say this a lot online but I've never seen it happen, even when I play with other people's kids. I wonder where the culture is so different, or if this is a case of people reading into (ugh) "resting bitch face"
        downerending 6y ago
dmje 6y ago
He might be a good entrepreneur but ffs, why the rabid, unthinking enthusiasm in following everything this guy says? Why not make a website for someone else who happens to be a good parent? This cultish b/s is exactly what leads to the hell of Trumpistan. IMO.
- toasterlovin 6y ago
  PG’s essays are why most people care about him. They’re only sometimes about business. These tweets are a natural extension of his essays.
  - nogabebop23 6y ago
    do you really think a vapid low-effort tweet is an extension of the effort and care that goes into his essay? seems like a major step backwards IMO
brudgers 6y ago
Parenting trick: invent a gesture that means "I love you." 2 yos like it as a game. 8 yos like it because they can use it in public. I learned to say "I love you." It still gets an "I love you, too" nearly twenty years later by default. If I don't fuck up, I expect it will work on my deathbed. It probably helped that I often add "and am very very proud of you" when I've thought it's a good thing to say. Most recently by text across two thousand miles in the midst of a pandemic. Because I was. YMMV.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  That's something to strive for - that those around me will want to say that on my deathbed. I mean, there's not much else that is going to matter to me then.
sytelus 6y ago
Does anyone else feel this is extreme amount of pushing/hand-holding to kids to have them learn programming? My own experience is this: (1) kids meticulously observe what their parents do in their "natural" state and get interested in that, however, (2) kids develop sort of "not for me" or even outright repulsion for things parents what them to excel at. So the best way for kids to get interested in X is just to do that yourself all the time and let them approach you with questions while never let them feel that you are way too good at that. One technique is to do Conway style "blunders" while teaching something to kids. This apparently makes them feel that there is room for them to come in, contribute and think independently.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- kkwteh 6y ago
  Could you explain what these Conway style "blunders" are? I hadn't heard of them, and a web search didn't turn up anything.
  - ftbai 6y ago
    I believe they're talking about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22843693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22843693
  - robotresearcher 6y ago
    John Conway had a teaching technique where he would appear to make an error in a talk, act slightly confused, then restart the problem now that a faulty assumption (for example) was made explicit. Second time around greater insight would be reached. You have to be very good to pull off that kind of move.
- dqpb 6y ago
  I think the right way to think about is to treat it like reading and writing.
- analog31 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mabracadabra 6y ago
It's not cool when someone gets preached like a prophet. VC stuff, OK, but kids? Come on.
- nogabebop23 6y ago
  This is pretty stupid. The cross-over between VC and parenting is ... non-existent. Maybe PG is a great person and parent, but I don't know him. VC playbook: build a portfolio of rapid growth companies, spread a bunch of cash around; expect most to fail but one or a few are huge successes in a short time frame; repeat. Parent playbook: no real repeatable systems, slow organic growth, everyone succeeds, likely no unicorns, one-and-done. You cannot engineer and scale parenting.
  - kick 6y ago
    pg was famous for his essays before he was famous for being a venture capitalist. I disagree with many of his late-stage essays, but his reflections on parenting aren't the worst.
- rexreed 6y ago
  Agreed. I don't get the adulation here. A lot of this "advice" is honestly pretty weird and not helpful. Here's a guy who thinks of his kids as products. And things he does and they do as features.
  - astura 6y ago
    >A lot of this "advice" is honestly pretty weird and not helpful. This pretty much applies to most advice doled out by the super rich for consumption by the to the general public.
nogabebop23 6y ago
How many of you parents out there would take parenting advice from an Uncle?
- analog31 6y ago
  I don't take parenting advice from anybody. It's all bunk. Much of it can be summed up thus: If you're unusually self disciplined and organized, your children will be unusually self disciplined and organized. Otherwise, just as you learned to work past your faults, so will your kids have to. Many of us got through school and life by having the brains to make up for our other shortcomings. You're about to find out what it looks like when someone you care about goes through the same.
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  My uncles were boomers & their advice tended toward crap. Advice from my wife's uncles could be a bit better, tho. From that generation - nearly all the worthwhile advice came from women.
  - dang 6y ago
    Oh dear. Please keep generational flamebait and gender flamebait off HN. We want NOR on those, not AND. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
distalx 6y ago
programming for kids #### kodable https://www.kodable.com/ https://www.kodable.com/ #### scratch https://scratch.mit.edu/ https://scratch.mit.edu/ #### tynker https://www.tynker.com/ https://www.tynker.com/ #### blackly https://developers.google.com/blockly/ https://developers.google.com/blockly/ ####star logo http://education.mit.edu/starlogo-tng/ http://education.mit.edu/starlogo-tng/ #### alice http://www.alice.org/index.php http://www.alice.org/index.php #### kodu form microsofts https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/confirmation.aspx?id=10056 https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/confirmation.aspx?i... #### android app inventor http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ #### kids ruby http://kidsruby.com/ http://kidsruby.com/ #### Lua programming language https://www.lua.org/ https://www.lua.org/
- DanBC 6y ago
  Is KidsRuby still active? The downloads page isn't working (leads to an access denied page) and the twitter account hasn't posted anything for 5 years. Hardware programming for kids Crumble https://redfernelectronics.co.uk/crumble/ https://redfernelectronics.co.uk/crumble/ BBC Micro:Bit https://microbit.org/ https://microbit.org/ CodeBug http://www.codebug.org.uk/ http://www.codebug.org.uk/
  - fillskills 6y ago
    Hardware making for kids (using 3D printing/Laser engraving/mills/soldering): https://beamakerclub.com/ https://beamakerclub.com/ I am an advisor
tlb 6y ago
As an early skeptic of Twitter as a medium of non-frivolous discourse, I frequently cited Chesterfield's Letters to his Son as a thing that could never be done with tweets instead of letters. Perhaps I was wrong.
- kick 6y ago
  To be fair, tweets are twice as long as they used to be.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
abledon 6y ago
lots of pressure on that kids psyche
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
I have a point to make that I feel intersects the conversations here. It concerns something I didn't figure out until I was older, that children are brought into existence w/o their consent. Now I don't believe this is* (edit: fixed) an evil or unethical act; it's simply an unavoidable facet of reality. However, it creates a debt to children so massive, that it can't be fully repaid in a lifetime. In short, the debt between children & parents only ever runs one way. Because of this, I have a permanent & total obligation to my kids' well being, while they in-turn owe me nothing for a lifetime of labor on their belhaf (which as a single parent - changing diapers & earning income - has been substantial). It doesn't mean my grown kids should or shouldn't contribute to my welfare. It means that my responsibility is to continually tip the scales toward the outcomes they desire. In our case we operate as one household & there are different obligations in play there. But the Original Debt indicates that any shortfalls (in labor, etc) be filled by me, unless & until more practical solutions are worked out. My reward is that this really efficient mindset solves lots of problems in advance.
- sintaxi 6y ago
  I think the word you are looking for is duty, not debt.
  - jacobolus 6y ago
    The words “duty” and “debt” (and “due”) are more or less the same idea, and both derived from the latin "debere". You can think of “duty” as more or less a smoothed out version of “debt-ity”.
    - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
      That's elegant.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- normalnorm 6y ago
  Well said. I believe this to be the fundamental realization that would change the world for the better, if enough people had it. So many of the ills of the world can be traced back to childhood trauma and mediocre education. I think we have been going through a few decades where mainstream parenting values have been mostly narcissistic. Parents seeing their children as indebted to them is both the norm and an abomination. I have some hope that more and more people are seeing things as you do.
kriro 6y ago
Being an uncle of 10 month now I have made a list of the things to keep in mind when I decide to have my own children. It's pretty short: - Spend as much time with your child as possible and let them roam free. Just have a loose eye out and don't overprotect everything, children are really not that fragile. This includes letting them eat dirt and play with pets without worrying too much - Children observe/copy/improve (and wil let you know when they are not interested in stuff). It's really fascinating to watch. Keep that in mind when you want them to learn something - Let them play with other children without worrying that it'll be bad for them. Also don't be scared to hand your toddler over to some other family member to hold etc...noone will drop them. Humans intuitively understand how to care for babies/children - Do research and base stuff on that (name bias and praising effort vs. ability are the only two that seem interesting on a quick glance) That's all I got so far. And there's a certain set of values I want to teach but I believe the best way of doing that is by living it (be decent to people, be critical of yourself/don't take yourself too seriously, always stay curious about life, value freedom highly).
nojvek 6y ago
Anyone have tips on how to make kids eat by themselves or generate hunger? My 2 year seems like she hates eating. Feeding her is a painful endeavor everyday. Watching cocomelon videos helps but this behavior makes me really wonder how people have 2+ kids. Even one kid is a handful for us.
- danenania 6y ago
  Eating is tough with our 1 year old sometimes. What seems to help is not stressing about any particular meal and turning it into a struggle. If she doesn't want to eat much now, that's fine; she'll be hungry at the next meal or even the next day. Overall she gets enough and is gaining the right amount of weight, so it seems she's capable of regulating it herself, and we prevent pointless frustration for everyone by trying to force it. Of course if she wasn't gaining weight as she should be, it would be a different (and I'm sure much more challenging) story.
- feydaykyn 6y ago
  First breath and regain some calm! As a parent we feel issues with sleeping, eating, behavior, etc will always last, but in reality most won't last. You're doing a permanent experiment on what's working and what's isn't, while the subject constantly change: it's really hard! Eating in front of TV is bad for nutrition in general and especially bad for the kids, as multiple studies prove: almost no TV before 6 is a good rule of thumb. As others comments are hinting, kids know how to regulate themselves regarding food intake, and no kid will let themselves starve, so you can offer a plate with the main course and a small dessert, your kid will eat the main course when she is hungry. Also we found that allowing them to come and go out of table was hard on our sense of properness but helped our kids to eat the complete dish. After a few months, there were able to stay at table for the duration. We also found out that industrial food for children is disgusting, and that nothing beats homemade to open the appetite! Feeling (and being) overwhelmed is normal, if possible go see a professional to reassure you. Sources: experience with my kids, reading a lot a studies, and a psychiatrist wife Keep up!
darepublic 6y ago
Do you need to teach 11 yr olds to test their programs after each change.. come on.
dusted 6y ago
Ahh, web 3.0 An empty screen except a green box with the text "LOAD MORE", assuming the box might be a button, I press it. It elegantly turns into a small green square, and then disappear completely, leaving me with a white rectangle on top of a grey background.

382 points by k0stas 6y ago

amha 6y ago

I've really, really enjoyed pg's tweets on parenting and his kids. It's obvious he loves his kids and he loves being a dad. Given how much of parenting advice/writing is written by and for moms (rather than dads), and given how much of it is (separately) written by and for people who are both extremely anxious and not very analytical, reading pg's thoughtful and joyous takes on being a parent makes me want to be a parent, too.

kqr 6y ago
As a new father, it is crazy how little us fathers write for each other. Almost everything I read on parenting is directed at mothers, and in some ways, it is infuriating. Either way, seeing someone write about parenting and reference fatherhood is always a fresh breath of air. (In a way, I guess I have tasted what it can be like as a woman in engineering, with everything written for "him".)
- steve_adams_86 6y ago
  Part of why it's like this could be because of how our dads and their dads handled being fathers. Perhaps too often they didn't own it, made child raising women's work, and created that gap in society that we see here today. I might be wrong. I used to get a little frustrated by how men are treated as parents though, and I've come to think it's no one's fault today. If some old lady congratulates me for spending time with my sons (something I do every day and while it is nice, I don't want people to think it's remarkable and novel), I shouldn't assume it's condescending or rude; it's more likely that her husband rarely spent time with their kids and/or her father never spend time with her. She could be totally sincere. Similarly, there could be very little written for us because in much of the world and recent history, raising kids has been largely placed on women. We might need to start writing if we want to see that change. Again, I could be wrong. I think about it quite a bit though. Being a 'single dad' was a real eye opener about how men and parenting are perceived in society.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  I was a stay-at-home parent with a Y chromosome. It was a deep and profound eye opener for me to (1) notice how most of the writing about the stuff I did all day was written specifically for people without Y chromosomes but more importantly (2) it made it much more clear to me what it must be like to be a woman who wants to be or is a part of a male-dominated field. Even though I was already aware of the concept of gendered literature as it pertains to a field of endeavor, wow, was it a totally different experience to have it apply directly to me and to my feelings. I used to be a bit cavalier about this - acknowledging that it was a real thing, but downplaying its significance. No more. The kid is now 25, and we talk gender politics every other week :)
  - watwut 6y ago
    Out od curiosity what we're biggest things that you noticed or annoyed you? (I am woman programmer who was stay-at-home few years and I am curious.)
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      It's been a while now :) Almost any book on raising young children (say birth to 5) would be written with the assumption that diapers, feeding, play arrangements, and what we might call "very early childhood education" were the responsibility of a mother. Many early children's books would feature mothers as the ones taking care of young children too, and that grated on me a bit. To be fair, there's a flip side to this which is almost as bad. By the time my child ended up at a (co-op) nursery school, I of course got huge karma from all the other stay-at-home mothers there for doing precisely what they did. That wasn't comfortable either, but at least it was an ego massage. A couple of decades later ... it all seems like water under the bridge now compared to the deeper gender politics that we still face, and I am only glad that it made me pay attention to what I had previously assumed was a trivial thing.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
> and not very analytical Yeah. Stuff that is written in an affective style drives me crazy. I want to scream "Stop trying to make me feel the emotions, and get to the point already!" I find it rather hard to read. For certain people, PG talks their language in a way that few others do. Not that others couldn't, but at the moment, very few do.

midoodj 6y ago

nice work @k0stas

someperson 6y ago

These are really great insights, thanks for taking the time to put this together. Which tool do Hacker News users recommend for reading everything ever written by a Twitter user in chronological order?

lazydon 6y ago
Reading everything from an account will usually give you quite low signal to noise ratio. Even for someone like pg's timeline. I usually use min_retweets and min_faves filter of Twitter advanced search to get to the best (crowd-sourced) tweets by someone. For example - https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Apaulg%20min_faves%3A200&src=typed_query&f=live https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Apaulg%20min_faves%3A200&...
- soonix 6y ago
  I think GP asked more about ascending chronological order (i.e. "oldest first"). Of course, that's only conjecture, based on what I thought when reading the question. OTOH, your info about "best" vs. "everything" is of interest, too.

mister_hn 6y ago

3 thoughts: 1. Didn't he had already a personal website? 2. Why is he teaching Basic over Scratch? 3. Will it scale to Kubernetes one day?

mdonahoe 6y ago
my random guesses 1. Someone else made this site in order to centralize all of Paul's relevant parenting content in one place. 2. PG prefers the text-only purity of Basic. 3. Who cares.
markdown 6y ago
2. Why is he teaching Basic over Scratch? Scratch is too mainstream for Graham.
DanBC 6y ago
For 2, I'm guessing that BASIC is a step away from a visual drag-and-drop language towards something that you type in, and it's a stepping stone towards something like Python and other languages.
tlarkworthy 6y ago
My teaching path for youngens:- 1. electrical circuits (switch, button, battery), no reading necessary, and purely physical. 2. gcompris (computer skills + you can simulate circuits so it connects to 1.) 3. Scratch 4. something textual (e.g. Basic but maybe Python or JS)
benhoyt 6y ago
2. The real question is why Graham is teaching BASIC instead of Lisp.

cpach 6y ago

Very nice and interesting site! I like the texts and also the concept as a whole. Discovering old tweets is very cumbersome on twitter.com. So this site really meets a need that Twitter itself doesn’t.

hellofunk 6y ago

> The biggest division in work may be between jobs that involve making new stuff (science, engineering) and those that don't (administration, sales), and you'll be a lot happier if you end up on the side you're suited for. This is rather binary (and naive) distinction. There is a lot of room for creative work in any field.

anonytrary 6y ago
Furthermore, there is also a lot of non-creative work in science and engineering. Ask any grad student or entry/mid level engineer.
- hellofunk 6y ago
  Exactly. I find so many of PG's musings to be pretentious in their short sightedness. As if these are great revelations that underscore a deep observation, when in reality they are often shallow or contrived points.
  - anonytrary 6y ago
    I like most of PG's musings, but I agree that they often pertain to a very thin slice of reality. If we conducted a taste test comparing randomly selected ideas/excerpts from PG and senior engineers who comment on HN, I doubt most people would be able to tell the difference. Most people in science and engineering can think of equally (if not more) clever and thought-provoking sentences, but PG's carry more weight because of who he is. We still live in a world where thought-leading is dominated by who has the most attention.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Ask any engineer. In software, to invent and make something work, you spend maybe 10% of the time actually inventing/creating things, and for the remaining 90% of the time, you try to "instantiate" your creation, which involves lots of drudgework, code bureaucracy (and sometimes real bureaucracy), dealing with irrelevant crap (e.g. tooling issues) and debugging.
6y ago

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

> Writing Basic programs (I'm teaching my son Basic) reminds me that there was once a time when I used to be impressed when my programs were long. Look at all the work I've done, I used to think. I am glad I am not alone I thinking that BASIC is still a great language to teach young kids to program. I love how there is not a lot of boilerplate (for example the parenthesis for the print call in python and indentation).

DanBC 6y ago
It's possible to use BASIC on the ESP8266 / NodeMCU boards: http://www.esp8266basic.com/# http://www.esp8266basic.com/# At the moment primary school age (5 to 10) children in the UK seem to learn some flavour of Scratch. And then (in the UK) they also tinker with boards like Crumble or CodeBug or BBC Micro:Bit (which use blockly or MS MakeCode or something a bit like Scratch). I don't know what the next step in progression is. I'm curious about what HN readers would think good stepping stones would be? Direct to Python, or something else then to python? BBC Micro:Bit https://microbit.org/ https://microbit.org/ Crumble https://redfernelectronics.co.uk/crumble/ https://redfernelectronics.co.uk/crumble/ Codebug http://www.codebug.org.uk/ http://www.codebug.org.uk/
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  Python seems to be what's chosen next; couple of years ago I did the UMich/Coursera course "Python for Everybody" as prep for parenting a high-schooler as I'd never done any Python, good level for that. I think if they're looking at the js behind the blocks in blockly that python isn't a very big step.
kleiba 6y ago
C64 BASIC was the first language I learned which is probably true for lots and lots of other people. However, I learned it by reading the book that came with the computer and trying it out. I cannot really imagine someone teaching me a programming language. Half the fun was trying to "get it". I think that if I had had someone teaching me BASIC back then, it would half felt like trying to solve a Sudoku with someone watching over your shoulder and telling you which numbers to put.

TheGrassyKnoll 6y ago

https://parenting.stackexchange.com/

fapjacks 6y ago
This, the Academia SE, and the Workplace SE are wonderful repositories full of shining examples of how many pedantic, bureaucratic sociopaths walk among us.

latte 6y ago

This has been discussed in the responses to the tweets, but still couldn't find a definitive answer - why Basic? I started with Basic too when I was a kid, but if I were to teach my child programming now in 2020, I would choose Python as a first language. It has many graphic tools, and it looks even more beginner-friendly than Basic.

sideshowb 6y ago
Especially the python turtle module, imo the best of all beginner teaching options I looked at
- elric 6y ago
  Logo on the C64 was one of the foundational tools in my programming journey. It was part of a computing class in primary school, I think when we were 9 years old. For many in the class, this was a first opportunity to mess around with a computer (almost no one had any kind of computer at home back then). Getting that little triangular turtle to draw the shape of my house, simply by telling it how far to move and which way to turn, ended up being a life altering moment. I don't know if it's possible to enthrall children with it these days. The graphics must seem absolutely bland and boring compared to many things children these days get to tinker with.
  - ido 6y ago
    We got started with logo (on DOS PCs) at the same age in my school. It took me a long time to even realize it had anything to do with programming, just seemed like a wierd and cumbersome drawing program (compared to PC Paintbrush for example). A couple years later I started messing around with QBasic & that really pulled me in even tho it took me a long while to learn even the basics. Computer classes in school (until high school at least) seemed to have been generally be taught by teachers slightly less computer-literate than more advanced pupils in their class.
    - jecel 6y ago
      When I was testing a Logo implementation that had been released, I called my much younger cousin to look at it since he had been so good at Logo back in school that they had made him the "class monitor" the following year. I quickly typed in code to draw a recursive tree and ran it. His reaction was "What?!?! You mean Logo is a programming language like the Pascal I learned at the university?" Very sad.

kleiba 6y ago

Some of them are quite nice but being a parent myself I don't subscribe to all of them. Which is expected, of course. And then there are some tweets which are very situation/environment specific, like for instance the one about walking to school alone: 10 yo asked when I'd let him and his 7 yo brother walk to school by themselves. I told him the task was not to get himself to school safely, but to get his brother to school safely. I could practically hear his brain struggle to assimilate this paradigm shift. All of my class mates and I walked to school alone from first class on (6 yrs of age) simply because we used to live in a smaller town where that was no problem. I'd even think that a parent driving their elementary school kids to school would have been looked at funny by the other parents. Or this one: Explained to nervous 7 yo that me being on the floor above is the same as me being in the next room, just rotated 90 degrees. After trying various objections, he had to agree. While it might be true topologically, of course there are just practical every-day considerations why the are not exactly the same. So, yeah, I find a lot of the tweets entertaining, but not as deeply insightful than some other commenters here.

qznc 6y ago
Our older one goes to school himself from first grade on. The second is about to start school. Each one getting to school safely is not the problem. Getting them to school safely if they walk together is a problem.
- kleiba 6y ago
  I used to walk with class mates most of the time, I don't remember that making much of a difference if any. But of course, that's the judgment of my 6-year old self. In any event, it just comes down to what I stated above: all of this is / can be very dependent on the specific situation / environment that you live in.
mtreis86 6y ago
Yeah, to someone who is wheelchair bound, that the room above them which is only accessible by stairs, is not even close to the same as the room next door.

fouc 6y ago

A lot of people in this thread keep wondering about the choice of Basic and end up suggesting other programming languages. Let me ask you though, what's the simplest plainest programming language for a preteen that won't have any patience for dealing with syntax?

perilunar 6y ago
Logo or Scratch.
soonix 6y ago
While I'm not a fan of "visual programming languages", I think Scratch (https://scratch.mit.edu/ https://scratch.mit.edu/) and ScratchJr (http://scratchjr.org/ http://scratchjr.org/) are good. ScratchJr is made for the younger ones, "no reading required" (but knowing the digits/numbers is helpful)
tlarkworthy 6y ago
Yeah I have a couple of suggestions that come before that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22914598 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22914598
jl2718 6y ago
Hammer and nails. Paintbrushes. Clay. This thread changed my perspective on teaching my kids to code. I won’t.

qqssccfftt 6y ago

if you get parenthood advice from paul graham you should go to prison

asdkjh345fd 6y ago
Luckily there isn't really any advice there, it is just a bunch of narcissistic rambling.

etiennemarcel 6y ago

I never really understood the whole thing around Paul Graham. His insights on startups and tech are somewhat interesting and legitimate, but at this point I feel like some people are taking his every thought, even mondaine, as gospel...

a_bonobo 6y ago
I've read a collection of his essays and outside of programming/startups, they are really mundane/black & white/binary division. I.e., the world is divided into nerds who are good, and bullies who are bad. I guess it's halo effect? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect
sidlls 6y ago
There are a lot of “hackers” who think that the ability to code or build a successful business is synonymous with deep intellect and wisdom, and a forum such as this naturally attracts a greater number of them who engage in some vicarious glory seeking.
- nogabebop23 6y ago
  You would think someone who said: I actually worry a lot that as I get "popular" I'll be able to get away with saying stupider stuff than I would have dared say before. This sort of thing happens to a lot of people, and I would really like to avoid it would probaly talk less or at least narrow his focus. replace artists with parents and re-read https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
AlchemistCamp 6y ago
It gets really repetitive and boring to see this sort of comment (and often much nastier ad homenim attacks) every single time any of pg's writing is on the front page. If you think his observations are mundane, then why not just move on to another link, hopefully one that you're interested in?
- 6y ago

john_fushi 6y ago

This is, at best, mindless ego stroking. But then again, I did not really expect better from pg. Enjoy your jerk, hackers.

stripline 6y ago

I found his essay on kids [0] a lot more insightful than this collection of short tweets. In particular, he admits that having kids may actually make you less ambitious The fact is, once you have kids, you're probably going to care more about them than you do about yourself. And attention is a zero-sum game. I've noticed this in myself. As usual though, he has a hack for this as well: I have some hacks for sailing close to this wind. For example, when I write essays, I think about what I'd want my kids to know. That drives me to get things right. And when I was writing Bel, I told my kids that once I finished it I'd take them to Africa. When you say that sort of thing to a little kid, they treat it as a promise. Which meant I had to finish or I'd be taking away their trip to Africa. Maybe if I'm really lucky such tricks could put me net ahead. But the wind is there, no question. [0] http://paulgraham.com/kids.html http://paulgraham.com/kids.html

eanzenberg 6y ago
I guess it depends were you are in life. I’ve noticed since having kids that working and succeeding takes on a whole other meaningful level. Before, ambition was tied to abstract things I didn’t quite care too much about, i.e. money. Now, being my best self is the greatest teaching tool for our kids as they look to us as role models.
toasterlovin 6y ago
I agree, though I’ll add that my perspective has become much, much longer. I am laying plans for 20-40 years from now and continuously attend to their fruition. I don’t think that would have been possible without kids and, in light of the compounding nature of life (and capital), it feels like a super power.
- dannykwells 6y ago
  I really like this point, and 100% agree having had a wee one recently. I've found I'm more discerning about opportunities, not jumping headlong into any new thing. If anything having a kid has helped me focus, by cutting out a lot of extraneous noise in other parts of life.
6y ago

pnako 6y ago

It's pretty cool that Paul Graham has reinvented the concept of parenting in such an innovative way. I'm looking forward to hearing his cooking advice next.

dean177 6y ago
This is unnecessarily snarky. Nobody is claiming to reinvent anything, just someone sharing their wisdom.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  But the snark has a point: Paul Graham is qualified to give advice about startups, but what qualifies him to dispense parenting advice? Like all other parents, it sounds like he's making it up as he goes along.
  - sideshowb 6y ago
    Meh. The vast majority of parenting advice lacks scientific evidence anyway. (I tried to find some with a proper evidence base as a new dad and honestly I'm amazed we don't have more for what is clearly such an important topic).
  - danenania 6y ago
    And what qualifies anyone here to discount his advice? He's not bringing down stone tablets from Mt. Sinai, just writing about his own thoughts and experiences. If you're not interested, don't read it.
  - slothtrop 6y ago
    There is no point, because he doesn't pretend to be anything than other than a parent, not an expert on parenting. It's like posting to a mommy blog. The call for industry professionals to "stay in their lane" when they want to talk about whatever they want to talk about is ridiculous.
    - nogabebop23 6y ago

Linkd 6y ago

I love to highlight text on my browser as I read. The fact that it auto-clicks into the tweets as I'm highlight is infuriating.

micael_dias 6y ago
I do too! I can't use Medium, it gets so annoying.

aidenn0 6y ago

I got down to the one where he says adults lecture kids on morality, but not other adults. Does he really not get regularly lectured on morality by other adults? I certainly do, and I get a tiny fraction of such lectures compared to my wife...

heavenlyblue 6y ago
Why does your wife get more lectures on morality?
- aidenn0 6y ago
  My observations hint at two primary reasons: older women who would be uncomfortable telling men that they are "doing it wrong" Differing standards for moms and dads. I get kudos for doing anything with my kids. She gets told she is parenting wrong
  - downerending 6y ago
    I got suspicious staring for playing with my kids in public. She could play with other people's kids without even asking.
    - aidenn0 6y ago
      Yeah, I had a bit of a baby face when I first became a parent so got some of those same things. As soon as one of them called me "daddy" the ice melted
    - lonelappde 6y ago
      People say this a lot online but I've never seen it happen, even when I play with other people's kids. I wonder where the culture is so different, or if this is a case of people reading into (ugh) "resting bitch face"
      - downerending 6y ago

dmje 6y ago

He might be a good entrepreneur but ffs, why the rabid, unthinking enthusiasm in following everything this guy says? Why not make a website for someone else who happens to be a good parent? This cultish b/s is exactly what leads to the hell of Trumpistan. IMO.

toasterlovin 6y ago
PG’s essays are why most people care about him. They’re only sometimes about business. These tweets are a natural extension of his essays.
- nogabebop23 6y ago
  do you really think a vapid low-effort tweet is an extension of the effort and care that goes into his essay? seems like a major step backwards IMO

brudgers 6y ago

Parenting trick: invent a gesture that means "I love you." 2 yos like it as a game. 8 yos like it because they can use it in public. I learned to say "I love you." It still gets an "I love you, too" nearly twenty years later by default. If I don't fuck up, I expect it will work on my deathbed. It probably helped that I often add "and am very very proud of you" when I've thought it's a good thing to say. Most recently by text across two thousand miles in the midst of a pandemic. Because I was. YMMV.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
That's something to strive for - that those around me will want to say that on my deathbed. I mean, there's not much else that is going to matter to me then.

sytelus 6y ago

Does anyone else feel this is extreme amount of pushing/hand-holding to kids to have them learn programming? My own experience is this: (1) kids meticulously observe what their parents do in their "natural" state and get interested in that, however, (2) kids develop sort of "not for me" or even outright repulsion for things parents what them to excel at. So the best way for kids to get interested in X is just to do that yourself all the time and let them approach you with questions while never let them feel that you are way too good at that. One technique is to do Conway style "blunders" while teaching something to kids. This apparently makes them feel that there is room for them to come in, contribute and think independently.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
kkwteh 6y ago
Could you explain what these Conway style "blunders" are? I hadn't heard of them, and a web search didn't turn up anything.
- ftbai 6y ago
  I believe they're talking about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22843693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22843693
- robotresearcher 6y ago
  John Conway had a teaching technique where he would appear to make an error in a talk, act slightly confused, then restart the problem now that a faulty assumption (for example) was made explicit. Second time around greater insight would be reached. You have to be very good to pull off that kind of move.
dqpb 6y ago
I think the right way to think about is to treat it like reading and writing.
analog31 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

mabracadabra 6y ago

It's not cool when someone gets preached like a prophet. VC stuff, OK, but kids? Come on.

nogabebop23 6y ago
This is pretty stupid. The cross-over between VC and parenting is ... non-existent. Maybe PG is a great person and parent, but I don't know him. VC playbook: build a portfolio of rapid growth companies, spread a bunch of cash around; expect most to fail but one or a few are huge successes in a short time frame; repeat. Parent playbook: no real repeatable systems, slow organic growth, everyone succeeds, likely no unicorns, one-and-done. You cannot engineer and scale parenting.
- kick 6y ago
  pg was famous for his essays before he was famous for being a venture capitalist. I disagree with many of his late-stage essays, but his reflections on parenting aren't the worst.
rexreed 6y ago
Agreed. I don't get the adulation here. A lot of this "advice" is honestly pretty weird and not helpful. Here's a guy who thinks of his kids as products. And things he does and they do as features.
- astura 6y ago
  >A lot of this "advice" is honestly pretty weird and not helpful. This pretty much applies to most advice doled out by the super rich for consumption by the to the general public.

nogabebop23 6y ago

How many of you parents out there would take parenting advice from an Uncle?

analog31 6y ago
I don't take parenting advice from anybody. It's all bunk. Much of it can be summed up thus: If you're unusually self disciplined and organized, your children will be unusually self disciplined and organized. Otherwise, just as you learned to work past your faults, so will your kids have to. Many of us got through school and life by having the brains to make up for our other shortcomings. You're about to find out what it looks like when someone you care about goes through the same.
WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
My uncles were boomers & their advice tended toward crap. Advice from my wife's uncles could be a bit better, tho. From that generation - nearly all the worthwhile advice came from women.
- dang 6y ago
  Oh dear. Please keep generational flamebait and gender flamebait off HN. We want NOR on those, not AND. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

distalx 6y ago

programming for kids #### kodable https://www.kodable.com/ https://www.kodable.com/ #### scratch https://scratch.mit.edu/ https://scratch.mit.edu/ #### tynker https://www.tynker.com/ https://www.tynker.com/ #### blackly https://developers.google.com/blockly/ https://developers.google.com/blockly/ ####star logo http://education.mit.edu/starlogo-tng/ http://education.mit.edu/starlogo-tng/ #### alice http://www.alice.org/index.php http://www.alice.org/index.php #### kodu form microsofts https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/confirmation.aspx?id=10056 https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/confirmation.aspx?i... #### android app inventor http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ #### kids ruby http://kidsruby.com/ http://kidsruby.com/ #### Lua programming language https://www.lua.org/ https://www.lua.org/

DanBC 6y ago
Is KidsRuby still active? The downloads page isn't working (leads to an access denied page) and the twitter account hasn't posted anything for 5 years. Hardware programming for kids Crumble https://redfernelectronics.co.uk/crumble/ https://redfernelectronics.co.uk/crumble/ BBC Micro:Bit https://microbit.org/ https://microbit.org/ CodeBug http://www.codebug.org.uk/ http://www.codebug.org.uk/
- fillskills 6y ago
  Hardware making for kids (using 3D printing/Laser engraving/mills/soldering): https://beamakerclub.com/ https://beamakerclub.com/ I am an advisor

tlb 6y ago

As an early skeptic of Twitter as a medium of non-frivolous discourse, I frequently cited Chesterfield's Letters to his Son as a thing that could never be done with tweets instead of letters. Perhaps I was wrong.

kick 6y ago
To be fair, tweets are twice as long as they used to be.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

abledon 6y ago

lots of pressure on that kids psyche

WarOnPrivacy 6y ago

I have a point to make that I feel intersects the conversations here. It concerns something I didn't figure out until I was older, that children are brought into existence w/o their consent. Now I don't believe this is* (edit: fixed) an evil or unethical act; it's simply an unavoidable facet of reality. However, it creates a debt to children so massive, that it can't be fully repaid in a lifetime. In short, the debt between children & parents only ever runs one way. Because of this, I have a permanent & total obligation to my kids' well being, while they in-turn owe me nothing for a lifetime of labor on their belhaf (which as a single parent - changing diapers & earning income - has been substantial). It doesn't mean my grown kids should or shouldn't contribute to my welfare. It means that my responsibility is to continually tip the scales toward the outcomes they desire. In our case we operate as one household & there are different obligations in play there. But the Original Debt indicates that any shortfalls (in labor, etc) be filled by me, unless & until more practical solutions are worked out. My reward is that this really efficient mindset solves lots of problems in advance.

sintaxi 6y ago
I think the word you are looking for is duty, not debt.
- jacobolus 6y ago
  The words “duty” and “debt” (and “due”) are more or less the same idea, and both derived from the latin "debere". You can think of “duty” as more or less a smoothed out version of “debt-ity”.
  - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
    That's elegant.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
normalnorm 6y ago
Well said. I believe this to be the fundamental realization that would change the world for the better, if enough people had it. So many of the ills of the world can be traced back to childhood trauma and mediocre education. I think we have been going through a few decades where mainstream parenting values have been mostly narcissistic. Parents seeing their children as indebted to them is both the norm and an abomination. I have some hope that more and more people are seeing things as you do.

kriro 6y ago

Being an uncle of 10 month now I have made a list of the things to keep in mind when I decide to have my own children. It's pretty short: - Spend as much time with your child as possible and let them roam free. Just have a loose eye out and don't overprotect everything, children are really not that fragile. This includes letting them eat dirt and play with pets without worrying too much - Children observe/copy/improve (and wil let you know when they are not interested in stuff). It's really fascinating to watch. Keep that in mind when you want them to learn something - Let them play with other children without worrying that it'll be bad for them. Also don't be scared to hand your toddler over to some other family member to hold etc...noone will drop them. Humans intuitively understand how to care for babies/children - Do research and base stuff on that (name bias and praising effort vs. ability are the only two that seem interesting on a quick glance) That's all I got so far. And there's a certain set of values I want to teach but I believe the best way of doing that is by living it (be decent to people, be critical of yourself/don't take yourself too seriously, always stay curious about life, value freedom highly).

nojvek 6y ago

Anyone have tips on how to make kids eat by themselves or generate hunger? My 2 year seems like she hates eating. Feeding her is a painful endeavor everyday. Watching cocomelon videos helps but this behavior makes me really wonder how people have 2+ kids. Even one kid is a handful for us.

danenania 6y ago
Eating is tough with our 1 year old sometimes. What seems to help is not stressing about any particular meal and turning it into a struggle. If she doesn't want to eat much now, that's fine; she'll be hungry at the next meal or even the next day. Overall she gets enough and is gaining the right amount of weight, so it seems she's capable of regulating it herself, and we prevent pointless frustration for everyone by trying to force it. Of course if she wasn't gaining weight as she should be, it would be a different (and I'm sure much more challenging) story.
feydaykyn 6y ago
First breath and regain some calm! As a parent we feel issues with sleeping, eating, behavior, etc will always last, but in reality most won't last. You're doing a permanent experiment on what's working and what's isn't, while the subject constantly change: it's really hard! Eating in front of TV is bad for nutrition in general and especially bad for the kids, as multiple studies prove: almost no TV before 6 is a good rule of thumb. As others comments are hinting, kids know how to regulate themselves regarding food intake, and no kid will let themselves starve, so you can offer a plate with the main course and a small dessert, your kid will eat the main course when she is hungry. Also we found that allowing them to come and go out of table was hard on our sense of properness but helped our kids to eat the complete dish. After a few months, there were able to stay at table for the duration. We also found out that industrial food for children is disgusting, and that nothing beats homemade to open the appetite! Feeling (and being) overwhelmed is normal, if possible go see a professional to reassure you. Sources: experience with my kids, reading a lot a studies, and a psychiatrist wife Keep up!

darepublic 6y ago

Do you need to teach 11 yr olds to test their programs after each change.. come on.

dusted 6y ago

Ahh, web 3.0 An empty screen except a green box with the text "LOAD MORE", assuming the box might be a button, I press it. It elegantly turns into a small green square, and then disappear completely, leaving me with a white rectangle on top of a grey background.