4 ms·

You shouldn’t stop trying at age 20 (or 30, or 40...), as long as you are earnest, not too much bother, and aren’t worried about not always getting a response.

You shouldn’t stop trying at age 20 (or 30, or 40...), as long as you are earnest, not too much bother, and aren’t worried about not always getting a response. If you show interest in people’s work, especially if you have questions, corrections, etc. that demonstrate that you are engaging with it seriously, even “famous” people are often happy to respond (but people certainly also often don’t respond to cold emails, for a wide variety of reasons).

robertlagrant 5y ago
I'm 40 now! I'd better start emailing people :D
smoldesu 5y ago
RMS is pretty famous for responding to pretty much any query, for better or worse. There's a treasure trove of fantastic email responses to questions like "do you watch anime?" and "what do you think of my birthday card?" I've seen a number of people rag on him, espousing that he's got nothing else to do (they may well be right) but it makes me respect the guy even more to know that he's replying to emails, even when they're dumb, instead of watching TV or browsing Twitter. He's a real consummate professional, even when the people around him aren't.
- nimfan 5y ago
  I dimly recall receiving a call from RMS one Saturday when I must have been in high school. I was working (on my own) on porting the ETH Modula-2 compiler from VAX/VMS to a NS32032 based "co-processor" board that plugged into the pc isa bus (an early hardware design from Trevor Marshall of YARC Systems). I think RMS asked if I would port the compiler to GNU, but alas I told him I knew nothing about Unix back then. The NS32032 went no where, but my compiler porting effort got me my first job with an interesting (to me) startup!
- Thoreandan 5y ago
  > RMS is pretty famous for responding to pretty much any query Can confirm. In 1990, I managed to send him a letter from a borrowed Internet account (I didn't have an email address at the time.) He tracked me down and telephoned me(!!), I still remember his friendly demeanor, and at the end of the conversation he said "Happy hacking!".

robertlagrant 5y ago

I'm 40 now! I'd better start emailing people :D

smoldesu 5y ago

RMS is pretty famous for responding to pretty much any query, for better or worse. There's a treasure trove of fantastic email responses to questions like "do you watch anime?" and "what do you think of my birthday card?" I've seen a number of people rag on him, espousing that he's got nothing else to do (they may well be right) but it makes me respect the guy even more to know that he's replying to emails, even when they're dumb, instead of watching TV or browsing Twitter. He's a real consummate professional, even when the people around him aren't.

nimfan 5y ago
I dimly recall receiving a call from RMS one Saturday when I must have been in high school. I was working (on my own) on porting the ETH Modula-2 compiler from VAX/VMS to a NS32032 based "co-processor" board that plugged into the pc isa bus (an early hardware design from Trevor Marshall of YARC Systems). I think RMS asked if I would port the compiler to GNU, but alas I told him I knew nothing about Unix back then. The NS32032 went no where, but my compiler porting effort got me my first job with an interesting (to me) startup!
Thoreandan 5y ago
> RMS is pretty famous for responding to pretty much any query Can confirm. In 1990, I managed to send him a letter from a borrowed Internet account (I didn't have an email address at the time.) He tracked me down and telephoned me(!!), I still remember his friendly demeanor, and at the end of the conversation he said "Happy hacking!".