6 ms·

Talking over a wall changed my direction as a programmer

147 points by fagnerbrack 2y ago

oceanparkway 2y ago
Metal desks!
- sjf 2y ago
  My forearms are getting cold just thinking about it.
dr_kiszonka 2y ago
The author is on HN and makes awesome art at https://andrewwulf.com https://andrewwulf.com
- scrapcode 2y ago
  > "Today I make generative art..." Is generative art just AI, or is there something else out there that was called that before the emergence of AI? Genuinely curious.
  - erichocean 2y ago
    Generative art pre-AI was art created with code.
    - vajrabum 2y ago
      And he says on his about page "This art is primarily non-objective and abstract, focusing on complex shapes and colors. I use my math, programming, and digital manipulation knowledge to produce highly unique art." It's not AI generated.
  - noizejoy 2y ago
    TFA author links to this page: https://artasartist.com/what-is-generative-art/?ref=thecodist.com https://artasartist.com/what-is-generative-art/?ref=thecodis...
  - indigoabstract 2y ago
    It's made by people, but using code instead of brushes. Andrew Wulf's art is really beautiful, both in colors and patterns.
  - swiftcoder 2y ago
    It's all hand-coded. Most folks in the generative art community are pretty upset about "generative AI" preempting the name.
wlindley 2y ago
It's a program. "App" is a word, short for "Application Program," publicized by Apple for its handheld computers that masquerade as (and are euphemistically called) "telephones." "App" effectively means "proprietary closed-source program that talks to proprietary walled-garden programs running on someone else's computer, and acts as a spy sending all your sensitive data to who-knows-where." No-one ever called a real program an "app" before that, did they?
- tom_ 2y ago
  GEM on the Atari ST supported the .app (short for "application") extension for gui executables. One of its components was the AES, short for Application Environment Services. This stuff dates from the early to mid 1980s.
- cannam 2y ago
  > No-one ever called a real program an "app" before that, did they? Yes. Apple called them apps in the 80s, at least on the Mac - this is Apple II but it's plausible they were also referred to as apps there? For my part I read the title as "Taking over a wall changed my direction as a programmer" which had me really confused for a while. I'd like to read that article, I think.
  - musicale 2y ago
    Apple (App-le?) certainly popularized abbreviating "applications programs" or "application software" (vs. system software, systems programs etc.) to "applications" in the 1980s, and "apps" with the advent of the App Store in 2008, but Apple was unsuccessful in trying to obtain and enforce an App Store trademark given prior uses of app, store, and app store (including, perhaps ironically given Steve Jobs' return and Apple's acquisition of NeXT, a store for NeXTSTEP apps.) "Killer App(lication)" dates to the 1980s, applying to software like VisiCalc for the Apple II.
- majormajor 2y ago
  "Applications" was a very common term in the classic Mac days. "Programs" was a more Windows-y term. ("Applications" vs "Program Files" in ye olden 90s world of where to put things you installed.)
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
yapyap 2y ago
Yeah, networking can give you the world. Often networking is seen as this robot-like bleep bloop hello, here’s my business card thing and at the dedicated events it very well could be but networking in the most basic sense is just making friends and shooting the shit, only difference is that you can leverage those friends for opportunities in the workplace and vice versa.
- glitchc 2y ago
  If there's mutual interest, certainly, but in most cases networking feels shallow and forced. If the only thing in common between us is the weather, I tune out quickly. Networking is mainly for those who truly like people.
ThomW 2y ago
I feel super fortunate to be a part of that generation where screwing around at home could lead directly to employment. I taught myself Atari BASIC on my 800 and took a 286 IBM compatible to college where I was a music major. I dropped out and landed working for an industrial automation company because I knew how to write dumb little programs. A couple years later I was the sole guy programming robots for them in a structured BASIC language.
- dghlsakjg 2y ago
  I’m not entirely sure we’re past those days. Up until the current hiring lull, it was very possible to get a programming position with just a self taught background. When the need for juniors comes back around, I’m sure we’ll start to see it again.
  - musicale 2y ago
    I hope this is still true. There are certainly lots of opportunities for self-taught software and hardware development. And university lectures and course material (much of which is very good) that used to be locked inside physical campuses with expensive tuition fees are often freely available to anyone on the internet. You can definitely build a nice portfolio of open source software (and even hardware) on github. I would hope that is enough to get a job, but it might not be, especially in the current era of AI-fueled employment pressure.
  - hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
    > When the need for juniors comes back around, I’m sure we’ll start to see it again. Man, I'm skeptical, at least in the US. Since the pandemic, I've seen an absolute explosion in offshoring, which makes perfect sense when so many people are working remotely anyway. I've worked with lots of excellent engineers from Argentina to Poland and many places in between. It's tough for me to see how an American "tinkerer" will be able to find a job in that world if he wants an American-level salary. Also, I know the adage about "this time it's different" being the most dangerous phrase in language, but, at least in one example, something really is different. In the early 00s, after the dot com bust, there was a ton of fear about outsourcing the bulk of software work to India. That turned out not to happen, of course, because (a) remote meeting software was nowhere close to where it is today, (b) remote work in general wasn't common, and (c) the timezones issues between US and India were an absolute productivity killer. These days, though, everyone is used to remote work, and US companies have realized there are enough lower cost locales with plenty of timezone overlap to make offshoring the norm these days.
commandersaki 2y ago
Eh, I read the article and I still don't know what it means to "talk over a wall".
- tantalor 2y ago
  I think it means taking to people outside your team, about your personal interest areas.
- vajrabum 2y ago
  If you worked in a cubicle farm you'd know. The cubicles were generally divided by low portable walls. There were different setups but generally you don't see people when you're seated but if you stand you can see your neighbors.
- dghlsakjg 2y ago
  I think he means literally talking to someone on the other side of his cubicle wall.
- GrumpyNl 2y ago
  For me it boils doen to, communication is key, talk to each other, exchange ideas.
ian-g 2y ago
> Today I make generative art, see it on my website I do love the ways random events can change folks’ lives. Would the author have ended up doing art at all without this happening?
fcatalan 2y ago
I was studying Physics, not out of particular interest, just because it was challenging, so I was doing badly. I then discovered a small room that had two unsupervised computers hooked up to some mysterious world-spaning network, and made friends there, ended up leaving Physics for Computer Science. My first job and every job in my 20s came from people I met in that room getting jobs themselves and calling me to see if I would go work with them, or someone from the previous jobs calling me back. I've never done a real job interview or sent a CV. But then I formed a family and my social life plummeted. I'm also bad at really nurturing relationships that don't self sustain, so in retrospect I can see how my career ossified since then. I don't totally regret it because even if I'm now underpaid and underemployed, I earn more than enough for my lifestyle and have loads of free time, so it balances the pang for greater things. But yeah, networking is very important.
cranberryturkey 2y ago
I was late to programming. I had a computer in junior high but didn’t start programming until the mid 90s when I got internet access at college.
otteromkram 2y ago
> So when they asked who could write 6502 assembly on an Apple II, I raised my hand figuring everyone here was a programmer — and found only my hand had been raised! Pre comedy. I can just imagine the initial indifference when raising his hand only to look around and start lowering his hand slowly when one of the bosses just looks at him and says, "You. No, not him. YOU. You stay, everyone else can leave."
2b3a51 2y ago
Quote from OA "About 15 years later I ran into that manager again, and he was close to dying from a kidney ailment. I spent a day with him, driving him around so he could take some photographs, and having lunch. We didn't talk much about work, mostly he wanted to get out of being in bed and see the world a bit." Just deLurking to say that was an excellent thing to do. This small paragraph tucked away at the end of the anecdote shifted the whole experience for me.
- rekabis 2y ago
  Agreed. This is what Genuinely Good People do.
  - Tempest1981 2y ago
    And what started as a tech connection, became a deeper human connection.
Scubabear68 2y ago
I had my interest in computing cemented when I was about 16 in the early 1980’s I volunteered that summer at a local hospital where my cousin worked running one of the test labs. They had an apple II and some equipment they figured might be able to interface with it. Like the article author, I basically got a few manuals and just figured out how to make it work. I was able to do some simple control of one of the new instruments via the RS-232 serial connection, plus print out some it’s internal state. I was very proud that all the other volunteers were basically candy stripers, and I was doing software development in a lab environment. I would have gone bonkers with everything available today. But then again, in the 80s the sorting function was very strong - you were either one of those who could figure this stuff out, or you weren’t. Then of course, there were further delineations. Case in point, my apple ii basic and 6502 assembly hacks in the lab sound like child’s play compared to what this dude did!
AlienRobot 2y ago
>I raised my hand figuring everyone here was a programmer—and found only my hand had been raised I guess some things never change.

147 points by fagnerbrack 2y ago

oceanparkway 2y ago

Metal desks!

sjf 2y ago
My forearms are getting cold just thinking about it.

dr_kiszonka 2y ago

The author is on HN and makes awesome art at https://andrewwulf.com https://andrewwulf.com

scrapcode 2y ago
> "Today I make generative art..." Is generative art just AI, or is there something else out there that was called that before the emergence of AI? Genuinely curious.
- erichocean 2y ago
  Generative art pre-AI was art created with code.
  - vajrabum 2y ago
    And he says on his about page "This art is primarily non-objective and abstract, focusing on complex shapes and colors. I use my math, programming, and digital manipulation knowledge to produce highly unique art." It's not AI generated.
- noizejoy 2y ago
  TFA author links to this page: https://artasartist.com/what-is-generative-art/?ref=thecodist.com https://artasartist.com/what-is-generative-art/?ref=thecodis...
- indigoabstract 2y ago
  It's made by people, but using code instead of brushes. Andrew Wulf's art is really beautiful, both in colors and patterns.
- swiftcoder 2y ago
  It's all hand-coded. Most folks in the generative art community are pretty upset about "generative AI" preempting the name.

wlindley 2y ago

It's a program. "App" is a word, short for "Application Program," publicized by Apple for its handheld computers that masquerade as (and are euphemistically called) "telephones." "App" effectively means "proprietary closed-source program that talks to proprietary walled-garden programs running on someone else's computer, and acts as a spy sending all your sensitive data to who-knows-where." No-one ever called a real program an "app" before that, did they?

tom_ 2y ago
GEM on the Atari ST supported the .app (short for "application") extension for gui executables. One of its components was the AES, short for Application Environment Services. This stuff dates from the early to mid 1980s.
cannam 2y ago
> No-one ever called a real program an "app" before that, did they? Yes. Apple called them apps in the 80s, at least on the Mac - this is Apple II but it's plausible they were also referred to as apps there? For my part I read the title as "Taking over a wall changed my direction as a programmer" which had me really confused for a while. I'd like to read that article, I think.
- musicale 2y ago
  Apple (App-le?) certainly popularized abbreviating "applications programs" or "application software" (vs. system software, systems programs etc.) to "applications" in the 1980s, and "apps" with the advent of the App Store in 2008, but Apple was unsuccessful in trying to obtain and enforce an App Store trademark given prior uses of app, store, and app store (including, perhaps ironically given Steve Jobs' return and Apple's acquisition of NeXT, a store for NeXTSTEP apps.) "Killer App(lication)" dates to the 1980s, applying to software like VisiCalc for the Apple II.
majormajor 2y ago
"Applications" was a very common term in the classic Mac days. "Programs" was a more Windows-y term. ("Applications" vs "Program Files" in ye olden 90s world of where to put things you installed.)

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

yapyap 2y ago

Yeah, networking can give you the world. Often networking is seen as this robot-like bleep bloop hello, here’s my business card thing and at the dedicated events it very well could be but networking in the most basic sense is just making friends and shooting the shit, only difference is that you can leverage those friends for opportunities in the workplace and vice versa.

glitchc 2y ago
If there's mutual interest, certainly, but in most cases networking feels shallow and forced. If the only thing in common between us is the weather, I tune out quickly. Networking is mainly for those who truly like people.

ThomW 2y ago

I feel super fortunate to be a part of that generation where screwing around at home could lead directly to employment. I taught myself Atari BASIC on my 800 and took a 286 IBM compatible to college where I was a music major. I dropped out and landed working for an industrial automation company because I knew how to write dumb little programs. A couple years later I was the sole guy programming robots for them in a structured BASIC language.

dghlsakjg 2y ago
I’m not entirely sure we’re past those days. Up until the current hiring lull, it was very possible to get a programming position with just a self taught background. When the need for juniors comes back around, I’m sure we’ll start to see it again.
- musicale 2y ago
  I hope this is still true. There are certainly lots of opportunities for self-taught software and hardware development. And university lectures and course material (much of which is very good) that used to be locked inside physical campuses with expensive tuition fees are often freely available to anyone on the internet. You can definitely build a nice portfolio of open source software (and even hardware) on github. I would hope that is enough to get a job, but it might not be, especially in the current era of AI-fueled employment pressure.
- hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
  > When the need for juniors comes back around, I’m sure we’ll start to see it again. Man, I'm skeptical, at least in the US. Since the pandemic, I've seen an absolute explosion in offshoring, which makes perfect sense when so many people are working remotely anyway. I've worked with lots of excellent engineers from Argentina to Poland and many places in between. It's tough for me to see how an American "tinkerer" will be able to find a job in that world if he wants an American-level salary. Also, I know the adage about "this time it's different" being the most dangerous phrase in language, but, at least in one example, something really is different. In the early 00s, after the dot com bust, there was a ton of fear about outsourcing the bulk of software work to India. That turned out not to happen, of course, because (a) remote meeting software was nowhere close to where it is today, (b) remote work in general wasn't common, and (c) the timezones issues between US and India were an absolute productivity killer. These days, though, everyone is used to remote work, and US companies have realized there are enough lower cost locales with plenty of timezone overlap to make offshoring the norm these days.

commandersaki 2y ago

Eh, I read the article and I still don't know what it means to "talk over a wall".

tantalor 2y ago
I think it means taking to people outside your team, about your personal interest areas.
vajrabum 2y ago
If you worked in a cubicle farm you'd know. The cubicles were generally divided by low portable walls. There were different setups but generally you don't see people when you're seated but if you stand you can see your neighbors.
dghlsakjg 2y ago
I think he means literally talking to someone on the other side of his cubicle wall.
GrumpyNl 2y ago
For me it boils doen to, communication is key, talk to each other, exchange ideas.

ian-g 2y ago

> Today I make generative art, see it on my website I do love the ways random events can change folks’ lives. Would the author have ended up doing art at all without this happening?

fcatalan 2y ago

I was studying Physics, not out of particular interest, just because it was challenging, so I was doing badly. I then discovered a small room that had two unsupervised computers hooked up to some mysterious world-spaning network, and made friends there, ended up leaving Physics for Computer Science. My first job and every job in my 20s came from people I met in that room getting jobs themselves and calling me to see if I would go work with them, or someone from the previous jobs calling me back. I've never done a real job interview or sent a CV. But then I formed a family and my social life plummeted. I'm also bad at really nurturing relationships that don't self sustain, so in retrospect I can see how my career ossified since then. I don't totally regret it because even if I'm now underpaid and underemployed, I earn more than enough for my lifestyle and have loads of free time, so it balances the pang for greater things. But yeah, networking is very important.

cranberryturkey 2y ago

I was late to programming. I had a computer in junior high but didn’t start programming until the mid 90s when I got internet access at college.

otteromkram 2y ago

> So when they asked who could write 6502 assembly on an Apple II, I raised my hand figuring everyone here was a programmer — and found only my hand had been raised! Pre comedy. I can just imagine the initial indifference when raising his hand only to look around and start lowering his hand slowly when one of the bosses just looks at him and says, "You. No, not him. YOU. You stay, everyone else can leave."

2b3a51 2y ago

Quote from OA "About 15 years later I ran into that manager again, and he was close to dying from a kidney ailment. I spent a day with him, driving him around so he could take some photographs, and having lunch. We didn't talk much about work, mostly he wanted to get out of being in bed and see the world a bit." Just deLurking to say that was an excellent thing to do. This small paragraph tucked away at the end of the anecdote shifted the whole experience for me.

rekabis 2y ago
Agreed. This is what Genuinely Good People do.
- Tempest1981 2y ago
  And what started as a tech connection, became a deeper human connection.

Scubabear68 2y ago

I had my interest in computing cemented when I was about 16 in the early 1980’s I volunteered that summer at a local hospital where my cousin worked running one of the test labs. They had an apple II and some equipment they figured might be able to interface with it. Like the article author, I basically got a few manuals and just figured out how to make it work. I was able to do some simple control of one of the new instruments via the RS-232 serial connection, plus print out some it’s internal state. I was very proud that all the other volunteers were basically candy stripers, and I was doing software development in a lab environment. I would have gone bonkers with everything available today. But then again, in the 80s the sorting function was very strong - you were either one of those who could figure this stuff out, or you weren’t. Then of course, there were further delineations. Case in point, my apple ii basic and 6502 assembly hacks in the lab sound like child’s play compared to what this dude did!

AlienRobot 2y ago

>I raised my hand figuring everyone here was a programmer—and found only my hand had been raised I guess some things never change.