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For my part I hope to retire early so I can spend more of my time building and implementing the things I enjoy... I'm not criticizing your desire - it's just t

by vidarh 3y ago

For my part I hope to retire early so I can spend more of my time building and implementing the things I enjoy... I'm not criticizing your desire - it's just that for me, the learning and exploration and building is the fun part. As long as it's still either useful for me, or I have the memories, it doesn't matter if it's still used by others, though that can be fun too. I couldn't imagine having made this my career otherwise.

zikduruqe 3y ago
I remember a time without internet and without cellphones. I have helped build those things from scratch, all the way until where we are today. I have great memories and have made a living from it. But, it is not satisfying to the soul. I just want to get to a time where I am not glued to the internet and do not carry a cellphone. The absolute freedom it brings to me is something that a lot of people are not familiar with today. I don't want to get into too many details, but a side gig I have, when I bring people out into the field, I take their phones from them. And to watch the withdrawal that they have from the lack of dopamine hits is just sad.
- nightski 3y ago
  That's fine as a personal anecdote, and to be honest you sound burned out. But making absolute statements like "it is not satisfying to the soul" does not help your argument at all. Happy to provide my anecdote. In my 40s and I still live to build/create.
  - zikduruqe 3y ago
    > But making absolute statements like "it is not satisfying to the soul" does not help your argument at all. It is my soul. If it is not satisfied, who are you to tell me different? We all have to chop wood, carry water.
    - ziddoap 3y ago
      They are taking issue with you writing: >it is not satisfying to _the_ soul. Instead of writing: >it is not satisfying to _my_ soul. The first could be interpreted as you speaking generally (i.e. you think no ones soul can be satisfied by building tech or whatever), the second makes it clear that you are talking about specifically your soul not being satisfied.
  - UncleOxidant 3y ago
    It's zikduruqe's soul not yours. In my 40s I would have said the same as you. In my 60s it's starting to feel meaningless. People are in different stages of life.
    - nasmorn 3y ago
      Shit I am in my 40s and it is already pretty meaningless
- vidarh 3y ago
  It satisfies my soul. I accept that does not yours. I have no problem putting it aside; I enjoy e.g. going for walks and sitting down to meditate. But even then, if anything, I'm likely to come out of it bursting with new ideas for code I want to write or things I want to explore, and I hope that feeling never goes away.
ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
Same here. I'm getting ready to explore ML applications on Apple systems, but first, I need to finally get around to learning SwiftUI as a shipping app system (I have only been playing with it, so far. Doing ship work is an order of magnitude more than the simple apps that are featured in "Learn SwiftUI" courses). I'll probably do that, switching over to using SwiftUI for all of my test harnesses. My test harnesses tend to be fairly robust systems. So far, it looks like I may not be using it to actually ship stuff, for a while. Auto Layout is a huge pain, but it is very, very powerful. I can basically do anything I want, in UI, with it. SwiftUI seems to make using default Apple UI ridiculously easy, but the jury is out, as to how far off the beaten path I can go. BTW: I have been "retired," since 2017. I wanted to keep working, but no one wanted me, so I set up a small company to buy my toys, and kept coding. I also love learning new stuff.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  Ugh. Just slammed into a wall. SwiftUI is very bad at working with maps, and they still have a long way to go. Since most of the stuff I'm doing, these days, is highly location-dependent, I can't compromise. I have been reading about people hitting these types of walls for a couple of years, and thought that Apple has worked around it. I suspect that the issue is with trying to use UIKit stuff inside of SwiftUI, and I was trying to avoid UIViewRepresentable (because it's a kludge). Back to UIKit. This stinks. :(
dkasper 3y ago
I feel similar, but keep going another 10 years and we might lose the desire for that type of fun too, not to mention the “building” part might look radically different and not be “fun” anymore. Or maybe it will be more fun, but point is things change.
- vidarh 3y ago
  The building looks how we want it, though. A large part of my building has been replacing things because I don't like how it works. E.g. a few years ago I switched to my own text editor. Now I'm running my own text editor in my own terminal, using "my" (in this case a port from C to Ruby; the C version was not mine) font renderer, running under my own window manager, using my own file manager and my own desktop switcher... And while some of the above had reasons, I am itching to rewrite more of my stack, and mostly for fun or out of curiosity than any need. Things looking radically different is more likely to affect my enjoyment of it as a job than in general, though, because for my side projects I can build things as I please, using the tools I want (and mostly have written myself), and can ignore everything I don't like. I absolutely agree things change, but I've been doing this for 42 years now, and so far it doesn't feel any different, so I'm going to guess I'll stick to this for some time still.

by vidarh 3y ago

zikduruqe 3y ago

I remember a time without internet and without cellphones. I have helped build those things from scratch, all the way until where we are today. I have great memories and have made a living from it. But, it is not satisfying to the soul. I just want to get to a time where I am not glued to the internet and do not carry a cellphone. The absolute freedom it brings to me is something that a lot of people are not familiar with today. I don't want to get into too many details, but a side gig I have, when I bring people out into the field, I take their phones from them. And to watch the withdrawal that they have from the lack of dopamine hits is just sad.

nightski 3y ago
That's fine as a personal anecdote, and to be honest you sound burned out. But making absolute statements like "it is not satisfying to the soul" does not help your argument at all. Happy to provide my anecdote. In my 40s and I still live to build/create.
- zikduruqe 3y ago
  > But making absolute statements like "it is not satisfying to the soul" does not help your argument at all. It is my soul. If it is not satisfied, who are you to tell me different? We all have to chop wood, carry water.
  - ziddoap 3y ago
    They are taking issue with you writing: >it is not satisfying to _the_ soul. Instead of writing: >it is not satisfying to _my_ soul. The first could be interpreted as you speaking generally (i.e. you think no ones soul can be satisfied by building tech or whatever), the second makes it clear that you are talking about specifically your soul not being satisfied.
- UncleOxidant 3y ago
  It's zikduruqe's soul not yours. In my 40s I would have said the same as you. In my 60s it's starting to feel meaningless. People are in different stages of life.
  - nasmorn 3y ago
    Shit I am in my 40s and it is already pretty meaningless
vidarh 3y ago
It satisfies my soul. I accept that does not yours. I have no problem putting it aside; I enjoy e.g. going for walks and sitting down to meditate. But even then, if anything, I'm likely to come out of it bursting with new ideas for code I want to write or things I want to explore, and I hope that feeling never goes away.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago

Same here. I'm getting ready to explore ML applications on Apple systems, but first, I need to finally get around to learning SwiftUI as a shipping app system (I have only been playing with it, so far. Doing ship work is an order of magnitude more than the simple apps that are featured in "Learn SwiftUI" courses). I'll probably do that, switching over to using SwiftUI for all of my test harnesses. My test harnesses tend to be fairly robust systems. So far, it looks like I may not be using it to actually ship stuff, for a while. Auto Layout is a huge pain, but it is very, very powerful. I can basically do anything I want, in UI, with it. SwiftUI seems to make using default Apple UI ridiculously easy, but the jury is out, as to how far off the beaten path I can go. BTW: I have been "retired," since 2017. I wanted to keep working, but no one wanted me, so I set up a small company to buy my toys, and kept coding. I also love learning new stuff.

ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
Ugh. Just slammed into a wall. SwiftUI is very bad at working with maps, and they still have a long way to go. Since most of the stuff I'm doing, these days, is highly location-dependent, I can't compromise. I have been reading about people hitting these types of walls for a couple of years, and thought that Apple has worked around it. I suspect that the issue is with trying to use UIKit stuff inside of SwiftUI, and I was trying to avoid UIViewRepresentable (because it's a kludge). Back to UIKit. This stinks. :(

dkasper 3y ago

I feel similar, but keep going another 10 years and we might lose the desire for that type of fun too, not to mention the “building” part might look radically different and not be “fun” anymore. Or maybe it will be more fun, but point is things change.

vidarh 3y ago
The building looks how we want it, though. A large part of my building has been replacing things because I don't like how it works. E.g. a few years ago I switched to my own text editor. Now I'm running my own text editor in my own terminal, using "my" (in this case a port from C to Ruby; the C version was not mine) font renderer, running under my own window manager, using my own file manager and my own desktop switcher... And while some of the above had reasons, I am itching to rewrite more of my stack, and mostly for fun or out of curiosity than any need. Things looking radically different is more likely to affect my enjoyment of it as a job than in general, though, because for my side projects I can build things as I please, using the tools I want (and mostly have written myself), and can ignore everything I don't like. I absolutely agree things change, but I've been doing this for 42 years now, and so far it doesn't feel any different, so I'm going to guess I'll stick to this for some time still.