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"The farm life works for some people" I agree. I couldn't do farm, I have bad allergies to pollen, dust, and too much time under the sun and I become red as a

"The farm life works for some people" I agree. I couldn't do farm, I have bad allergies to pollen, dust, and too much time under the sun and I become red as a lobster, and it is painful But programming is what I love to do. So I will say "The programmer life works for some people" I wouldn't call the original article "The death of a programmer", I would call it "The born of a farmer". He figure out were he feels happier, and that is good thing which sometimes means leaving behind what is hip for the masses, but that is not a failure, that is centering

Fuxy 11y ago
I somewhat in the middle too much programming it mentally exhausting too much farming is physically exhausting but if i don't do some hard physical work from time to time i cannot enjoy programming.
wslh 11y ago
As a child, I interacted with the first computer, a TI-99/4A, on a farm. So, for me the best programming inspiration is mixing nature with computers.
crimsonalucard 11y ago
As much as we "say" we love programming and farming if ever we became so filthy rich that we could pay other people to do these things for us... we would. I've never heard of a tech billionaire profess his love of programming so much that he's diving right back into the trenches. We're all human, we may love programming and farming, but let's be real, programming and farming are still work and we're all working toward retirement: a state where we no longer need to work.
- jalcazar 11y ago
  No. Matthew Dillon doesn't need to work but keeps working on DragonFlyBSD. Also it is possible to live and work as in retirement http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/fisherman.html http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/fisherman.html
  - crimsonalucard 11y ago
    I don't think their is any quantifiable data to prove what either of us say... but I think what I say applies to most programmers, not all.
  - tete 11y ago
    Addendum to that. The story in the link actually seems to be "Anekdote zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral", by Heinrich Böll. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekdote_zur_Senkung_der_Arbeitsmoral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekdote_zur_Senkung_der_Arbei... An English translation as PDF: https://www.uea.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.33246!np_vol_5_article_8_by_hansjorg_bittner.pdf https://www.uea.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.33246!np_vol_5_article_8...
  - ciupicri 11y ago
    > Matthew Dillon doesn't need to work but keeps working on DragonFlyBSD. Source?
    - jalcazar 11y ago
      It is known, kind of an axiom. While I don't have access to Dillon's finances, his personal site http://www.backplane.com http://www.backplane.com gives some hints: BEST Internet was an incredible successs successs [sic] These days most of my attention is focused on the The DragonFly Project ______ He isn't the only one, many open source developers contribute because they want to do it and not expecting any monetary compensation.
  - monkeypizza 11y ago
    I can appreciate the story - it's a paean to a lost world when we didn't need to be competitive. The thing is, money provides more power for the fisherman, which he would need if his environment changed: -rebuilding after an earthquake -fleeing if the local government goes bad -dealing with a crash in tuna price We all still live in a competitive environment. Hunter-gatherers were replaced by massively-reproducing (but probably unhappy & unhealthy) farmers. In the example, fishing represents pure surplus value, produced from nothing - and in economic situations like that, producing less than others means you'll eventually be out-competed and replaced. In reality the same tragedy of the commons applies to fishing, and we haven't solved it there either. Until competition is restrained, we've gotta compete. Individuals can opt out but they're just removing their traces from the future - those left will still be struggling until we have a way to globally eliminate environments which force people to be maximizers. And in a big universe, it's uncertain whether we can ever really control enough to be able to relax. It may even be computationally impossible to really stop the continuous evolution of competition in how we live life
- juliangregorian 11y ago
  Anecdotal, but Mark Zuckerberg was (and may still be) committing code at Facebook very recently. Some of us actually love programming for its own sake.
  - crimsonalucard 11y ago
    Dabbling in coding and being in the trenches are two different things. Look up Bill Gates. Unlike Zuckerberg, who was just a mediocre programmer, Gates was actually an elite programmer who "loved" programming. Nowadays he mostly travels the world with his family, and does philanthropy.
    - juliangregorian 11y ago
      Bill Gates said on his Reddit AMA he still writes code. Not everyone is like you dude.
      - crimsonalucard 11y ago
        He dabbles in code, on occasion. I'm talking about a love of code that takes you back into the trenches. I never said everyone is like me. But in my opinion most people are like me. If you look at the world around you and how career paths are set up, how society is setup and the general nature of most human beings... imo it is the most logical conclusion.
        juliangregorian 11y ago
        Actually, you did: > We're all human, we may love programming and farming > we're all working toward retirement I also appreciate how Bill Gates transformed from an elite coder into a dabbler as soon as it suited your argument. You're evidently not someone who ever let facts got in the way of a good story.
        crimsonalucard 11y ago
        >Actually, you did: >> We're all human, we may love programming and farming >> we're all working toward retirement ok my bad, I didn't mean everyone as in everyone on the face of the earth. There's obviously outliers, I made a mistake for not specifying that. > also appreciate how Bill Gates transformed from an elite coder into a dabbler as soon as it suited your argument. What the hell is this? Can we not have a civil conversation without insulting each other? I am NOT Changing my argument. As of what I KNOW, Bill Gates is currently a dabbler. He doesn't code regularly he's not part of any big coding projects. But back in the heyday he was an excellent coder and his code was responsible for much of early success in Microsoft. Your attitude is not conducive to civil conversation and you're really pissing me off. You accused me of changing my argument even though from my perspective I did not. You say stupid shit about me like this: "You're evidently not someone who ever let facts got in the way of a good story." I understand we may have different perspectives, but there are better ways of expressing it then being excessively negative. You could of asked me what I meant by things that have been inconsistent in our conversation, you could have politely asked about the conflicting details. There is no need say I am "obviously" someone who ignores facts. Please refer to proper etiquette below: http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news-guideline http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news-guideline That's my last word. I'm not going to continue on with a whole flame war and populate this thread with anymore shitty comments that no one wants to read.
- andyroid 11y ago
  "Billionaire" might be a stretch but there's plenty of people in tech that wouldn't need to work at all if they didn't want to. It would surprise me if Torvalds et. al would have to wait for retirement before they didn't actually _have_ to work.
  - ciupicri 11y ago
    Actually Linus Torvalds isn't that rich according to his post from Google+ [1]: > Linus Torvalds: 3840x2160 resolution - it's the Dell 28" UHD panel - for $299 thanks to Microsoft's black Friday deal. Thanks MS! > Vladimir Odessit: At a net-worth of $150M I wouldn't think that you would care for black friday deals :) > Linus Torvalds: +Vladimir Odessit I wish. Not even close. My net worth means that I can happily avoid Walmart and feel good about myself, but it's nowhere near the number you seem to think it is. [1]: https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/4MwQKZhGkEr https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/4MwQKZhGkEr
- randomdata 11y ago
  I guess it is impossible to say for sure, but I feel like if I had billions, I would still want to farm commercially – just with much nicer equipment than I have now. Something like 30% of farmers are 65+ years of age. I would suggest it is not because they cannot afford to retire, especially with the price of land these days, but because it is something they love to do. Anecdotally, a neighbour of mine made millions with the sale of his company (not tech) and then started farming with those proceeds.
  - crimsonalucard 11y ago
    I think most people wouldn't go into farming. They'd use the billion dollars to chase some crazy dream, retire, party hard, spend extravagantly, go on vacation, travel the world, start a new venture... anything but farming or doing something totally plain... but that's just my opinion, I'd actually like to see some hard data on what billionaires do with their time.
    - randomdata 11y ago
      We can ascertain that at least 50 billionaires are classified as farmers[1] in the USA. How involved they are with the operation is more difficult to quantify, but being completely hands off would surprise me. Even for my own farming operation, it only takes about four weeks out of the year of my time. It's not like I'm up at sunrise 365 days per year, breaking my back until sunset, like some people seem to picture. I consider it to be my vacation away from the day job as a programmer. I mean, what is more fun than operating highly advanced heavy equipment that costs more than high end sports cars? I can't imaging having billions of dollars at my disposal making that less exciting – it is a tech nerd's paradise. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/bethhoffman/2013/11/07/50-billionaires-receive-unnecessary-farm-subsidies/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/bethhoffman/2013/11/07/50-billio...
- learc83 11y ago
  I love to cook, but I don't love to peel potatoes. Just because a chef pays someone else to do the drudge work doesn't mean he doesn't love to cook. When people say they love programming. They mean they love building interesting things, solving interesting problems, and using interesting tools. Unfortunately, actual programs are full of boring parts. Yes, most programmers would pay someone to finish the boring parts, but I don't think that means they don't love programming.
  - crimsonalucard 11y ago
    Yeah I get it. I love programming too. There certain folks who claim that going to a job everyday is like going to disneyland because they're doing what they love. I find this concept hard to believe. I'm just trying to express: yes people may love programming, but programming at work is still "work" which is very different from "play"; both of which can be done with a programming language. I should mention lest I get accused saying everyone is like me, that there are outliers. There exists people who love programming so much that they never burn out.
- data_scientist 11y ago
  I just saw a tweet of Notch > Turns out unrolling tight inner loops really speeds them up! 38% speedup from that alone. Makes sense, it's doing one eight of the branching https://twitter.com/notch/status/595509436040491008 https://twitter.com/notch/status/595509436040491008 Even billionaires may want to micro-optimize! Bonus point: he is developing for a "20 years old platform"
  - crimsonalucard 11y ago
    There's always outliers, which is what I think Notch is... Without quantitative data I may be totally wrong though. I still think most people would stop coding once they had the resources to command other people to do it for them. Take for instance, Elon Musk, I'm pretty sure he's no longer in the trenches. That guy started coding at 12.
    - Kesty 11y ago
      Most of those people though simply can't go back to the trenches coding because their time become too valuable. Some of them actually miss it. In most Bill Gates interviews he alaways remember his days hard at coding as the most fun.
- SiVal 11y ago
  Some of us aren't just "saying" we love programming; we do. If I were a billionaire, I would no more pay someone to do my programming than pay them to take my vacations. I think your talk of "the trenches" is telling, though. The more money I have, the less I have to work on other people's projects and the more I can work on my own. Just as travel-lovers with more money can do less business travel to unpleasant destinations and more personal travel to favorite places, those of us who love programming just dream of doing more projects of our own choosing, not of escaping this terrible chore called programming that we only "say" we love.
  - crimsonalucard 11y ago
    Don't get me wrong. I love programming too, and I certainly have my own projects on the side. But work is work, which this person is doing. People who say that working as a coder is like going to disneyland everyday because their totally enamored by programming... I find it hard to believe that many people are like that. Burn out is a real thing.
    - SiVal 11y ago
      I agree with you here, that even for someone who loves programming, working as a hired coder to implement other people's plans can become very tedious if you don't care about the project personally, and few programming lovers would liken it to a trip to Disneyland. Also, that burnout is a real thing. So, it sounds as though we agree that many people really DO love programming, they're not just saying they do, and would go on doing it even if they made billions, but loving programming doesn't mean loving all programming work. There are programming jobs that people who genuinely love programming don't love at all and wouldn't do if they didn't need the paycheck.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- technomancy 11y ago
  "If you really want to do something you’ll do it at night. You know, Bruce Wayne had a day job. He was Batman at night. If you really want to get something done you’ll just do it." - Nicholas Gurewitch (of pbfcomics.com) I'm semi-retired and living in Thailand where the cost of living is a fraction of my (modest for a programmer) life in the US. I don't code as much as I used to, but I still write a fair bit. But it's not for the same reasons; now I'm coding in order to teach my children, and hopefully eventually other children too. I certainly don't see myself spending my time coding another database-backed CRUD web application any time soon; instead it's games and art and possibly soon music. It changes things, but it lets you do it for the reasons that matter instead of just to feed yourself. > if ever we became so filthy rich that we could pay other people to do these things for us... we would. I disagree; "programming" is far too broad a field to make generalizations like the parent makes. I suspect "growing food" is too, though I agree it's probably true of any farming on a scale larger than your own back yard.
- aidenn0 11y ago
  I am a hobbyist programmer. I've never had a job where my primary role was programming. Nearly all of my programming in the past 5 years has been for open source projects.
xrange 11y ago
>I have bad allergies to pollen, dust Interestingly enough, if you had grown up on a farm, you many not have developed allergies... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20497148 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20497148 https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=allergies+and+growing+up+on+a+farm https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=allergies+and+growing+u...
- ics 11y ago
  I grew up around farms and have a really bad pollen allergy. Still gets bad even in NYC around this time. Still, I don't think people should fear the outside because of it– my reaction sometimes takes me out for a couple days at a time, but it's still better than what it feels like to always be avoiding it and then one day getting a blast of discomfort that you aren't used to.
- bjwbell 11y ago
  Key word /may/. I grew up in the backwoods of interior northern california. And have terrible allergies. I take allergies shots, two nasal sprays, and antihistamines. They still only go away in the snow and rock above the treeline.
- erdle 11y ago
  Anecdote: Grew up on a vineyard and blueberry farm ... did not stop allergies from crushing my sinus cavities aka chronic sinusitis
- timc3 11y ago
  I grew up on a farm and had terrible allergies as a kid, so bad that I couldn’t go outside sometimes. They cleared up a year after leaving that life.
- louhike 11y ago
  To all the replies to this (at this time), he said "you MAY not have developed allergies", so please do not refute what he is saying by using yourself as an example (as it is just one sample in the overall population).

Fuxy 11y ago

I somewhat in the middle too much programming it mentally exhausting too much farming is physically exhausting but if i don't do some hard physical work from time to time i cannot enjoy programming.

wslh 11y ago

As a child, I interacted with the first computer, a TI-99/4A, on a farm. So, for me the best programming inspiration is mixing nature with computers.

crimsonalucard 11y ago

As much as we "say" we love programming and farming if ever we became so filthy rich that we could pay other people to do these things for us... we would. I've never heard of a tech billionaire profess his love of programming so much that he's diving right back into the trenches. We're all human, we may love programming and farming, but let's be real, programming and farming are still work and we're all working toward retirement: a state where we no longer need to work.

jalcazar 11y ago
No. Matthew Dillon doesn't need to work but keeps working on DragonFlyBSD. Also it is possible to live and work as in retirement http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/fisherman.html http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/fisherman.html
- crimsonalucard 11y ago
  I don't think their is any quantifiable data to prove what either of us say... but I think what I say applies to most programmers, not all.
- tete 11y ago
  Addendum to that. The story in the link actually seems to be "Anekdote zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral", by Heinrich Böll. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekdote_zur_Senkung_der_Arbeitsmoral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anekdote_zur_Senkung_der_Arbei... An English translation as PDF: https://www.uea.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.33246!np_vol_5_article_8_by_hansjorg_bittner.pdf https://www.uea.ac.uk/polopoly_fs/1.33246!np_vol_5_article_8...
- ciupicri 11y ago
  > Matthew Dillon doesn't need to work but keeps working on DragonFlyBSD. Source?
  - jalcazar 11y ago
    It is known, kind of an axiom. While I don't have access to Dillon's finances, his personal site http://www.backplane.com http://www.backplane.com gives some hints: BEST Internet was an incredible successs successs [sic] These days most of my attention is focused on the The DragonFly Project ______ He isn't the only one, many open source developers contribute because they want to do it and not expecting any monetary compensation.
- monkeypizza 11y ago
  I can appreciate the story - it's a paean to a lost world when we didn't need to be competitive. The thing is, money provides more power for the fisherman, which he would need if his environment changed: -rebuilding after an earthquake -fleeing if the local government goes bad -dealing with a crash in tuna price We all still live in a competitive environment. Hunter-gatherers were replaced by massively-reproducing (but probably unhappy & unhealthy) farmers. In the example, fishing represents pure surplus value, produced from nothing - and in economic situations like that, producing less than others means you'll eventually be out-competed and replaced. In reality the same tragedy of the commons applies to fishing, and we haven't solved it there either. Until competition is restrained, we've gotta compete. Individuals can opt out but they're just removing their traces from the future - those left will still be struggling until we have a way to globally eliminate environments which force people to be maximizers. And in a big universe, it's uncertain whether we can ever really control enough to be able to relax. It may even be computationally impossible to really stop the continuous evolution of competition in how we live life
juliangregorian 11y ago
Anecdotal, but Mark Zuckerberg was (and may still be) committing code at Facebook very recently. Some of us actually love programming for its own sake.
- crimsonalucard 11y ago
  Dabbling in coding and being in the trenches are two different things. Look up Bill Gates. Unlike Zuckerberg, who was just a mediocre programmer, Gates was actually an elite programmer who "loved" programming. Nowadays he mostly travels the world with his family, and does philanthropy.
  - juliangregorian 11y ago
    Bill Gates said on his Reddit AMA he still writes code. Not everyone is like you dude.
    - crimsonalucard 11y ago
      He dabbles in code, on occasion. I'm talking about a love of code that takes you back into the trenches. I never said everyone is like me. But in my opinion most people are like me. If you look at the world around you and how career paths are set up, how society is setup and the general nature of most human beings... imo it is the most logical conclusion.
      - juliangregorian 11y ago
        Actually, you did: > We're all human, we may love programming and farming > we're all working toward retirement I also appreciate how Bill Gates transformed from an elite coder into a dabbler as soon as it suited your argument. You're evidently not someone who ever let facts got in the way of a good story.
        crimsonalucard 11y ago
        >Actually, you did: >> We're all human, we may love programming and farming >> we're all working toward retirement ok my bad, I didn't mean everyone as in everyone on the face of the earth. There's obviously outliers, I made a mistake for not specifying that. > also appreciate how Bill Gates transformed from an elite coder into a dabbler as soon as it suited your argument. What the hell is this? Can we not have a civil conversation without insulting each other? I am NOT Changing my argument. As of what I KNOW, Bill Gates is currently a dabbler. He doesn't code regularly he's not part of any big coding projects. But back in the heyday he was an excellent coder and his code was responsible for much of early success in Microsoft. Your attitude is not conducive to civil conversation and you're really pissing me off. You accused me of changing my argument even though from my perspective I did not. You say stupid shit about me like this: "You're evidently not someone who ever let facts got in the way of a good story." I understand we may have different perspectives, but there are better ways of expressing it then being excessively negative. You could of asked me what I meant by things that have been inconsistent in our conversation, you could have politely asked about the conflicting details. There is no need say I am "obviously" someone who ignores facts. Please refer to proper etiquette below: http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news-guideline http://blog.ycombinator.com/new-hacker-news-guideline That's my last word. I'm not going to continue on with a whole flame war and populate this thread with anymore shitty comments that no one wants to read.
andyroid 11y ago
"Billionaire" might be a stretch but there's plenty of people in tech that wouldn't need to work at all if they didn't want to. It would surprise me if Torvalds et. al would have to wait for retirement before they didn't actually _have_ to work.
- ciupicri 11y ago
  Actually Linus Torvalds isn't that rich according to his post from Google+ [1]: > Linus Torvalds: 3840x2160 resolution - it's the Dell 28" UHD panel - for $299 thanks to Microsoft's black Friday deal. Thanks MS! > Vladimir Odessit: At a net-worth of $150M I wouldn't think that you would care for black friday deals :) > Linus Torvalds: +Vladimir Odessit I wish. Not even close. My net worth means that I can happily avoid Walmart and feel good about myself, but it's nowhere near the number you seem to think it is. [1]: https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/4MwQKZhGkEr https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/4MwQKZhGkEr
randomdata 11y ago
I guess it is impossible to say for sure, but I feel like if I had billions, I would still want to farm commercially – just with much nicer equipment than I have now. Something like 30% of farmers are 65+ years of age. I would suggest it is not because they cannot afford to retire, especially with the price of land these days, but because it is something they love to do. Anecdotally, a neighbour of mine made millions with the sale of his company (not tech) and then started farming with those proceeds.
- crimsonalucard 11y ago
  I think most people wouldn't go into farming. They'd use the billion dollars to chase some crazy dream, retire, party hard, spend extravagantly, go on vacation, travel the world, start a new venture... anything but farming or doing something totally plain... but that's just my opinion, I'd actually like to see some hard data on what billionaires do with their time.
  - randomdata 11y ago
    We can ascertain that at least 50 billionaires are classified as farmers[1] in the USA. How involved they are with the operation is more difficult to quantify, but being completely hands off would surprise me. Even for my own farming operation, it only takes about four weeks out of the year of my time. It's not like I'm up at sunrise 365 days per year, breaking my back until sunset, like some people seem to picture. I consider it to be my vacation away from the day job as a programmer. I mean, what is more fun than operating highly advanced heavy equipment that costs more than high end sports cars? I can't imaging having billions of dollars at my disposal making that less exciting – it is a tech nerd's paradise. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/bethhoffman/2013/11/07/50-billionaires-receive-unnecessary-farm-subsidies/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/bethhoffman/2013/11/07/50-billio...
learc83 11y ago
I love to cook, but I don't love to peel potatoes. Just because a chef pays someone else to do the drudge work doesn't mean he doesn't love to cook. When people say they love programming. They mean they love building interesting things, solving interesting problems, and using interesting tools. Unfortunately, actual programs are full of boring parts. Yes, most programmers would pay someone to finish the boring parts, but I don't think that means they don't love programming.
- crimsonalucard 11y ago
  Yeah I get it. I love programming too. There certain folks who claim that going to a job everyday is like going to disneyland because they're doing what they love. I find this concept hard to believe. I'm just trying to express: yes people may love programming, but programming at work is still "work" which is very different from "play"; both of which can be done with a programming language. I should mention lest I get accused saying everyone is like me, that there are outliers. There exists people who love programming so much that they never burn out.
data_scientist 11y ago
I just saw a tweet of Notch > Turns out unrolling tight inner loops really speeds them up! 38% speedup from that alone. Makes sense, it's doing one eight of the branching https://twitter.com/notch/status/595509436040491008 https://twitter.com/notch/status/595509436040491008 Even billionaires may want to micro-optimize! Bonus point: he is developing for a "20 years old platform"
- crimsonalucard 11y ago
  There's always outliers, which is what I think Notch is... Without quantitative data I may be totally wrong though. I still think most people would stop coding once they had the resources to command other people to do it for them. Take for instance, Elon Musk, I'm pretty sure he's no longer in the trenches. That guy started coding at 12.
  - Kesty 11y ago
    Most of those people though simply can't go back to the trenches coding because their time become too valuable. Some of them actually miss it. In most Bill Gates interviews he alaways remember his days hard at coding as the most fun.
SiVal 11y ago
Some of us aren't just "saying" we love programming; we do. If I were a billionaire, I would no more pay someone to do my programming than pay them to take my vacations. I think your talk of "the trenches" is telling, though. The more money I have, the less I have to work on other people's projects and the more I can work on my own. Just as travel-lovers with more money can do less business travel to unpleasant destinations and more personal travel to favorite places, those of us who love programming just dream of doing more projects of our own choosing, not of escaping this terrible chore called programming that we only "say" we love.
- crimsonalucard 11y ago
  Don't get me wrong. I love programming too, and I certainly have my own projects on the side. But work is work, which this person is doing. People who say that working as a coder is like going to disneyland everyday because their totally enamored by programming... I find it hard to believe that many people are like that. Burn out is a real thing.
  - SiVal 11y ago
    I agree with you here, that even for someone who loves programming, working as a hired coder to implement other people's plans can become very tedious if you don't care about the project personally, and few programming lovers would liken it to a trip to Disneyland. Also, that burnout is a real thing. So, it sounds as though we agree that many people really DO love programming, they're not just saying they do, and would go on doing it even if they made billions, but loving programming doesn't mean loving all programming work. There are programming jobs that people who genuinely love programming don't love at all and wouldn't do if they didn't need the paycheck.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
technomancy 11y ago
"If you really want to do something you’ll do it at night. You know, Bruce Wayne had a day job. He was Batman at night. If you really want to get something done you’ll just do it." - Nicholas Gurewitch (of pbfcomics.com) I'm semi-retired and living in Thailand where the cost of living is a fraction of my (modest for a programmer) life in the US. I don't code as much as I used to, but I still write a fair bit. But it's not for the same reasons; now I'm coding in order to teach my children, and hopefully eventually other children too. I certainly don't see myself spending my time coding another database-backed CRUD web application any time soon; instead it's games and art and possibly soon music. It changes things, but it lets you do it for the reasons that matter instead of just to feed yourself. > if ever we became so filthy rich that we could pay other people to do these things for us... we would. I disagree; "programming" is far too broad a field to make generalizations like the parent makes. I suspect "growing food" is too, though I agree it's probably true of any farming on a scale larger than your own back yard.
aidenn0 11y ago
I am a hobbyist programmer. I've never had a job where my primary role was programming. Nearly all of my programming in the past 5 years has been for open source projects.

xrange 11y ago

>I have bad allergies to pollen, dust Interestingly enough, if you had grown up on a farm, you many not have developed allergies... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20497148 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20497148 https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=allergies+and+growing+up+on+a+farm https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=allergies+and+growing+u...

ics 11y ago
I grew up around farms and have a really bad pollen allergy. Still gets bad even in NYC around this time. Still, I don't think people should fear the outside because of it– my reaction sometimes takes me out for a couple days at a time, but it's still better than what it feels like to always be avoiding it and then one day getting a blast of discomfort that you aren't used to.
bjwbell 11y ago
Key word /may/. I grew up in the backwoods of interior northern california. And have terrible allergies. I take allergies shots, two nasal sprays, and antihistamines. They still only go away in the snow and rock above the treeline.
erdle 11y ago
Anecdote: Grew up on a vineyard and blueberry farm ... did not stop allergies from crushing my sinus cavities aka chronic sinusitis
timc3 11y ago
I grew up on a farm and had terrible allergies as a kid, so bad that I couldn’t go outside sometimes. They cleared up a year after leaving that life.
louhike 11y ago
To all the replies to this (at this time), he said "you MAY not have developed allergies", so please do not refute what he is saying by using yourself as an example (as it is just one sample in the overall population).