4 ms·

Sort of?, if you are sufficiently well rounded and can implement solutions from start to finish. It’s sort of Art adjacent, or entrepreneur adjacent. Still, I’d

by K0balt 1y ago

Sort of?, if you are sufficiently well rounded and can implement solutions from start to finish. It’s sort of Art adjacent, or entrepreneur adjacent. Still, I’d encourage strongly to learn carpentry, as in the rough construction level carpentry for anyone who is likely to focus on anything extremely cerebral. It is empowering to know you can build your own shelter, and construction carpentry tends to be a touching grass type of outdoor activity. Programming also is kinda iffy as a trade in the “I just got dropped off in the middle of BFE and I need to eat” kind of way. It sort of requires a bunch of fragile situational trimmings that are not really under individual control … so I’ve looked at software as a profession, really. It doesn’t quite pass the doctor test. Not everyone needs a programmer, but everyone needs shelter.

amelius 1y ago
But programming can be done with less starting-capital than carpentry, realistically.
- K0balt 1y ago
  True, but it still, generally, requires a whole lot of other societal components to be in place and functioning in order to generate most of its value. It tends to service the tyranny of needs in a very tangential way, or serves those needs only through the more direct agency of others. In that way it fails my test for a trade, in the same way that being a lawyer does. A trade should serve a universal human need with no intermediary. That’s what makes it especially resilient to chaos, and especially useful to the person with those skills. It gets close when you incorporate hardware as well. Now you can make tools with a software component, sort of a technical blacksmith, but you are still reliant on a fragile supply chain. Perhaps the technological handyman or tinker is as close as can be achieved inside this scope? Lots of grey areas with many skills.
  - throwup238 1y ago
    I think “grey area” is the right way to think of carpenters and electricians and plumbers too. You say that programmers need a lot of societal components but so does every one of those professions. Unless your kids are learning how to harvest and dry their own lumber along with classical carpentry with nothing but wood joints, they will need a massive supply chain for the lumber and fasteners - unless you expect them to hunt down bog iron and bootstrap all of civilization themselves. Same with plumbers who need PVC/copper/solder and a modern sewer/water system or septic tank. Or the electrician who needs copper wire and power infrastructure (or solar panels, which require semiconductor manufacturing). What good is an electrician without the power plants to feed their customers? I like your approach but I can't help but feel that unless you’re going full apocalyptic prepper, the practical skills are an illusion.
    - amelius 1y ago
      On the other hand, who would you prefer to end up on a deserted island with, a programmer or a carpenter?
      - throwup238 1y ago
        Of course the knee jerk answer is a carpenter, but unless that carpenter knows how to make metal tools from scratch, hand hew a log, and fashion his own nails, I’m not sure how really useful they’d be apart from better physical fitness. A carpenter that buys nails at home depot by the box and sends plywood through a table saw likely isn’t going to have the practical skills to survive on a desert island without the modern supply chain. Traditional woodworking and blacksmithing like that is now mostly a novelty in the developed world. No one really knows how to make their own tools from scratch which is what it’d take to bootstrap carpentry. The best realistic set of skills would probably be knowledge of how to work with fibers to make rope and gather pitch for adhesive. Then you could make a primitive axe that can do most of the hard work in bringing down and hewing trees.
        K0balt 1y ago
        If a carpenter can’t read a book and understand how to make a structure without metal fasteners, they are not competent in that field. And working with raw logs is also not much of a challenge. I’m not an especially good carpenter, and I can work with limited tools. A chainsaw and an auger drill would be really nice, especially if I had to make lumber.. but an axe , drawknife , and chisels will do. That’s like being a programmer that can’t write software without a framework and libraries. The idea is that tools make the job easier and faster, not that you don’t even understand how to do the job, but only how to staple code together. We all start out there, and while we may rarely if ever work that way, we can when it is needed, do something no one has done for us. Obviously, different trades have different utility if you are talking about the breakdown of society, but I’m not really leaning into that particularly hard, more leaning into the breakdown of one’s plans or expectations, the failure of a company or the evolution of an industry, those kinds of force majure events that one can reasonably expect to have happen during a life lived. Even so, there is some comfort in knowing that your personal knowledge and value to society is robust and resistant to black swan events, I suppose.
- haiku2077 1y ago
  You can sell carpentry work directly to people in your community as an individual, and make a profit on every customer. Programming needs a larger customer base to break even, and you generally won't be selling software to individuals.
  - ndriscoll 1y ago
    You can get started with programming for $15 for a monitor/mouse/keyboard from Goodwill and $50 for a PC off ebay (or $125 for a new N150 minipc, which are insanely powerful). Startup capital costs are negligible next to even (first-world) poverty living costs.
    - haiku2077 1y ago
      Sure, but how are you going to find customers? Within weeks of beginning carpentry you can make useful products that people will pay for. Even using less than $100 of hand tools (A saw, a chisel, and sanding + polishing can make useful and beautiful kitchen tools.) How long to go from beginner programmer to break-even revenue? Maybe if you're really smart and hit it big, at least six months. For most people closer to 2-6 years.
      - sh34r 1y ago
        My answer to this question, having been a victim of this economic crash, is bug bounty programs. Chaos is a ladder. All this outsourcing, layoffs, and AI slop is an opportunity. That Apple AirPlay wormable RCE CVE is an indicator of how bad things have already gotten. It's pathetic how far even Apple has fallen in this race to the bottom. These companies are running on fumes. They cut to the bone, through the bone, and everything is being held together by a thread. But security research is really far removed from the skillset of a startup app developer. Realistically, even if you were capable of learning, which most aren't, it'd take longer for you to get up to speed than it would take for the market to improve. The more relevant answer would be to bootstrap an MVP and pitch it to investors to get funding to scale. There's no piecework model for consumers like "install can lights" or "build a she-shed."
- antisthenes 1y ago
  Assuming you only think of capital as physical things, then yes. But that's a very narrow definition. Mental capital is still capital.

by K0balt 1y ago

amelius 1y ago

But programming can be done with less starting-capital than carpentry, realistically.

K0balt 1y ago
True, but it still, generally, requires a whole lot of other societal components to be in place and functioning in order to generate most of its value. It tends to service the tyranny of needs in a very tangential way, or serves those needs only through the more direct agency of others. In that way it fails my test for a trade, in the same way that being a lawyer does. A trade should serve a universal human need with no intermediary. That’s what makes it especially resilient to chaos, and especially useful to the person with those skills. It gets close when you incorporate hardware as well. Now you can make tools with a software component, sort of a technical blacksmith, but you are still reliant on a fragile supply chain. Perhaps the technological handyman or tinker is as close as can be achieved inside this scope? Lots of grey areas with many skills.
- throwup238 1y ago
  I think “grey area” is the right way to think of carpenters and electricians and plumbers too. You say that programmers need a lot of societal components but so does every one of those professions. Unless your kids are learning how to harvest and dry their own lumber along with classical carpentry with nothing but wood joints, they will need a massive supply chain for the lumber and fasteners - unless you expect them to hunt down bog iron and bootstrap all of civilization themselves. Same with plumbers who need PVC/copper/solder and a modern sewer/water system or septic tank. Or the electrician who needs copper wire and power infrastructure (or solar panels, which require semiconductor manufacturing). What good is an electrician without the power plants to feed their customers? I like your approach but I can't help but feel that unless you’re going full apocalyptic prepper, the practical skills are an illusion.
  - amelius 1y ago
    On the other hand, who would you prefer to end up on a deserted island with, a programmer or a carpenter?
    - throwup238 1y ago
      Of course the knee jerk answer is a carpenter, but unless that carpenter knows how to make metal tools from scratch, hand hew a log, and fashion his own nails, I’m not sure how really useful they’d be apart from better physical fitness. A carpenter that buys nails at home depot by the box and sends plywood through a table saw likely isn’t going to have the practical skills to survive on a desert island without the modern supply chain. Traditional woodworking and blacksmithing like that is now mostly a novelty in the developed world. No one really knows how to make their own tools from scratch which is what it’d take to bootstrap carpentry. The best realistic set of skills would probably be knowledge of how to work with fibers to make rope and gather pitch for adhesive. Then you could make a primitive axe that can do most of the hard work in bringing down and hewing trees.
      - K0balt 1y ago
        If a carpenter can’t read a book and understand how to make a structure without metal fasteners, they are not competent in that field. And working with raw logs is also not much of a challenge. I’m not an especially good carpenter, and I can work with limited tools. A chainsaw and an auger drill would be really nice, especially if I had to make lumber.. but an axe , drawknife , and chisels will do. That’s like being a programmer that can’t write software without a framework and libraries. The idea is that tools make the job easier and faster, not that you don’t even understand how to do the job, but only how to staple code together. We all start out there, and while we may rarely if ever work that way, we can when it is needed, do something no one has done for us. Obviously, different trades have different utility if you are talking about the breakdown of society, but I’m not really leaning into that particularly hard, more leaning into the breakdown of one’s plans or expectations, the failure of a company or the evolution of an industry, those kinds of force majure events that one can reasonably expect to have happen during a life lived. Even so, there is some comfort in knowing that your personal knowledge and value to society is robust and resistant to black swan events, I suppose.
haiku2077 1y ago
You can sell carpentry work directly to people in your community as an individual, and make a profit on every customer. Programming needs a larger customer base to break even, and you generally won't be selling software to individuals.
- ndriscoll 1y ago
  You can get started with programming for $15 for a monitor/mouse/keyboard from Goodwill and $50 for a PC off ebay (or $125 for a new N150 minipc, which are insanely powerful). Startup capital costs are negligible next to even (first-world) poverty living costs.
  - haiku2077 1y ago
    Sure, but how are you going to find customers? Within weeks of beginning carpentry you can make useful products that people will pay for. Even using less than $100 of hand tools (A saw, a chisel, and sanding + polishing can make useful and beautiful kitchen tools.) How long to go from beginner programmer to break-even revenue? Maybe if you're really smart and hit it big, at least six months. For most people closer to 2-6 years.
    - sh34r 1y ago
      My answer to this question, having been a victim of this economic crash, is bug bounty programs. Chaos is a ladder. All this outsourcing, layoffs, and AI slop is an opportunity. That Apple AirPlay wormable RCE CVE is an indicator of how bad things have already gotten. It's pathetic how far even Apple has fallen in this race to the bottom. These companies are running on fumes. They cut to the bone, through the bone, and everything is being held together by a thread. But security research is really far removed from the skillset of a startup app developer. Realistically, even if you were capable of learning, which most aren't, it'd take longer for you to get up to speed than it would take for the market to improve. The more relevant answer would be to bootstrap an MVP and pitch it to investors to get funding to scale. There's no piecework model for consumers like "install can lights" or "build a she-shed."
antisthenes 1y ago
Assuming you only think of capital as physical things, then yes. But that's a very narrow definition. Mental capital is still capital.