4 ms·
I came across that essay a couple of years back, and I liked it very much. It pretty much taught me the value of persistence. The first time I tried to learn L
by krylon 12y ago
I came across that essay a couple of years back, and I liked it very much.
It pretty much taught me the value of persistence. The first time I tried to learn Lisp, I felt like my IQ had dropped to about room temperature. It took me years to get it, trying again every couple of months. Eventually, I did get it. I am not an enlightned, brilliant Lisp hacker, but refusing to give up has allowed me to understand things I initially considered myself too stupid for.
Which, in turn, encouraged me to tackle other problems. If that first one eventually turned out not to have been all that hard, maybe this other one isn't, either?
It's not a major influence, but I could say this essay has, in a way, changed my life.
- toxican 12y agoI tend to be my own worst enemy when it comes to these things. I hit a roadblock, feel like an idiot, then beat myself up over it. What helps me is looking back at the kind of developer I was a year, 2 years, 5 years ago. It has been long, and sometimes incredibly slow and stagnant couple of years for me, but damn if I'm not twice the developer I was a year or two ago.
- S4M 12y ago> but damn if I'm not twice the developer I was a year or two ago. On the other hand I don't think your salary has been multiplied by two in the meantime - unless you were not working two years ago.
- toxican 12y ago2 years ago I was a dishwasher at a restaurant. So it has definitely at least doubled :)
- michaelochurch 12y agoThe first time I tried to learn Lisp, I felt like my IQ had dropped to about room temperature. It took me years to get it, trying again every couple of months. Eventually, I did get it. Next stop is Haskell. :) If it makes you feel better, the people who seem to be really smart have the same roadblocks, false starts, and struggles... if not more of them, just as world-class marathoners (while they run the distance faster than most of us could) are still exhausted at the end of a race, because they run so hard. It wasn't until my late 20s that I "got" that this sense of exhaustion is often a good thing. At least the exhaustion that comes from solving hard problems is a good thing; the kind that comes from political flare-ups and open-plan offices is pretty useless as far as I can tell.
- eru 12y agoAfter Haskell, Agda and Idris.
- michaelochurch 12y agoPossibly Coq but I've heard that it's really hard.
- eru 12y agoSimilar-ish ideas in Coq, Agda, Idris and Isabelle. Or at least, they are trying to solve similar problems.
- krylon 12y agoAlas, Haskell has resisted my attempts at learning it far longer than Lisp. If I wanted to go in that general direction, I guess, I would look at OCaml, which seems to offer many of Haskell's benefits without being quite that weird.