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I think he loved the idea of owning a coffee shop, not actually doing it.
by fallentimes 18y ago
I think he loved the idea of owning a coffee shop, not actually doing it.
- blackguardx 18y agoAs I sit in my cubicle day in and day out practically forcing myself to do work that I don't really care about, I often wonder if I merely love the idea of being an engineer rather than the actual practice of it.
- fallentimes 18y agoI think you love the idea of being an engineer working on things you like, doing them the way you want instead of forcing yourself to do what other people want, doing them the way they insist upon.
- gaius 18y agoEveryone likes making cool new stuff. No-one likes deathmarches and debugging race conditions and writing documentation and sitting in meetings and dealing with incomplete or ambiguous specs or having their project cancelled after working on it for a year or having an idiot for a boss who doesn't understand what you do. But that's what engineering is really like for most people, most of the time.
- kentosi 18y agoYeah. It's kinda sad when you have a romantic idea of something, but reality paints a totally different picture. I'm learning a new language at the moment. The romantic idea I had in my head was being able to speak it fluently with friends from that culture, read books, etc. The reality is that learning a language is difficult and and takes a lot of effort and patience. Thankfully, I love studying it. But then if I didn't and then gave up I'd still be painting that romantic image in my head thinking i "shoulda, coulda, woulda..". I kinda forgot where I was going with this... sorry :-(
- endtime 18y agoWith languages, my experience has usually been that it's easy and gratifying at first. Then it gets tough and demoralizing. And then you sort of break through that wall and it becomes quite gratifying again. So hang in there. :) Oh, and to get past the level where you can hold a simple conversation I have found immersion necessary. My Hebrew improved as much in a month in Israel this past summer as it had in the previous year.
- jimbokun 18y ago"I have found immersion necessary." This is the only practical way to learn a language. There is an oft repeated cliche about playing quarterback in the NFL, that no matter how much you practice or try to simulate game conditions, the speed and chaos of actual game conditions is something you can't understand, really, until you experience it. Well, learning a foreign language does not involve 300 pound men coming at you at high velocity, but the real experience of trying to communicate something you really want to say to a real human being is a very different experience than learning words or even grammar structure from a book, audio, video, or lecture. Even interacting with classmates is somewhat contrived, because you are probably trying to say something your teacher prepared for you, instead of getting own ideas across. So, to summarize: learning a language with out immersion (or something close to it) will likely never amount to anything more than an academic experience.
- endtime 18y agoWell, most of what you say is true, but doesn't require immersion. For example, I have Israeli friends here in the States, and I keep in touch with a couple cousins in Israel. So it's possible for me to have real conversations (as opposed to contrived conversations with classmates or workbook exercises etc.) without actually going to Israel. I found immersion useful because when you hear a language all day, every day, it seems to seep into your subconscious. Also, I think that language learning is a function of density rather than just volume, so to speak. That is to say, spending ten hours speaking a language every day for a month is more effective than speaking it for half an hour a day for 600 days.
- ahoyhere 18y agoDoing something professionally often takes the joy out of it. Especially when you are doing it for someone else. "Amateur" comes from the Latin word for "lover" - amator.
- narag 18y ago-eur seems French. The meaning is the same anyway.
- delano 18y agohttp://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Amateur http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Amateur
- narag 18y agoAha, "replaced by F -teur"
- gojomo 18y agoThere's a reason French, Spanish, Italian, and others are called 'Latin languages'.
- narag 18y agoOh, I know, maybe because Spanish is my first language and I took three years of Latin at high school :-)
- parenthesis 18y agoThere's that old quote (don't know where from) that when your hobby becomes your job, you need to find a new hobby.
- cabalamat 18y agoJust like some people love the idea of being an author, whereas other like writing books.
- electromagnetic 18y agoI love writing, I don't necessarily love the concept of being an author. Book tours, having to pay 100% of everything from my own benefits to my own pension, etc. I want to get published, not because I love the job but because I love writing. I spend hours a day writing, and then when I'm doing other things it's still running through my mind and I'll end up writing notes down or grabbing a pad at 2am and writing down an idea I had while sat on the toilet. I'm sure most coders on here do their job because they love to code not necessarily because they love their job.