9 ms·

Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

What's you life work? What is it that you're working on, be it an area, company, game, language, subject, cause etc. That you expect to work until the end of your life? Starting with me it's a little bit hard. I have so many interests that picking a single one out of all of them is hard. But I plan on working on companies, causes, philosophies, books, areas etc. Some of the areas I'm interested in are: Intelligence, IQ, Collective Intelligence, Knowledge Management, Writing, Sleep, Comics, AI, Game Design, Meta Cognition, Zettelkasten, Linguistics, Design, Coordination etc. My current project is: https://github.com/ilse-langnar/notebook. It's a mixture of Roam Research, Obsidian, Emacs, VSCode(in the future), Figma etc. I plan on making an online mode for people to share and collaborate with other people being as easy as sharing a link. I don't plan on making this my "Life's Work" because I believe other opportunities will arise as I go in life. Examples: - Minecraft(Notch) - RimWorld(Tynan Sylvester) - C++(Bjarne Stroustrup) - Java(James Gosling) - Linux Kernel(Linus Torvalds) - SpaxeX, Tesla(Elon Musk) - Growth Mindset(Carol Dweck) So ... here it is, what's something you're so dedicated to that you're willing to call it "your life's work"?

hirvi74 4y ago
My life's work is surviving. Everything I do and have done has been to keep myself alive to some degree or another. Everything else is just a bunch of distractions and abstractions that boil down to same thing at the end of the day.
- ElevenLathe 4y ago
  Love this answer. Sometimes I feel like "merely" surviving is looked down upon, but the art of survival is the only lasting thing we can hand down the generations. The environment changes so rapidly (especially in the Anthropocene) that usually the best we can do is figure out how to survive right now. Anything else is superfluous if we can't do that.
  - hirvi74 4y ago
    As my favorite philosopher, Alan Watts, once said when asked, "What is the meaning of life?" > “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
- abnercoimbre 4y ago
  I really like this view and have been adopting it often.
082349872349872 4y ago
I "do only what only I can do", which in practice mostly means grand-scheme-unimportant things for the animals (with people as a subset) in my life.
- fuzzfactor 4y ago
  With me it's the science of natural resources and their derivatives, with a strong emphasis on chemicals. Professionally applied over a lifetime focused on domestic & international commerce. These are things I will not be retiring from. When the ships get really big there will always be a situation where it's most valuable to have uniquely deep experience, now more than ever over a greater number of decades. Many other unrelated and unscientific things I will also continue for life as much as I can, but for work that's how simple it is.
jstx1 4y ago
Don't have one and don't expect to. Seems like an absurd expectation to have of oneself.
jameal 4y ago
I'm not sure what form it will take exactly, but I would say my life's work is to live as fully into my values as I can. I used to just want to have a nice job with autonomy and to be able to work from home, until I got it and I realized that it wasn't as fulfilling as I thought it would be. I had security but I was disconnected. There is so much disconnection in the world. We become disconnected from ourselves, from others and from reality. I think that it causes a lot of trouble for people personally and for society at large. I used to be a complete introvert and would become overwhelmed easily. Now I truly enjoy meeting new people and being put in new situations. I want to help other people with their personal development because I see it as the greatest lever for creating a more connected humanity. I love development but this is what I'm truly passionate about.
- examplary_cable 4y ago
  > I used to be a complete introvert and would become overwhelmed easily. Now I truly enjoy meeting new people and being put in new situations I see this a somewhat of an identity problem. If you pick "shy" identities for yourself, then they all correlate on being shy( e.g: Autistic, Programmer, Nerd etc). So the more strongly you feel about being X, the shy-er you'll become. That's why I don't like to call myself too many things because I sub-consciously attach the sub-traits of the personality unto myself.
f0e4c2f7 4y ago
I enjoy learning things and helping people. Most of what I do fits into one of those two categories.
throwaway22032 4y ago
Chilling out, maxin, relaxing all cool. More seriously, learning. We have enough of everything. Almost all of the technological breakthroughs I can think of have eventually been used to excess and ended up crippling us in some way, I'm quite content with just being.
- qorrect 4y ago
  > Almost all of the technological breakthroughs I can think of have eventually been used to excess and ended up crippling us in some way What do you mean crippling ? We're living longer than we did 100 years ago through advances in science in medicine, I see a lot of tech as net positive.
- badpun 4y ago
  How old are you? I was like that in my 20s and 30s, but in my 40s I'm becoming increasingly aware of my mortality. Just chilling does not feel like the best use of the rest of my time.
qdot76367 4y ago
I suspect https://buttplug.io https://buttplug.io is gonna keep me busy. I’ve already been working in the intimate haptics field for ~18 years and it’s remained interesting the whole time, so no plans on stopping.
- sshine 4y ago
  Don't you get numb at some point? Sorry, this subject is too funny. :-)
  - qdot76367 4y ago
    That’s why it’s so fun to keep working on!
- examplary_cable 4y ago
  > https://buttplug.io https://buttplug.io LMAO. If that's what interests you ha!
Decabytes 4y ago
I've been trying to find my "life's work" for years. I've tried writing, painting, drawing, programming, linocuts, woodworking etc. I really want to find that thing but nothing has been fulfilling enough so far
ileitch 4y ago
While I’m unsure I’ll be using Swift for the rest of my life, I’ll continue to work on my little tool to detect unused code for as long as I can. It’s my most popular open-source contribution, and it brings me joy knowing others find it useful. https://github.com/peripheryapp/periphery https://github.com/peripheryapp/periphery
- jamil7 4y ago
  Thanks for your work on this I had no idea it existed, definitely going to try it out.
sassyonsunday 4y ago
My family. I never thought I would be able to have a family when I was growing up but now I have a husband and we have a baby so I'll spend my life making sure our family is happy and healthy as best I can.
iancmceachern 4y ago
My family. I design medical devices, have designed many real good ones. But that is just work.
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
  Looked up your portfolio. Are you hiring? ;)
  - iancmceachern 4y ago
    Maybe, send me an email!
duringwork12 4y ago
I'm trying to add a ping pong table to a park next to my house. Got like 2k of the 5k i need so far. After that probably will try to get a dog fence and a pickleball court.
- CincinnatiMan 4y ago
  Is the ping pong table going to be outdoors? I've thought about pursuing something similar but I feel like playing ping pong outside would be an exercise in frustration if you had even the slightest bit of wind.
  - baandang 4y ago
    I grew up playing ping pong in the backyard because we had no room inside. It sucks just as much as you would imagine it would because of the wind. It is not quite as bad as trying to surf on a pond but it is down that path.
CincinnatiMan 4y ago
My children, and hopefully eventually grandchildren. Making sure they grow up to be good people and are happy.
- collyw 4y ago
  It's quite encouraging to see a few answers like this.
Moxdi 4y ago
happiness, i want to master happiness, i want to enjoy my life, be the happiest i can be, for as many prolonged lenghts i can have, recently i was happy for whole month while doing my skydiving course, i plan on doing more of that, once i get bored of it i will find something else but yeah personal happiness
nisegami 4y ago
I've posted some really funny tweets. I'm content with that being my life's work.
unintendedcons 4y ago
Founding a school for future leaders, starting in Toronto. Combining the Sudbury Valley School model with the Free Software movement, a democratic makerspace school.
mark_l_watson 4y ago
I want to be content almost all the time. Professionally, around 1978 I had an epiphany: I realized that I was sometimes very good/lucky at solving ‘show stopper’ type problems at work, and I 99% freed myself from worrying about my job. I started a hard policy of working just 32 hours a week (taking 80% salary) and prioritized learning things that I cared about. I also became more generous in putting energy into helping coworkers; I have had 6 visits this year from old co-workers (I live off the beaten path in Sedona Arizona) so I don’t feel like I am just bragging when I say I have respected coworkers and cared about them. So really, my life’s work is learning what I want to learn in tech and spirituality (mostly Self Realization Fellowship and also Buddhism). EDIT: I forgot the ‘big thing’: I love my family and friends.
rmelton 4y ago
COSMOS: An open source command and control software. Currently primarily used with satellites, but also great for home automation. https://openc3.com https://openc3.com
zmgsabst 4y ago
Explaining how the Curry-Howard square [1] relates to DNNs and AI more broadly. Not a full time job, but been at it fives years and still going… so that seems the strongest contender so far. [1] - Alegebra-geometry equivalence commutes with logic-computation equivalence; this provides a map between the world of type statements and the world of diffy-Q networks.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  ok, I'll bite: algebraically logic is being and computation is becoming; how does this geometrically map into denotations and diffyqs?
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    You have something like this [1], where you have clear maps from the type theory world into the typed representation of software and the category map structures to Euclidean VM/difference EQ representation of software. This is classic Curry-Howard. And algebra/geometry split of being/becoming happens in both the type theory/category theory and typed program/difference equation relations. [1] - https://zmichaelgehlke.com/images/curry-howard-square-graphic.jpg https://zmichaelgehlke.com/images/curry-howard-square-graphi...
    - 082349872349872 4y ago
      could I get a quick example? let's say the top of the square is: A * A->B -------- <------> f(x), where f:A->B and x:A B what does that interval map onto on the bottom of the square? is the inverse map also interesting? Edit: are you familiar with Vicker's work? if so, would it help understand (I have it saved off but have not gotten into it yet) the content of the square? https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~sjv/talks.php https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~sjv/talks.php
      - zmgsabst 4y ago
        I have two white papers on transporting shape types to difference equations on images; and am working on a third related to models of Zn. https://www.zmgsabstract.com/whitepapers/shapes-as-digital-images https://www.zmgsabstract.com/whitepapers/shapes-as-digital-i... https://www.zmgsabstract.com/whitepapers/shapes-have-operations https://www.zmgsabstract.com/whitepapers/shapes-have-operati... This is pretty new; but the main interest is actually the inverse mapping — can you recover a type theory that is the “internal language” of the diagram modeling the difference equations that (eg) represents a DNN? That would be the “effective semantics” of the DNN, expressed as typed statements. - - - I’m following the work of (eg) Michael Shulman on attaching types to categories; and my own experience as an SDE on the logic, types, difference equation side. (There’s some papers on programs as Euclidean VMs I used as well, but I don’t have them handy.) The weakest link is category to difference equations; but that exists to some degree already due to physics — and I’m muddling my way through implementing that to gain deeper insight myself.
jcpst 4y ago
I used to be into a ton of different things, I still find a lot in the world fascinating. But it's too much. Over time I have been slowly carving out the life I want to live. Cutting out the distractions that are only mildly interesting. It's down to: * My family's well-being, which includes myself. * My music career (composer/songwriter). * A continual series of actions to keep tipping my work/life balance farther and farther to the "life" side. * Camping.
ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
I'm writing software to help people Recover from drug addiction. I expect to be doing it until I pop my clogs. The coroner will need to rub "YTЯƎWϘ" off my cheek.
- skhm 4y ago
  Do you have a link or anything you can point to? This is a great calling.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    I don't really take credit for that stuff in public, but it's not a secret. Feel free to contact me.
recursivedoubts 4y ago
my children, first & foremost technically: https://htmx.org https://htmx.org - bringing hypermedia back as a viable web architecture https://hyperscript.org https://hyperscript.org - bringing HyperTalk back as a viable scripting language https://grugbrain.dev https://grugbrain.dev - bringing humility back as a viable programming vibe
- examplary_cable 4y ago
  > https://htmx.org https://htmx.org I love htmlx. That you so much for this. I'm currently using https://alpinejs.dev/ https://alpinejs.dev/ because it allows me to work directly with HTML so I can have meta-programming capabilities that React.js/Vue.js simply could not handle. That you for htmlx!
- jonjacky 4y ago
  grugbrain.dev is wonderful. Also, it is an example of the simplicity it advocates: One file, simple HTML with a bit of simple CSS inline at the start of the file. That's all! Simple and effective.
profstasiak 4y ago
just mindless grind. one hour commute 8 hours of mindless CRUD rest of the time spent in front of screens.
- PainfullyNormal 4y ago
  I used to hate the grind, too. But, as somebody who's been out of work longer than he thought he would be and is starting to wonder how he's going to pay the rent, I long for a bit of the grind right now.
cwbrandsma 4y ago
Raising my kids, and I have 5 of them. I've built some cool software, which has built companies and positively affected the lives of millions of people, but in the end that was just a paycheck. One kid will be a nurse, another is in engineering school, another seems to be destined to be an artist, and the last two can do almost anything. But even more importantly, they are all kind people (nerdy, but kind). I will take that.
- 082349872349872 4y ago
  > Adult: What do you want to be when you grow up? Child: An honest, brave, compassionate human being. Adult: No. I mean, how do you want to sell your labor? https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/328209-what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up?store_id=1362 https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/328209-what-do-you-want-to...
rektide 4y ago
I'd like to work piercing the veil between user & software. The mechanisms & purpose of software should be made visible, and be up for live modification & experimentation, ideally in a semi-safe / isolated / containerized virtuality. At some point, we need to move beyond there being a scribes vs everyone else distinction, and start to have a more holistic engageable computing, and this seems like a strong requisite. Presently, I believe client-side web, where computing represents itself as DOM (ex: react-router) serves as a good base to start to work from, where we can build more elements that help us view/examine/operate on the other elements.
akuro 4y ago
Statistical mechanics, molecular simulation and high performance computing. That is the centre-point of nearly all of my effort in life. Nearly everything I do is based around getting a deeper understanding of this field or being able to employ my understanding more effectively. My entire life is based around the academic route. I fell in love with a girl whose great desire in life was to settle securely in one place and have a family. To have a 9-5 job where she could spend the rest of the time in leisure with the person she loves, who presumably would also have a more laidback career. This is the opposite of the life of an academic. Stress, poor schedules and constant intense work and study. A professor who I deeply respect worked from 6AM to 11PM, 6 days a week for most of his post-doctoral years. I personally love the intensity of an academic life and working at breakneck pace is something I deeply enjoy. Recently, I chose my scientific career over her. I suppose that I will be wondering my entire life whether I made the right choice.
- strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  if it helps, you would have regretted in some part no matter what route you chose.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  Not to pry, but was she also a physics PhD and how long did your relationship last before you made the choice to pursue science?
kelseyfrog 4y ago
My life's work is embodying my individual soul-form[1] in the most poetic life-affirming[2] way possible. 1. Gerson, L. (Ed.). (2017). Plotinus: The Enneads (G. Boys-Stones, J. Dillon, R. King, A. Smith, & J. Wilberding, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9780511736490 2. Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Will to Power (Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale translators). New York: Random House, 1967. pp. 532–533
zackmorris 4y ago
Coping. I had lists like yours in the 1990s, but working to make rent eventually expanded to use up all of my time. Now I practice meditation and stoicism, work on myself with bodybuilding and kickboxing, but have no expectation that things will improve. That said, I didn't know about manifestation, or such basic principles as the difference between reason and meaning. So I believe that I inadvertently shifted into this difficult reality. In the end, all that matters is consciousness and being alive. So I silenced my inner monologue, experienced ego death and the dark night of the soul, and am putting my energy into reconnecting with love for all things. Practicing non-attachment and moving with the flow of life as things unfold with divine timing. Loosely, imagine if everything was the opposite. Imagine if there were no billionaires, just rising median incomes and UBI. No dogma, no politics, just living life in peace. Being able to self-actualize and invent. Not.. whatever all this is. That's why I dream to let it all go and shift into the new age.
- conorcleary 4y ago
  Sounds like you either smoke too much weed or not enough.
jasfi 4y ago
https://inventai.xyz https://inventai.xyz - Starting with a UI for generative AI art, but I want to take this all the way to AGI one day. https://logictrader.xyz https://logictrader.xyz - Automated trader, right now for crypto/Binance only, but plans to expand to other crypto exchanges and then stocks. Rules help to stop people making mistakes in trading.
fsn4dN69ey 4y ago
Being really good at Dota. Sounds kind of ridiculous, but I make plenty of money for my age, very very secure/comfortable financially. However, I've been playing Dota for the better part of the last 12 years, spent some of those years being in the 0.01% of players, friends with current pros, etc. I love it and could honestly do it for the rest of my life.
- hackily 4y ago
  That's so great to hear! I went to high school with someone who took a path like yours - his parents were not sure about his ability to live a comfortable life going into pro Dota. But I'm so glad you folks are able to do what you love and make a good living.
  - fsn4dN69ey 4y ago
    To clarify, I work as a dev or engineer or whatever, but pretty much every other bit of free time goes into it. At this point, 16k hours and counting.
cableshaft 4y ago
Closest thing I have to a life's work is probably my Proximity game. * I released the original[1] as a flash game on Newgrounds eighteen years ago and it blew up, played millions of times across a bunch of websites * Worked on a J2ME version for my mobile phone (it worked but never released it, probably should have) * Worked on a sequel in Flash, then started learning about XNA and being able to put games on Xbox 360 with it, so I used that to learn C# and submitted to a game dev contest Microsoft hosted (and was a finalist in it. They also invited me to be one of the first demos for their Xbox Live Indie Games service - 1 of 8 - and was briefly shown during their keynote address at GDC that year, and was playable at one of their kiosks there. I happened to be at that GDC and got to watch people trying it live, it was surreal). I was at that GDC because the game got me a game producer job in the video game industry for a small publisher.[2] * Saw iOS starting to blow up and decided to port my sequel to iOS and learn Objective-C and some OpenGL ES at the same time. Did okay but not amazing, I didn't really know how to market it on there, just kind of got lost amongst other games. It's not up there anymore as eventually it wasn't worth keeping up with the required updates. I plan to support an iOS version again with Proximity 3[3] * Remember when Kindle had games on it? You could apply to be a developer for that, and I did, and I was accepted. I got pretty far along in development (mostly just working on game options and menus still), but got distracted by college just long enough that Active Content was starting to be on its way out, so it never got released. * Mostly made a Pico-8 version. Once again core gameplay was done, but got distracted at menus. At some point I want to sit down and finish it finally. * Ported that Pico-8 version to PlayDate in a couple weekends since they are both Lua. Still waiting to receive my PlayDate so I can test it on the device. The graphics are super basic though, since I don't know how to do 2-color graphics well (white/black and dithering), and I'm worried about releasing it without some help there because I'm already seeing some beautiful puzzle games (comparatively) being released on that system. * Worked together with a friend to make a physical board game and pieces prototype using a laser cutter. Talked to a couple of publishers but most are too hesitant to release a straight abstract game (just hex tiles with colors and numbers), despite its past popularity. Hoping to release a new version out there and maybe that will help them change their mind. Either that or get some other board games designs of mine released, which may convince them to take a chance on it. One other game design is signed and in the publisher's queue (still a ways back, unfortunately). * Working on Proximity 3 right now, using Monogame. I originally ported my Xbox 360 version of 2 to Monogame, and was just going to clean up and upgrade and add new features to it, but after a while I started getting really annoyed by resolution issues and having to redo art a bunch since it was all 2D art, so I decided to restart from scratch using 3D. Core gameplay loop is done and I've been spending my spare time working on the surrounding interface and options and redesigning some things so that a Twitch streamer can play it along with their viewers via the chat. Hoping to get that into Steam early access within the next 6 months. * Have an idea for Proximity 4 already that makes the game a lot deeper. I'll probably switch to Unity at that point, because I want to make it VR-compatible. * I also need to make a new web version at some point, and I'd love for it to have room codes so people can join from anywhere. I'd also love to store the stats in a database and slowly build up a lichess style database of moves. I work on other games as well, and that's part of the reason why there was such a gap between Proximity 2 and Proximity 3 (over 10 years at this point), because I took a detour to try my hand at designing a bunch of other board games (also I was in the video game industry for a while with companies that had contracts that may not have looked too fondly on new video game releases by me), but I think it's time for a sequel. [1]: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/183428 https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/183428 [2]: https://youtu.be/Yqe0hS7AvOE https://youtu.be/Yqe0hS7AvOE [3]: https://youtu.be/uy08ohBLGhE https://youtu.be/uy08ohBLGhE
bko 4y ago
Maybe not what you're looking for, but my children. I have a lot of hobbies and try to contribute what I can with my skill set. But I'm honest with myself. Nothing meaningful I create in the digital form will outlive me so I'm never overly attached. I've also lived long enough to see my interests change drastically that I am confident I won't have the same interests in 5, 10, 20 years (nor would I want to) However with children I hope to serve as an influence and guide for my entire life.
- kcplate 4y ago
  Same. One piece of software that I contributed to is going on it’s 23rd year of use (but that is likely it’s last year). My youngest child is much older than that. When I am long gone, my kids and grandkids and the guidance I provided them will be my legacy. Frankly it’s my hope that my career accomplishments are not even mentioned the minute after I walk out the proverbial door as a retiree let alone in my eulogy.
shakna 4y ago
My daughter. I've been working on a stack-based language, that is highly dynamic, incorporating as much of the theory work around F-expressions as I can. For a number of years. I'm getting close to getting it fully-realised into something that is both performant, and shouldn't feel too odd for most programmers, even if they're unfamiliar with stack languages. That work? Doesn't matter at all. What matters is how my daughter learns to respect herself, and position herself in this world. I've been known to be drop everything, when she asks me what a Gruffalo is.
samsquire 4y ago
I'm journalling computer and software ideas in the open and I have been journalling since 2013. I am up to 700 ideas and 25 startup ideas. Here are links to them https://github.com/samsquire/ideas https://github.com/samsquire/ideas https://github.com/samsquire/ideas2 https://github.com/samsquire/ideas2 https://github.com/samsquire/ideas3 https://github.com/samsquire/ideas3 https://github.com/samsquire/ideas4 https://github.com/samsquire/ideas4 (incomplete) https://GitHub.com/samsquire/startups https://GitHub.com/samsquire/startups I am working on a multithreaded programming language interpreter and compiler. I am interested in parallelism, asynchrony and multithreading.
obloid 4y ago
It seems like there is a lot of pressure these days for people to find their "passion" or their life's work. But I think there are only a small subset of people who have that kind of single-minded focus. I used to get anxious about the fact that I did not have a passion. I have many varied interests and hobbies, but that dilution of interest prevents me from really excelling in one thing or having anything close to a "life's work". I've now realized it's ok to not have a that passion for one thing. I'll never create my version of a Dwarf Fortress. I'll create small things that make me happy, and know a little bit about a lot of things. And I'm ok with that. edit:grammar
- examplary_cable 4y ago
  > but that dilution of interest prevents me from really excelling in one thing or having anything close to a "life's work". Same. I feel like I might stretch myself too thin and not be able to "become" anyone because of this. It's also because every low-hanging fruit was discovered or invented already, so presumably, in order to invent anything new you would be required to focus 100% of your time for 1 thing. And I hate this. So it's not possible for me to be interested in multiple things and avoid this feeling that I'm wasting my time? Anyways, I'm also ok with that. I'll let interest guide me in my life journey.
bsenftner 4y ago
This is something I've knowingly devoted my life. It's an immature idea / realization / dream I had at age 12, which was about 1976. I saw a presentation by Ohio State's 3D computer graphics group, basically showing off the then-new field of 3D computer graphics. I thought in my 12 year old head "some day someone will make realistic versions of ordinary people in animation, and that person is gonna be rich using these to sell stuff to those same people." And since that time I have in one way or another been working towards that goal. I've been a 3D graphics pioneer, game console OS and game dev, VFX technical artist, MBA, the author of a patent on automated actor replacement, and the failed CEO of a startup doing actor replacement for advertising. At this point my emotional state on the entire effort is mixed and complex. I feel "personalized media" is inevitable and on the cusp happening, and without me, despite my working on this at high levels for decades.
- bsenftner 4y ago
  As I expected, the lowest voted post. Nobody understands the power of media with the media consumer embedded into it. This is a new, extremely powerful form of media. It is an empathy engine. The use of actor embedding in media for advertisements is merely the financial foundation to launch a new form of highly empathic storytelling. Consider the racists and sexists in our society and how their thoughts would change after experiencing feature film quality talents producing media where they are minorities? Nobody seems to grasp the positive capabilities possible with ordinary people automagically embedded into media. I just get "I hate ads" and pornographic push back.
_xnmw 4y ago
I live in Ukraine (Canadian-born, not ethnically Ukrainian). My life's work is to help rebuild this country and society while building a fintech startup. I also wonder if I will be able to learn a second language as an adult to the point of high-level mastery i.e. to contribute to the Ukrainian literary canon.
phaedrus 4y ago
My life's work since I was a kid in the 90s was to make a computer game. Then in the mid-2000s I started working with someone I'd met at college to make an ambitious online multiplayer game, but the effort fizzled out. I continued working alone on the parts of it I had written myself. So I was working on the same game code (eventually just the game's engine; I had lost sight of the original goal) through the 2000s and 2010s. I had an initial period of great productivity (in lines-of-code), but the more I wrote the more work it was fighting bit-rot. As operating systems, graphics technology, and the C++ standard itself changed, I was perpetually playing catch-up to build-breaking changes rather than making new progress. Over the course of time my git history had gotten convoluted, and I had also split things into a couple of repos. I considered re-merging everything back into one repository, and was debating whether to try to consolidate all the history or start a fresh repo with existing sources. My friends suggested: do neither; don't even start with the old source files. I could always mine my old work for useful code, but I didn't need to pull it all in just because it was there. I.e. after more than a decade and a half of life's work that had only resulted in treading water trying to keep up with the changing technology I could just... stop. Now instead of trying to push one codebase forward against the relentless march of entropy, I'm trying to work from a simpler premise: what do I need to build a game jam submission, and back-fill what I need from that goal. Even that goalpost keeps receding before me. (Any given game jam I might target will be over before I get the first pixels on the screen.) I guess I just work at a slower pace than the world moves. With ambitious projects there's two ways to go about them: forward-chaining or backward-chaining. You can start from the beginning and build up (forward-chaining) then attempt to bend your arc of progress back Earth for eventual release. You're always in danger of discovering you've described a wider arc than you're able to close. Or you can start from what does a released thing look like and backward-chain to putting your original ideas into it. What I've learned is neither strategy provides any guarantee, but if I'm still having this much trouble with the latter I certainly was never going to be able to close the loop on the former.
scottLobster 4y ago
Family and moving the technological ball forward as best I can, I particularly gravitate toward aerospace/spaceflight (manned and unmanned). Balancing the two is a bitch. On one hand I can't/won't neglect my family by taking a job that requires sleeping under my desk/70 hour weeks for extended periods, despite how much I would probably enjoy the experience. I was stuck taking care of/recovering from a bad family situation during my twenties, and married soon after, so my opportunity to take such a role has passed, at least until my infant/toddler kids leave home in 17-19 years. Likewise I can't move too far away from extended family, wouldn't be fair to wife/kids and I actually get along well with said extended family, so it's good for me as well. So I can't work for SpaceX or NASA JPL (no family in CA), not that I have any desire to live in CA or TX anyway. On the other hand I want to set an example for my kids (and myself) that you can have a family and still do cool stuff for a living, even if it naturally limits your options. Just grinding away at a soul-sucking 9-5 for another 35 years sounds like hell, even if it provides a decent standard of living. I should know, it's been hell for the last several years while I get my life in order/train up for jobs I actually want. The "ignore your job and just focus on your family" angle is defeat to me, and if I tried to force myself to think that way it would just manifest as resentment. I busted my ass to get this far, and I didn't do it just to give up on half of what I want. Hopefully going to be ready to start applying some time in 2024, and we'll see what's available/what I can do. Either way I intend to build as strong family and as badass a career as my constraints allow, I imagine that's more than enough work to fill a life.
blockwriter 4y ago
Broadly speaking, I would say my life's work is the intersection of literature and what I call my spiritual mission. When I started writing, I was of the mindset that all of one's life should be dedicated to the task of writing, to the exclusion of happiness, if need be, and my happiness was excluded in practice. Career disappointments and a recognition of my folly put in mind the importance of the context surrounding one's vocation. It is a creative effort to curate the life that is separate from the work of letters. Enduring the psychological crisis that followed these all too predictable disappointments, I realized that I had an abiding belief in the good of engaging with the process of reading, writing, and publishing literature. Over time, I came to see how isolated I was, due partly to my person, but partly, also, to the wider concerns of the world. I wanted to solve the problem of isolation, to the extent that it was in my power to do so, for others, feeling that this, in turn, would make meaning of my personal crisis. I went about doing so in my own ways, often ineffectually, but still feeling I was on to something, until the pandemic. Although I found that the surgical extraction of the social life I had managed to cultivate, save for my intimates, whom I still saw, meant that I could not write as I had before, I could continue to work on fostering the environment I felt literature and the writers of literature required in order to thrive. To make a long story short, I began investing in a platform that is meant to augment the process of writing and reading. They are simple tools, but they will be part of a coffeeshop environment, which is already under construction, where I hope commerce and literature can be wed to the benefit of the shop's regular patrons. On July 4th, I could hear the reports from Central Street in Highland Park, which left six dead. I became obsessed with the tragedy of how suddenly and capriciously death can come, especially in relation to one's spiritual mission, which I feel is often left in a state of disorder, in ways big and small. The notion of completing one's spiritual mission in life, or in maintaining one's spiritual mission in a state of completeness, does not seem without our nature, just as the tendency to maintain its disorder does not seem innate to our nature. To develop the theme of literature in the 21st century and our spiritual life will be a matter to which I apply myself throughout life.
droobles 4y ago
While I have a couple products I plunk along on, thinking on this question, my life's work has always been just to show up everyday. I've helped numerous people from non-traditional backgrounds get tech employment which is really fulfilling and cool. Trying to get back into music, that was my first love and with this post-hardcore revival coming around the corner I'm brushing up on my guitar and singing/screaming skills.
soiler 4y ago
I just want to enjoy my gifts (intelligence, creativity, autism powers), minimize my curses (ADHD, depression, autism perceptions), and inspire/empower other people. I don't have a grand scheme for the latter. It would be cool if I did. But I'm not going to kid myself into thinking that I can overhaul my life and personality without ending up in the hospital from stress trying to optimize my remaining time. I'm in my early 30s and only in the last 5 years have I a) begun to learn programming, b) begun to learn about my own conditions, c) made serious effort to set goals for myself (besides a few pretty amazing one-offs in my youth). I am not having children (I made sure of that a few months ago), but I'm happy for all the people here who are. I hope I can pass on something important to other peoples' children. Actually, one more bullet point on my life's work: I want to be able to wake up every day and feel zero pressure to live up to my potential. Maybe I'll do it, maybe not, but all the adults who drowned young me in expectations without knowing who I really am don't deserve to keep telling me how to feel about myself.
havaloc 4y ago
https://www.turbulenceforecast.com https://www.turbulenceforecast.com - created by me in 2005 and probably will keep doing it for the rest of my life. It's a site that has evolved from a self service site of aviation maps into a service that tells people how bumpy (turbulent) their next airline flight will be - although the maps are still there if you want to forecast yourself. I've had people tell me it's helped them take new jobs, start relationships, and I have had emails from people working at all the major airlines how they use the site in various dispatch centers, and flight attendants working flights - and this is despite the airlines providing their own tools for turbulence. It feels very impactful and meaningful.
swhitf 4y ago
https://metroretro.io https://metroretro.io - started as a hackathon project in 2016. I found people using the barely functioning prototype a year later for actual work meetings and decided to started improving it. I went perm on the project 3 years ago and this year passed 10k MRR (100% self funded). Still doing all the dev and ops solo, but I have two co-founders doing all the sales, support and finance stuff. We are going for a specialized whiteboard for software/agile angle rather than generalist whiteboard app currently. I think I'll be working on this product for a long time as I believe there is a new generation of collaboration software coming to replace the current leaders and I would like to be one of them. I think about this product night and day, and wouldn't want to be building anything else!
abnercoimbre 4y ago
My life's work is running tech conferences [0] free of sponsors. I'm all-in on organizing indie events which celebrate building quality software (at least we try.) The process includes challenging anyone's software and criticizing it if necessary -- that's why I can never enter into a sponsorship deal with Microsoft, for example. Turns out operating conferences in American cities is a costly proposition... Thankfully I have an audience that's supporting me so far. [0] https://handmade-seattle.com https://handmade-seattle.com
usgroup 4y ago
“We are noise about a zero mean, fighting entropy for a blip of cosmic time.”
mathgladiator 4y ago
I've got a longer post about this subject as im doing a birthday/performance review post, but im building a vertically integrated board game stupid starting with https://www.adama-platform.com/ https://www.adama-platform.com/
badpun 4y ago
So far - saving enough money to retire by 41 years old.
beej71 4y ago
Education. Spreading knowledge. Helping people improve themselves in the most effective way I can.
binarysolo 4y ago
Me, then my children, then my company (small 8-digit rev company), then my communities (community leader in a few niches with 100-10000 ppl). I know this is vagueposting a bit. I've been heavily influenced by my hobbies and upbringing (almost went pro as a musician, had a heavily religious childhood) to treat life as my practice, so I just try to establish fundamental basics and work on them incrementally over time. Just focus on the journey and the nuance of each breath, each step and how fulfilled I feel... less on the big numbers and milestones and fanfare.
GaryNumanVevo 4y ago
At the risk of meta-posting: A "Life's Work" is kind of a misnomer. Certainly, people are known for those things, but reducing your entire life to a narrow project or field is only going to misalign your expectations. Of course it's great to have a focus! I've definitely focused on high performance optics for most of my career (haha). But life is a vastly complicated and messy thing, and I've gotten the most satisfaction out of taking a step back from projects that were demanding all my time. It's all about balance.
l0b0 4y ago
I've been background searching for one forever, and never found anything I think I'd want to work on until I retire. Instead, I'm devoted to adding a bajillion little fixes and tweaks all over the place: - Speeding up a third party app - Productionising tools - Simplifying, testing, linting & formatting all the things - Reporting issues when I don't know how or what to fix - Generally just having a dialogue with communities, avoiding the jerks and cheering/actively supporting the nice people
icarito 4y ago
I think Linus's major contribution to the world is Git, name coincidences notwithstanding.
Glench 4y ago
So far it seems like it's being a therapist: http://glench.com/WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist/ http://glench.com/WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist/
cyberdata 4y ago
Raising my daughter. Guiding her so that she becomes a kind, good human being.
ezedv 4y ago
I have always been interested in technology and the potential for it to change the world, and that is what initially drew me to the web3 world. I am excited to be a part of this growing and dynamic community. Since I didn't have any experience in deploying or creating a Web3 project, I contacted Rather Labs (https://www.ratherlabs.com https://www.ratherlabs.com), a Blockchain page that helps people to create Web3 projects. From that moment on, my project was created and fully working. I hope this page can help contribute to the growth and development of the web3 world. If you have any questions or suggestions, I would love to hear from you.

hirvi74 4y ago

My life's work is surviving. Everything I do and have done has been to keep myself alive to some degree or another. Everything else is just a bunch of distractions and abstractions that boil down to same thing at the end of the day.

ElevenLathe 4y ago
Love this answer. Sometimes I feel like "merely" surviving is looked down upon, but the art of survival is the only lasting thing we can hand down the generations. The environment changes so rapidly (especially in the Anthropocene) that usually the best we can do is figure out how to survive right now. Anything else is superfluous if we can't do that.
- hirvi74 4y ago
  As my favorite philosopher, Alan Watts, once said when asked, "What is the meaning of life?" > “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
abnercoimbre 4y ago
I really like this view and have been adopting it often.

082349872349872 4y ago

I "do only what only I can do", which in practice mostly means grand-scheme-unimportant things for the animals (with people as a subset) in my life.

fuzzfactor 4y ago
With me it's the science of natural resources and their derivatives, with a strong emphasis on chemicals. Professionally applied over a lifetime focused on domestic & international commerce. These are things I will not be retiring from. When the ships get really big there will always be a situation where it's most valuable to have uniquely deep experience, now more than ever over a greater number of decades. Many other unrelated and unscientific things I will also continue for life as much as I can, but for work that's how simple it is.

jstx1 4y ago

Don't have one and don't expect to. Seems like an absurd expectation to have of oneself.

jameal 4y ago

I'm not sure what form it will take exactly, but I would say my life's work is to live as fully into my values as I can. I used to just want to have a nice job with autonomy and to be able to work from home, until I got it and I realized that it wasn't as fulfilling as I thought it would be. I had security but I was disconnected. There is so much disconnection in the world. We become disconnected from ourselves, from others and from reality. I think that it causes a lot of trouble for people personally and for society at large. I used to be a complete introvert and would become overwhelmed easily. Now I truly enjoy meeting new people and being put in new situations. I want to help other people with their personal development because I see it as the greatest lever for creating a more connected humanity. I love development but this is what I'm truly passionate about.

examplary_cable 4y ago
> I used to be a complete introvert and would become overwhelmed easily. Now I truly enjoy meeting new people and being put in new situations I see this a somewhat of an identity problem. If you pick "shy" identities for yourself, then they all correlate on being shy( e.g: Autistic, Programmer, Nerd etc). So the more strongly you feel about being X, the shy-er you'll become. That's why I don't like to call myself too many things because I sub-consciously attach the sub-traits of the personality unto myself.

f0e4c2f7 4y ago

I enjoy learning things and helping people. Most of what I do fits into one of those two categories.

throwaway22032 4y ago

Chilling out, maxin, relaxing all cool. More seriously, learning. We have enough of everything. Almost all of the technological breakthroughs I can think of have eventually been used to excess and ended up crippling us in some way, I'm quite content with just being.

qorrect 4y ago
> Almost all of the technological breakthroughs I can think of have eventually been used to excess and ended up crippling us in some way What do you mean crippling ? We're living longer than we did 100 years ago through advances in science in medicine, I see a lot of tech as net positive.
badpun 4y ago
How old are you? I was like that in my 20s and 30s, but in my 40s I'm becoming increasingly aware of my mortality. Just chilling does not feel like the best use of the rest of my time.

qdot76367 4y ago

I suspect https://buttplug.io https://buttplug.io is gonna keep me busy. I’ve already been working in the intimate haptics field for ~18 years and it’s remained interesting the whole time, so no plans on stopping.

sshine 4y ago
Don't you get numb at some point? Sorry, this subject is too funny. :-)
- qdot76367 4y ago
  That’s why it’s so fun to keep working on!
examplary_cable 4y ago
> https://buttplug.io https://buttplug.io LMAO. If that's what interests you ha!

Decabytes 4y ago

I've been trying to find my "life's work" for years. I've tried writing, painting, drawing, programming, linocuts, woodworking etc. I really want to find that thing but nothing has been fulfilling enough so far

ileitch 4y ago

While I’m unsure I’ll be using Swift for the rest of my life, I’ll continue to work on my little tool to detect unused code for as long as I can. It’s my most popular open-source contribution, and it brings me joy knowing others find it useful. https://github.com/peripheryapp/periphery https://github.com/peripheryapp/periphery

jamil7 4y ago
Thanks for your work on this I had no idea it existed, definitely going to try it out.

sassyonsunday 4y ago

My family. I never thought I would be able to have a family when I was growing up but now I have a husband and we have a baby so I'll spend my life making sure our family is happy and healthy as best I can.

iancmceachern 4y ago

My family. I design medical devices, have designed many real good ones. But that is just work.

scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
Looked up your portfolio. Are you hiring? ;)
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  Maybe, send me an email!

duringwork12 4y ago

I'm trying to add a ping pong table to a park next to my house. Got like 2k of the 5k i need so far. After that probably will try to get a dog fence and a pickleball court.

CincinnatiMan 4y ago
Is the ping pong table going to be outdoors? I've thought about pursuing something similar but I feel like playing ping pong outside would be an exercise in frustration if you had even the slightest bit of wind.
- baandang 4y ago
  I grew up playing ping pong in the backyard because we had no room inside. It sucks just as much as you would imagine it would because of the wind. It is not quite as bad as trying to surf on a pond but it is down that path.

CincinnatiMan 4y ago

My children, and hopefully eventually grandchildren. Making sure they grow up to be good people and are happy.

collyw 4y ago
It's quite encouraging to see a few answers like this.

Moxdi 4y ago

happiness, i want to master happiness, i want to enjoy my life, be the happiest i can be, for as many prolonged lenghts i can have, recently i was happy for whole month while doing my skydiving course, i plan on doing more of that, once i get bored of it i will find something else but yeah personal happiness

nisegami 4y ago

I've posted some really funny tweets. I'm content with that being my life's work.

unintendedcons 4y ago

Founding a school for future leaders, starting in Toronto. Combining the Sudbury Valley School model with the Free Software movement, a democratic makerspace school.

mark_l_watson 4y ago

I want to be content almost all the time. Professionally, around 1978 I had an epiphany: I realized that I was sometimes very good/lucky at solving ‘show stopper’ type problems at work, and I 99% freed myself from worrying about my job. I started a hard policy of working just 32 hours a week (taking 80% salary) and prioritized learning things that I cared about. I also became more generous in putting energy into helping coworkers; I have had 6 visits this year from old co-workers (I live off the beaten path in Sedona Arizona) so I don’t feel like I am just bragging when I say I have respected coworkers and cared about them. So really, my life’s work is learning what I want to learn in tech and spirituality (mostly Self Realization Fellowship and also Buddhism). EDIT: I forgot the ‘big thing’: I love my family and friends.

rmelton 4y ago

COSMOS: An open source command and control software. Currently primarily used with satellites, but also great for home automation. https://openc3.com https://openc3.com

zmgsabst 4y ago

Explaining how the Curry-Howard square [1] relates to DNNs and AI more broadly. Not a full time job, but been at it fives years and still going… so that seems the strongest contender so far. [1] - Alegebra-geometry equivalence commutes with logic-computation equivalence; this provides a map between the world of type statements and the world of diffy-Q networks.

082349872349872 4y ago
ok, I'll bite: algebraically logic is being and computation is becoming; how does this geometrically map into denotations and diffyqs?
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  You have something like this [1], where you have clear maps from the type theory world into the typed representation of software and the category map structures to Euclidean VM/difference EQ representation of software. This is classic Curry-Howard. And algebra/geometry split of being/becoming happens in both the type theory/category theory and typed program/difference equation relations. [1] - https://zmichaelgehlke.com/images/curry-howard-square-graphic.jpg https://zmichaelgehlke.com/images/curry-howard-square-graphi...
  - 082349872349872 4y ago
    could I get a quick example? let's say the top of the square is: A * A->B -------- <------> f(x), where f:A->B and x:A B what does that interval map onto on the bottom of the square? is the inverse map also interesting? Edit: are you familiar with Vicker's work? if so, would it help understand (I have it saved off but have not gotten into it yet) the content of the square? https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~sjv/talks.php https://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~sjv/talks.php
    - zmgsabst 4y ago
      I have two white papers on transporting shape types to difference equations on images; and am working on a third related to models of Zn. https://www.zmgsabstract.com/whitepapers/shapes-as-digital-images https://www.zmgsabstract.com/whitepapers/shapes-as-digital-i... https://www.zmgsabstract.com/whitepapers/shapes-have-operations https://www.zmgsabstract.com/whitepapers/shapes-have-operati... This is pretty new; but the main interest is actually the inverse mapping — can you recover a type theory that is the “internal language” of the diagram modeling the difference equations that (eg) represents a DNN? That would be the “effective semantics” of the DNN, expressed as typed statements. - - - I’m following the work of (eg) Michael Shulman on attaching types to categories; and my own experience as an SDE on the logic, types, difference equation side. (There’s some papers on programs as Euclidean VMs I used as well, but I don’t have them handy.) The weakest link is category to difference equations; but that exists to some degree already due to physics — and I’m muddling my way through implementing that to gain deeper insight myself.

jcpst 4y ago

I used to be into a ton of different things, I still find a lot in the world fascinating. But it's too much. Over time I have been slowly carving out the life I want to live. Cutting out the distractions that are only mildly interesting. It's down to: * My family's well-being, which includes myself. * My music career (composer/songwriter). * A continual series of actions to keep tipping my work/life balance farther and farther to the "life" side. * Camping.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

I'm writing software to help people Recover from drug addiction. I expect to be doing it until I pop my clogs. The coroner will need to rub "YTЯƎWϘ" off my cheek.

skhm 4y ago
Do you have a link or anything you can point to? This is a great calling.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  I don't really take credit for that stuff in public, but it's not a secret. Feel free to contact me.

recursivedoubts 4y ago

my children, first & foremost technically: https://htmx.org https://htmx.org - bringing hypermedia back as a viable web architecture https://hyperscript.org https://hyperscript.org - bringing HyperTalk back as a viable scripting language https://grugbrain.dev https://grugbrain.dev - bringing humility back as a viable programming vibe

examplary_cable 4y ago
> https://htmx.org https://htmx.org I love htmlx. That you so much for this. I'm currently using https://alpinejs.dev/ https://alpinejs.dev/ because it allows me to work directly with HTML so I can have meta-programming capabilities that React.js/Vue.js simply could not handle. That you for htmlx!
jonjacky 4y ago
grugbrain.dev is wonderful. Also, it is an example of the simplicity it advocates: One file, simple HTML with a bit of simple CSS inline at the start of the file. That's all! Simple and effective.

profstasiak 4y ago

just mindless grind. one hour commute 8 hours of mindless CRUD rest of the time spent in front of screens.

PainfullyNormal 4y ago
I used to hate the grind, too. But, as somebody who's been out of work longer than he thought he would be and is starting to wonder how he's going to pay the rent, I long for a bit of the grind right now.

cwbrandsma 4y ago

Raising my kids, and I have 5 of them. I've built some cool software, which has built companies and positively affected the lives of millions of people, but in the end that was just a paycheck. One kid will be a nurse, another is in engineering school, another seems to be destined to be an artist, and the last two can do almost anything. But even more importantly, they are all kind people (nerdy, but kind). I will take that.

082349872349872 4y ago
> Adult: What do you want to be when you grow up? Child: An honest, brave, compassionate human being. Adult: No. I mean, how do you want to sell your labor? https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/328209-what-do-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up?store_id=1362 https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/328209-what-do-you-want-to...

rektide 4y ago

I'd like to work piercing the veil between user & software. The mechanisms & purpose of software should be made visible, and be up for live modification & experimentation, ideally in a semi-safe / isolated / containerized virtuality. At some point, we need to move beyond there being a scribes vs everyone else distinction, and start to have a more holistic engageable computing, and this seems like a strong requisite. Presently, I believe client-side web, where computing represents itself as DOM (ex: react-router) serves as a good base to start to work from, where we can build more elements that help us view/examine/operate on the other elements.

akuro 4y ago

Statistical mechanics, molecular simulation and high performance computing. That is the centre-point of nearly all of my effort in life. Nearly everything I do is based around getting a deeper understanding of this field or being able to employ my understanding more effectively. My entire life is based around the academic route. I fell in love with a girl whose great desire in life was to settle securely in one place and have a family. To have a 9-5 job where she could spend the rest of the time in leisure with the person she loves, who presumably would also have a more laidback career. This is the opposite of the life of an academic. Stress, poor schedules and constant intense work and study. A professor who I deeply respect worked from 6AM to 11PM, 6 days a week for most of his post-doctoral years. I personally love the intensity of an academic life and working at breakneck pace is something I deeply enjoy. Recently, I chose my scientific career over her. I suppose that I will be wondering my entire life whether I made the right choice.

strikelaserclaw 4y ago
if it helps, you would have regretted in some part no matter what route you chose.
Dracophoenix 4y ago
Not to pry, but was she also a physics PhD and how long did your relationship last before you made the choice to pursue science?

kelseyfrog 4y ago

My life's work is embodying my individual soul-form[1] in the most poetic life-affirming[2] way possible. 1. Gerson, L. (Ed.). (2017). Plotinus: The Enneads (G. Boys-Stones, J. Dillon, R. King, A. Smith, & J. Wilberding, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/9780511736490 2. Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Will to Power (Walter Kaufmann and R. J. Hollingdale translators). New York: Random House, 1967. pp. 532–533

zackmorris 4y ago

Coping. I had lists like yours in the 1990s, but working to make rent eventually expanded to use up all of my time. Now I practice meditation and stoicism, work on myself with bodybuilding and kickboxing, but have no expectation that things will improve. That said, I didn't know about manifestation, or such basic principles as the difference between reason and meaning. So I believe that I inadvertently shifted into this difficult reality. In the end, all that matters is consciousness and being alive. So I silenced my inner monologue, experienced ego death and the dark night of the soul, and am putting my energy into reconnecting with love for all things. Practicing non-attachment and moving with the flow of life as things unfold with divine timing. Loosely, imagine if everything was the opposite. Imagine if there were no billionaires, just rising median incomes and UBI. No dogma, no politics, just living life in peace. Being able to self-actualize and invent. Not.. whatever all this is. That's why I dream to let it all go and shift into the new age.

conorcleary 4y ago
Sounds like you either smoke too much weed or not enough.

jasfi 4y ago

https://inventai.xyz https://inventai.xyz - Starting with a UI for generative AI art, but I want to take this all the way to AGI one day. https://logictrader.xyz https://logictrader.xyz - Automated trader, right now for crypto/Binance only, but plans to expand to other crypto exchanges and then stocks. Rules help to stop people making mistakes in trading.

fsn4dN69ey 4y ago

Being really good at Dota. Sounds kind of ridiculous, but I make plenty of money for my age, very very secure/comfortable financially. However, I've been playing Dota for the better part of the last 12 years, spent some of those years being in the 0.01% of players, friends with current pros, etc. I love it and could honestly do it for the rest of my life.

hackily 4y ago
That's so great to hear! I went to high school with someone who took a path like yours - his parents were not sure about his ability to live a comfortable life going into pro Dota. But I'm so glad you folks are able to do what you love and make a good living.
- fsn4dN69ey 4y ago
  To clarify, I work as a dev or engineer or whatever, but pretty much every other bit of free time goes into it. At this point, 16k hours and counting.

cableshaft 4y ago

Closest thing I have to a life's work is probably my Proximity game. * I released the original[1] as a flash game on Newgrounds eighteen years ago and it blew up, played millions of times across a bunch of websites * Worked on a J2ME version for my mobile phone (it worked but never released it, probably should have) * Worked on a sequel in Flash, then started learning about XNA and being able to put games on Xbox 360 with it, so I used that to learn C# and submitted to a game dev contest Microsoft hosted (and was a finalist in it. They also invited me to be one of the first demos for their Xbox Live Indie Games service - 1 of 8 - and was briefly shown during their keynote address at GDC that year, and was playable at one of their kiosks there. I happened to be at that GDC and got to watch people trying it live, it was surreal). I was at that GDC because the game got me a game producer job in the video game industry for a small publisher.[2] * Saw iOS starting to blow up and decided to port my sequel to iOS and learn Objective-C and some OpenGL ES at the same time. Did okay but not amazing, I didn't really know how to market it on there, just kind of got lost amongst other games. It's not up there anymore as eventually it wasn't worth keeping up with the required updates. I plan to support an iOS version again with Proximity 3[3] * Remember when Kindle had games on it? You could apply to be a developer for that, and I did, and I was accepted. I got pretty far along in development (mostly just working on game options and menus still), but got distracted by college just long enough that Active Content was starting to be on its way out, so it never got released. * Mostly made a Pico-8 version. Once again core gameplay was done, but got distracted at menus. At some point I want to sit down and finish it finally. * Ported that Pico-8 version to PlayDate in a couple weekends since they are both Lua. Still waiting to receive my PlayDate so I can test it on the device. The graphics are super basic though, since I don't know how to do 2-color graphics well (white/black and dithering), and I'm worried about releasing it without some help there because I'm already seeing some beautiful puzzle games (comparatively) being released on that system. * Worked together with a friend to make a physical board game and pieces prototype using a laser cutter. Talked to a couple of publishers but most are too hesitant to release a straight abstract game (just hex tiles with colors and numbers), despite its past popularity. Hoping to release a new version out there and maybe that will help them change their mind. Either that or get some other board games designs of mine released, which may convince them to take a chance on it. One other game design is signed and in the publisher's queue (still a ways back, unfortunately). * Working on Proximity 3 right now, using Monogame. I originally ported my Xbox 360 version of 2 to Monogame, and was just going to clean up and upgrade and add new features to it, but after a while I started getting really annoyed by resolution issues and having to redo art a bunch since it was all 2D art, so I decided to restart from scratch using 3D. Core gameplay loop is done and I've been spending my spare time working on the surrounding interface and options and redesigning some things so that a Twitch streamer can play it along with their viewers via the chat. Hoping to get that into Steam early access within the next 6 months. * Have an idea for Proximity 4 already that makes the game a lot deeper. I'll probably switch to Unity at that point, because I want to make it VR-compatible. * I also need to make a new web version at some point, and I'd love for it to have room codes so people can join from anywhere. I'd also love to store the stats in a database and slowly build up a lichess style database of moves. I work on other games as well, and that's part of the reason why there was such a gap between Proximity 2 and Proximity 3 (over 10 years at this point), because I took a detour to try my hand at designing a bunch of other board games (also I was in the video game industry for a while with companies that had contracts that may not have looked too fondly on new video game releases by me), but I think it's time for a sequel. [1]: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/183428 https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/183428 [2]: https://youtu.be/Yqe0hS7AvOE https://youtu.be/Yqe0hS7AvOE [3]: https://youtu.be/uy08ohBLGhE https://youtu.be/uy08ohBLGhE

bko 4y ago

Maybe not what you're looking for, but my children. I have a lot of hobbies and try to contribute what I can with my skill set. But I'm honest with myself. Nothing meaningful I create in the digital form will outlive me so I'm never overly attached. I've also lived long enough to see my interests change drastically that I am confident I won't have the same interests in 5, 10, 20 years (nor would I want to) However with children I hope to serve as an influence and guide for my entire life.

kcplate 4y ago
Same. One piece of software that I contributed to is going on it’s 23rd year of use (but that is likely it’s last year). My youngest child is much older than that. When I am long gone, my kids and grandkids and the guidance I provided them will be my legacy. Frankly it’s my hope that my career accomplishments are not even mentioned the minute after I walk out the proverbial door as a retiree let alone in my eulogy.

shakna 4y ago

My daughter. I've been working on a stack-based language, that is highly dynamic, incorporating as much of the theory work around F-expressions as I can. For a number of years. I'm getting close to getting it fully-realised into something that is both performant, and shouldn't feel too odd for most programmers, even if they're unfamiliar with stack languages. That work? Doesn't matter at all. What matters is how my daughter learns to respect herself, and position herself in this world. I've been known to be drop everything, when she asks me what a Gruffalo is.

samsquire 4y ago

I'm journalling computer and software ideas in the open and I have been journalling since 2013. I am up to 700 ideas and 25 startup ideas. Here are links to them https://github.com/samsquire/ideas https://github.com/samsquire/ideas https://github.com/samsquire/ideas2 https://github.com/samsquire/ideas2 https://github.com/samsquire/ideas3 https://github.com/samsquire/ideas3 https://github.com/samsquire/ideas4 https://github.com/samsquire/ideas4 (incomplete) https://GitHub.com/samsquire/startups https://GitHub.com/samsquire/startups I am working on a multithreaded programming language interpreter and compiler. I am interested in parallelism, asynchrony and multithreading.

obloid 4y ago

It seems like there is a lot of pressure these days for people to find their "passion" or their life's work. But I think there are only a small subset of people who have that kind of single-minded focus. I used to get anxious about the fact that I did not have a passion. I have many varied interests and hobbies, but that dilution of interest prevents me from really excelling in one thing or having anything close to a "life's work". I've now realized it's ok to not have a that passion for one thing. I'll never create my version of a Dwarf Fortress. I'll create small things that make me happy, and know a little bit about a lot of things. And I'm ok with that. edit:grammar

examplary_cable 4y ago
> but that dilution of interest prevents me from really excelling in one thing or having anything close to a "life's work". Same. I feel like I might stretch myself too thin and not be able to "become" anyone because of this. It's also because every low-hanging fruit was discovered or invented already, so presumably, in order to invent anything new you would be required to focus 100% of your time for 1 thing. And I hate this. So it's not possible for me to be interested in multiple things and avoid this feeling that I'm wasting my time? Anyways, I'm also ok with that. I'll let interest guide me in my life journey.

bsenftner 4y ago

This is something I've knowingly devoted my life. It's an immature idea / realization / dream I had at age 12, which was about 1976. I saw a presentation by Ohio State's 3D computer graphics group, basically showing off the then-new field of 3D computer graphics. I thought in my 12 year old head "some day someone will make realistic versions of ordinary people in animation, and that person is gonna be rich using these to sell stuff to those same people." And since that time I have in one way or another been working towards that goal. I've been a 3D graphics pioneer, game console OS and game dev, VFX technical artist, MBA, the author of a patent on automated actor replacement, and the failed CEO of a startup doing actor replacement for advertising. At this point my emotional state on the entire effort is mixed and complex. I feel "personalized media" is inevitable and on the cusp happening, and without me, despite my working on this at high levels for decades.

bsenftner 4y ago
As I expected, the lowest voted post. Nobody understands the power of media with the media consumer embedded into it. This is a new, extremely powerful form of media. It is an empathy engine. The use of actor embedding in media for advertisements is merely the financial foundation to launch a new form of highly empathic storytelling. Consider the racists and sexists in our society and how their thoughts would change after experiencing feature film quality talents producing media where they are minorities? Nobody seems to grasp the positive capabilities possible with ordinary people automagically embedded into media. I just get "I hate ads" and pornographic push back.

_xnmw 4y ago

I live in Ukraine (Canadian-born, not ethnically Ukrainian). My life's work is to help rebuild this country and society while building a fintech startup. I also wonder if I will be able to learn a second language as an adult to the point of high-level mastery i.e. to contribute to the Ukrainian literary canon.

phaedrus 4y ago

My life's work since I was a kid in the 90s was to make a computer game. Then in the mid-2000s I started working with someone I'd met at college to make an ambitious online multiplayer game, but the effort fizzled out. I continued working alone on the parts of it I had written myself. So I was working on the same game code (eventually just the game's engine; I had lost sight of the original goal) through the 2000s and 2010s. I had an initial period of great productivity (in lines-of-code), but the more I wrote the more work it was fighting bit-rot. As operating systems, graphics technology, and the C++ standard itself changed, I was perpetually playing catch-up to build-breaking changes rather than making new progress. Over the course of time my git history had gotten convoluted, and I had also split things into a couple of repos. I considered re-merging everything back into one repository, and was debating whether to try to consolidate all the history or start a fresh repo with existing sources. My friends suggested: do neither; don't even start with the old source files. I could always mine my old work for useful code, but I didn't need to pull it all in just because it was there. I.e. after more than a decade and a half of life's work that had only resulted in treading water trying to keep up with the changing technology I could just... stop. Now instead of trying to push one codebase forward against the relentless march of entropy, I'm trying to work from a simpler premise: what do I need to build a game jam submission, and back-fill what I need from that goal. Even that goalpost keeps receding before me. (Any given game jam I might target will be over before I get the first pixels on the screen.) I guess I just work at a slower pace than the world moves. With ambitious projects there's two ways to go about them: forward-chaining or backward-chaining. You can start from the beginning and build up (forward-chaining) then attempt to bend your arc of progress back Earth for eventual release. You're always in danger of discovering you've described a wider arc than you're able to close. Or you can start from what does a released thing look like and backward-chain to putting your original ideas into it. What I've learned is neither strategy provides any guarantee, but if I'm still having this much trouble with the latter I certainly was never going to be able to close the loop on the former.

scottLobster 4y ago

Family and moving the technological ball forward as best I can, I particularly gravitate toward aerospace/spaceflight (manned and unmanned). Balancing the two is a bitch. On one hand I can't/won't neglect my family by taking a job that requires sleeping under my desk/70 hour weeks for extended periods, despite how much I would probably enjoy the experience. I was stuck taking care of/recovering from a bad family situation during my twenties, and married soon after, so my opportunity to take such a role has passed, at least until my infant/toddler kids leave home in 17-19 years. Likewise I can't move too far away from extended family, wouldn't be fair to wife/kids and I actually get along well with said extended family, so it's good for me as well. So I can't work for SpaceX or NASA JPL (no family in CA), not that I have any desire to live in CA or TX anyway. On the other hand I want to set an example for my kids (and myself) that you can have a family and still do cool stuff for a living, even if it naturally limits your options. Just grinding away at a soul-sucking 9-5 for another 35 years sounds like hell, even if it provides a decent standard of living. I should know, it's been hell for the last several years while I get my life in order/train up for jobs I actually want. The "ignore your job and just focus on your family" angle is defeat to me, and if I tried to force myself to think that way it would just manifest as resentment. I busted my ass to get this far, and I didn't do it just to give up on half of what I want. Hopefully going to be ready to start applying some time in 2024, and we'll see what's available/what I can do. Either way I intend to build as strong family and as badass a career as my constraints allow, I imagine that's more than enough work to fill a life.

blockwriter 4y ago

Broadly speaking, I would say my life's work is the intersection of literature and what I call my spiritual mission. When I started writing, I was of the mindset that all of one's life should be dedicated to the task of writing, to the exclusion of happiness, if need be, and my happiness was excluded in practice. Career disappointments and a recognition of my folly put in mind the importance of the context surrounding one's vocation. It is a creative effort to curate the life that is separate from the work of letters. Enduring the psychological crisis that followed these all too predictable disappointments, I realized that I had an abiding belief in the good of engaging with the process of reading, writing, and publishing literature. Over time, I came to see how isolated I was, due partly to my person, but partly, also, to the wider concerns of the world. I wanted to solve the problem of isolation, to the extent that it was in my power to do so, for others, feeling that this, in turn, would make meaning of my personal crisis. I went about doing so in my own ways, often ineffectually, but still feeling I was on to something, until the pandemic. Although I found that the surgical extraction of the social life I had managed to cultivate, save for my intimates, whom I still saw, meant that I could not write as I had before, I could continue to work on fostering the environment I felt literature and the writers of literature required in order to thrive. To make a long story short, I began investing in a platform that is meant to augment the process of writing and reading. They are simple tools, but they will be part of a coffeeshop environment, which is already under construction, where I hope commerce and literature can be wed to the benefit of the shop's regular patrons. On July 4th, I could hear the reports from Central Street in Highland Park, which left six dead. I became obsessed with the tragedy of how suddenly and capriciously death can come, especially in relation to one's spiritual mission, which I feel is often left in a state of disorder, in ways big and small. The notion of completing one's spiritual mission in life, or in maintaining one's spiritual mission in a state of completeness, does not seem without our nature, just as the tendency to maintain its disorder does not seem innate to our nature. To develop the theme of literature in the 21st century and our spiritual life will be a matter to which I apply myself throughout life.

droobles 4y ago

While I have a couple products I plunk along on, thinking on this question, my life's work has always been just to show up everyday. I've helped numerous people from non-traditional backgrounds get tech employment which is really fulfilling and cool. Trying to get back into music, that was my first love and with this post-hardcore revival coming around the corner I'm brushing up on my guitar and singing/screaming skills.

soiler 4y ago

I just want to enjoy my gifts (intelligence, creativity, autism powers), minimize my curses (ADHD, depression, autism perceptions), and inspire/empower other people. I don't have a grand scheme for the latter. It would be cool if I did. But I'm not going to kid myself into thinking that I can overhaul my life and personality without ending up in the hospital from stress trying to optimize my remaining time. I'm in my early 30s and only in the last 5 years have I a) begun to learn programming, b) begun to learn about my own conditions, c) made serious effort to set goals for myself (besides a few pretty amazing one-offs in my youth). I am not having children (I made sure of that a few months ago), but I'm happy for all the people here who are. I hope I can pass on something important to other peoples' children. Actually, one more bullet point on my life's work: I want to be able to wake up every day and feel zero pressure to live up to my potential. Maybe I'll do it, maybe not, but all the adults who drowned young me in expectations without knowing who I really am don't deserve to keep telling me how to feel about myself.

havaloc 4y ago

https://www.turbulenceforecast.com https://www.turbulenceforecast.com - created by me in 2005 and probably will keep doing it for the rest of my life. It's a site that has evolved from a self service site of aviation maps into a service that tells people how bumpy (turbulent) their next airline flight will be - although the maps are still there if you want to forecast yourself. I've had people tell me it's helped them take new jobs, start relationships, and I have had emails from people working at all the major airlines how they use the site in various dispatch centers, and flight attendants working flights - and this is despite the airlines providing their own tools for turbulence. It feels very impactful and meaningful.

swhitf 4y ago

https://metroretro.io https://metroretro.io - started as a hackathon project in 2016. I found people using the barely functioning prototype a year later for actual work meetings and decided to started improving it. I went perm on the project 3 years ago and this year passed 10k MRR (100% self funded). Still doing all the dev and ops solo, but I have two co-founders doing all the sales, support and finance stuff. We are going for a specialized whiteboard for software/agile angle rather than generalist whiteboard app currently. I think I'll be working on this product for a long time as I believe there is a new generation of collaboration software coming to replace the current leaders and I would like to be one of them. I think about this product night and day, and wouldn't want to be building anything else!

abnercoimbre 4y ago

My life's work is running tech conferences [0] free of sponsors. I'm all-in on organizing indie events which celebrate building quality software (at least we try.) The process includes challenging anyone's software and criticizing it if necessary -- that's why I can never enter into a sponsorship deal with Microsoft, for example. Turns out operating conferences in American cities is a costly proposition... Thankfully I have an audience that's supporting me so far. [0] https://handmade-seattle.com https://handmade-seattle.com

usgroup 4y ago

“We are noise about a zero mean, fighting entropy for a blip of cosmic time.”

mathgladiator 4y ago

I've got a longer post about this subject as im doing a birthday/performance review post, but im building a vertically integrated board game stupid starting with https://www.adama-platform.com/ https://www.adama-platform.com/

badpun 4y ago

So far - saving enough money to retire by 41 years old.

beej71 4y ago

Education. Spreading knowledge. Helping people improve themselves in the most effective way I can.

binarysolo 4y ago

Me, then my children, then my company (small 8-digit rev company), then my communities (community leader in a few niches with 100-10000 ppl). I know this is vagueposting a bit. I've been heavily influenced by my hobbies and upbringing (almost went pro as a musician, had a heavily religious childhood) to treat life as my practice, so I just try to establish fundamental basics and work on them incrementally over time. Just focus on the journey and the nuance of each breath, each step and how fulfilled I feel... less on the big numbers and milestones and fanfare.

GaryNumanVevo 4y ago

At the risk of meta-posting: A "Life's Work" is kind of a misnomer. Certainly, people are known for those things, but reducing your entire life to a narrow project or field is only going to misalign your expectations. Of course it's great to have a focus! I've definitely focused on high performance optics for most of my career (haha). But life is a vastly complicated and messy thing, and I've gotten the most satisfaction out of taking a step back from projects that were demanding all my time. It's all about balance.

l0b0 4y ago

I've been background searching for one forever, and never found anything I think I'd want to work on until I retire. Instead, I'm devoted to adding a bajillion little fixes and tweaks all over the place: - Speeding up a third party app - Productionising tools - Simplifying, testing, linting & formatting all the things - Reporting issues when I don't know how or what to fix - Generally just having a dialogue with communities, avoiding the jerks and cheering/actively supporting the nice people

icarito 4y ago

I think Linus's major contribution to the world is Git, name coincidences notwithstanding.

Glench 4y ago

So far it seems like it's being a therapist: http://glench.com/WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist/ http://glench.com/WhyIQuitTechAndBecameATherapist/

cyberdata 4y ago

Raising my daughter. Guiding her so that she becomes a kind, good human being.

ezedv 4y ago

I have always been interested in technology and the potential for it to change the world, and that is what initially drew me to the web3 world. I am excited to be a part of this growing and dynamic community. Since I didn't have any experience in deploying or creating a Web3 project, I contacted Rather Labs (https://www.ratherlabs.com https://www.ratherlabs.com), a Blockchain page that helps people to create Web3 projects. From that moment on, my project was created and fully working. I hope this page can help contribute to the growth and development of the web3 world. If you have any questions or suggestions, I would love to hear from you.