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> Axiom: Boring work can never compete with Hacker News. > Axiom: Hacker News can never compete with interesting work. I disagree[1] with your second axiom. H

> Axiom: Boring work can never compete with Hacker News. > Axiom: Hacker News can never compete with interesting work. I disagree[1] with your second axiom. HN, in limited quantities[2], counts as professional development, I would say. That means that limited HN usage is necessary, which certainly helps it "compete". If I were interviewing someone for a programming job, and I learned that they never read HN or SO or Proggit or /. or anything like that, then I would have some serious reservations about them. ----------------- [1] Okay, being a mathematician, I know that an axiom simply is; one doesn't agree or disagree with it. But this does mean that your theorem has limited applications. [2] HN in large quantities, on the other hand ....

dennisgorelik 15y ago
Interesting work counts as professional development too. So there is no contradiction here. If work is boring then HN reading is the must to compensate in professional development.
nostrademons 15y ago
Interesting work will teach you far more than HN will. It's very easy to overestimate the amount of professional development you get from Internet websites, because at the end of a session, you can point to an article and say "I learned that". However, at the end of a project, you will very rarely be able to point to something and say "I learned that", but you will have unconsciously absorbed so many problem-solving techniques that you're miles ahead of the guys who sat and read a book the whole time. I say this as someone who sat on the Internet and read websites about programming all through college. Yes, it was useful - but nowhere near as useful as the time I spent actually programming.
- ggchappell 15y ago
  Interesting work gets you in-depth knowledge of whatever you need for that specific job. Reading widely (e.g., HN, in small doses, and taken seriously) gets you breadth. I think we need both.

dennisgorelik 15y ago

Interesting work counts as professional development too. So there is no contradiction here. If work is boring then HN reading is the must to compensate in professional development.

nostrademons 15y ago

Interesting work will teach you far more than HN will. It's very easy to overestimate the amount of professional development you get from Internet websites, because at the end of a session, you can point to an article and say "I learned that". However, at the end of a project, you will very rarely be able to point to something and say "I learned that", but you will have unconsciously absorbed so many problem-solving techniques that you're miles ahead of the guys who sat and read a book the whole time. I say this as someone who sat on the Internet and read websites about programming all through college. Yes, it was useful - but nowhere near as useful as the time I spent actually programming.

ggchappell 15y ago
Interesting work gets you in-depth knowledge of whatever you need for that specific job. Reading widely (e.g., HN, in small doses, and taken seriously) gets you breadth. I think we need both.