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I got a friend of mine who is a very good guitar player, with classical musical education and very sophisticated musical taste. He used to complain that althoug

by yankoff 13y ago

I got a friend of mine who is a very good guitar player, with classical musical education and very sophisticated musical taste. He used to complain that although it is easy to impress general public with your guitar skills, but they will be equally impressed by something much simpler. Like a guy playing a 3-chord pop song. If you have no musical education, if you don't really understand the structure of music and how it's composed it'll be hard for you to fully appreciate it. And those who do understand, professional musicians, will often criticize it just like, you say, programmers on a github will criticize your code. It happens in any professional area and absolutely normal. I think the problem is that you are looking primarily for extrinsic motivators. Of course it's an important part and it's hard to exclude them at all, but you gotta have something more then that. There should be an interest in doing things just because you like doing them and you _interested_ in them even if you couldn't share it with anyone else.

w0utert 13y ago
And that's putting the article in perspective by referring to someone with talent and experience in music, a universally enjoyed skill that also happens to combine very well with typical feel-good scenario's where people are more inclined to appreciate your work anyway. Like someone before me, I can think of hundreds of jobs that require skills with exactly the same opaqueness as programming: high finance, fundamental science, designing and fixing machinery, wiring electronics/floorplanning piping, genetics, law making, the list goes on and on... There may very well be reasons why programming increases your chances on depression, but the fact that its hard to explain, hard to appreciate by outsiders, and doesn't get you laid, really aren't the root causes. If that were true, almost everyone would be suffering from depression. One side note I have about the guitarist analogy is that looking at the music industry, it seems to me that incidence of depression, addiction, suicidal behaviour, etc is much higher among pop stars than it appears to be among high-profile technical people, which also invalidates the premise that 'recognition of skills' is such an important factor for depression.
- Sambdala 13y ago
  > There may very well be reasons why programming increases your chances on depression, but the fact that its hard to explain, hard to appreciate by outsiders, and doesn't get you laid, really aren't the root causes. If that were true, almost everyone would be suffering from depression. Maybe they are.
dorfuss 13y ago
I would add that it's not only a piece of technology or a set of skills that goes unnoticed or unappreciated by the general public, but nowadays most services are taken for granted without really thinking how difficult it was to put it all together. I worked as a debt collector for some time. It's the kind of profession you would not think as something really benefitting the society, but I've always liked to think about it in a very possitive way: a company that reclaims its money is able to invest in the product development, rising employment, lowering the impact the production has on the environment etc.

by yankoff 13y ago

w0utert 13y ago

And that's putting the article in perspective by referring to someone with talent and experience in music, a universally enjoyed skill that also happens to combine very well with typical feel-good scenario's where people are more inclined to appreciate your work anyway. Like someone before me, I can think of hundreds of jobs that require skills with exactly the same opaqueness as programming: high finance, fundamental science, designing and fixing machinery, wiring electronics/floorplanning piping, genetics, law making, the list goes on and on... There may very well be reasons why programming increases your chances on depression, but the fact that its hard to explain, hard to appreciate by outsiders, and doesn't get you laid, really aren't the root causes. If that were true, almost everyone would be suffering from depression. One side note I have about the guitarist analogy is that looking at the music industry, it seems to me that incidence of depression, addiction, suicidal behaviour, etc is much higher among pop stars than it appears to be among high-profile technical people, which also invalidates the premise that 'recognition of skills' is such an important factor for depression.

Sambdala 13y ago
> There may very well be reasons why programming increases your chances on depression, but the fact that its hard to explain, hard to appreciate by outsiders, and doesn't get you laid, really aren't the root causes. If that were true, almost everyone would be suffering from depression. Maybe they are.

dorfuss 13y ago

I would add that it's not only a piece of technology or a set of skills that goes unnoticed or unappreciated by the general public, but nowadays most services are taken for granted without really thinking how difficult it was to put it all together. I worked as a debt collector for some time. It's the kind of profession you would not think as something really benefitting the society, but I've always liked to think about it in a very possitive way: a company that reclaims its money is able to invest in the product development, rising employment, lowering the impact the production has on the environment etc.