[HN Gopher] It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the...
___________________________________________________________________
It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated
Author : tosh
Score : 218 points
Date : 2021-10-05 17:15 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| bsenftner wrote:
| Is this really useful, or another rationalization for choosing
| the less educated option, believing they are easier motivated? It
| is a grand generalization. As an accomplished do-er with multiple
| degrees, would I be filtered out via this thinking?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Doing involves a lot of implicit knowledge that reading
| frequently fails to cover. There's a density of information in
| doing that reading sometimes lacks.
|
| There are good points and bad points to that.
| j_walter wrote:
| I would say there is no way to 100% cover with reading what you
| need to learn on the job. Also there is no way to cover some
| concepts with 100% on the job training (much harder to make a
| HS grad a petroleum engineer by just throwing them on a
| platform in the gulf without any formal education).
|
| You have to have some implicit knowledge of how things work in
| order first...but that doesn't always come from formal
| education.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| The challenges are compounded when two people come from very
| different experiences. The same words mean different things
| to them and then instead of fostering the transfer of
| knowledge, "the words get in the way."
|
| I suspect this is a root cause of a lot of social and
| political friction. Doing or showing is sometimes the only
| hope of getting past that.
| j_walter wrote:
| This is why most if not all trades have apprenticeships.
| You have to know what to do and all see what to
| do...otherwise you could screw something up because you
| misinterpreted the instructions or design.
| davesque wrote:
| I think he's likely to trigger a lot of ire with this tweet.
| However, given what I know about his history, I think I know
| where this is coming from. Carmack himself did not finish school
| and was motivated early on to get involved in the profession of
| writing software despite lacking official credentials which
| entitled him to do so. I have a similar story and can relate.
| Therefore, I think what he's getting at is that it's important to
| just get started on something without waiting until you think
| you're "allowed" to. This quality of being a "doer" can stand out
| in colleagues. But of course there are many sides to the story. I
| don't think he meant to discount the others.
|
| _Update:_ I want to add that I think I recall being aware of
| figures like Carmack in my teenage years. Knowing of people like
| him, who were making lives for themselves by actively pursuing
| their interests, is I think a huge part of why I got involved in
| software early on in high school. It was a way for weird kids
| like me to have a sense of self-worth and accomplishment even if
| we were getting bad grades in more traditional subjects like
| "World History" or "Social Studies" on account of just not
| fitting in. And it was also at a time (in the 90s) when the
| economy _highly_ valued such people going into the dot com
| bubble. So this tweet doesn 't surprise me at all. I think this
| historical context is really relevant in understanding it.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| marsdepinski wrote:
| Aside from the fact that the two are not mutually exclusive but
| rather fit a DE,D!E,!DE,!D!E pairing resulting in a higher number
| of non-doer (!D) educated (E) people in industry, the statement
| is quite on point. Being a doer implies that you will by
| definition get more out of an education.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Being a 'doer' is also not a fixed trait. IMO it varies on what
| a thing happens to be. Motivation and drive also vary over time
| in complex ways.
| mrfusion wrote:
| How's he doing with the AGI BTW?
| mhh__ wrote:
| https://www.utsystem.edu/offices/talent-and-innovation/event...
|
| Suggests he at least hasn't given up.
|
| He's a very smart guy but I expect the net result of his work
| in this area to be basically zero. Doesn't sound like he has
| the background for it, and the task is genuinely huge.
| GDC7 wrote:
| That's because the educated don't want to just "do" , they want
| to be successful at it.
|
| The most ambitious want to be "world class good at it" . Hence
| nothing gets ever started because it seems like an unsurmountable
| mountain to climb.
|
| But there is a silver lining. The possibility of exploring social
| relationships.
|
| With regards to social relationships it doesn't really matter if
| you are having a party in Beverly Hills or in Des Moines.
|
| It's exactly the same thing.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| > That's because the educated don't want to just "do" , they
| want to be successful at it.
|
| I've actually observed the opposite. For a non-insignificant
| number of people, it seems like their university degree is seen
| primarily as a piece of paper that allows them to demand a high
| wage while actively avoiding mental or physical exertion.
| kurikuri wrote:
| > a piece of paper that allows them to demand a high wage
| while actively avoiding mental or physical exertion
|
| I'd argue that the piece of paper is more for a semi-secure
| livable wage than a high wage, with or without physical
| exertion. From my anecdotal subgroup, I've yet to meet a
| person who expects (let alone: hopes for) high wages (above
| $25/hr) as a result of their degree.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| To be fair, a lot of folks get degrees in part to avoid the
| sorts of jobs that require physical exertion, which have
| traditionally been low-skill jobs. I'm not so sure it is true
| much anymore, considering that a business degree often gets
| your a retail management job. A fair amount of those store
| managers unload the truck along with others.
| RandomLensman wrote:
| There are also now a wide range of surrogate activities for
| doing that come with way less risk of failure than doing:
| planning the doing, managing the doing, strategizing about
| doing, ...
|
| Not everyone likes taking risks and dealing with failures (and
| there will always be some - even if it us just on the way to
| success).
| potatochup wrote:
| Ooooh yeah. After being in national level sports teams, high-
| performing bands, I took up swing dancing as a hobby. I was
| garbage at it. After 5 years I'm approximately mediocre at
| best. Took me a very long time to come to terms with being not
| at all talented at something. But it's been a wonderful journey
| of meeting people, humility and learning how to learn something
| totally new again. I doubt I'll ever be great, but I have no
| plans on stopping (global pandemic aside).
| willcipriano wrote:
| Those who do are in the top 1% by default, the vast majority
| don't get that far.
| GDC7 wrote:
| But again people want to be in the 1% of income, wealth and
| social status, not in the 1% of "trying".
| mcdonje wrote:
| The problem with this phrasing is it implies that motivation is
| an inherent aspect of individuals. Nobody is a do-er. Motivation
| is impacted by a variety of factors.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Nobody is a do-er. Motivation is impacted by a variety of
| factors.
|
| Many people are motivated by the satisfaction of getting things
| done and working together with others toward accomplishing
| something.
|
| There are many people who are motivating more or less by doing.
| The people who would still be coding in their spare time if
| programming jobs paid minimum wage simply because they enjoy
| doing it.
|
| Counterintuitively, you usually have to pay those people more
| because they're usually in the highest demand.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Agreed, and key to both job negotiations and many other
| situations is to find out what motivates the other party to do
| as they do, even if it seems to be aligned with your own
| interests, if the motivation is a different one then that may
| spell trouble down the road.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| While you're right that motivation isn't purely an inherent
| trait of the individual, it is certainly a factor. The old
| nature vs nurture (or circumstance) debate. The answer is
| usually a mix of both.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| There's a neurochemical component to it for sure. Motivation
| is a complicated process that takes place in the brain, and
| can be influenced by genetics, lifestyle, and drugs.
|
| Some people's brains are just wired from the beginning to be
| more of a Do-er. Some people gain that skill through practice
| or drugs, and some people learn to Do in spite of a brain
| that seems to be constantly fighting against that.
| meheleventyone wrote:
| Motivation for a particular thing is also highly dependent
| on your material circumstances. I ski a lot more living by
| the mountains than I did when I lived two hours away. I ski
| a lot less than I did before I had kids.
| phaker wrote:
| Rephrased it even sounds better:
|
| _It 's easier to educate the motivated than motivate the
| educated._
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I think it's clear that a "do-er" is someone who is more
| motivated, relatively speaking.
|
| Surely you can grant some people are consistently motivated
| than some others.
| allenu wrote:
| If we assume doers as being goal-oriented, then I can see it
| being easier to educate them in ways to help them get closer to
| their goals faster and more efficiently. On the other hand,
| someone who doesn't really care about the goal, isn't going to
| care as much about getting there sooner or in a better fashion.
|
| That said, I've found myself in both camps on various projects.
| When you're working on something where the end result is really
| exciting, it makes a huge difference on you and your team. It's
| exhilarating. On the flip side, projects were you don't care
| about the end result, are really brutal to work through. You just
| work for the paycheck. Any sort of educating about how to do
| things better feels particularly pointless.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Alternative take: in the hiring process education is often used
| as a proxy for motivation, when actually it only proves that once
| upon a time someone was motivated long enough to get educated,
| but it doesn't actually say anything about their present state in
| terms of motivation.
|
| A 'Do-er' is at least at present motivated, and educating them
| will get them to the desired combination of education+motivation
| in the present, even if that education is going to be by
| necessity a very narrow one (typically: job specific).
|
| Being hungry for money and creature comforts also tends to be
| conflated with being motivated ('ambitious'), but it doesn't
| really align well because once financial success (for some very
| modest success) is attained the motivation will vanish. That's
| not necessarily a bad thing, but it tends to confuse people who
| were not aware of the driving power being the outwardly visible
| motivation.
|
| The movie 'Rush' has a nice bit about that, James Hunt just wants
| to be WDC, once. He doesn't care about anything past that point
| because it will give him what he wants. But until he's got it he
| will be super motivated.
| codegeek wrote:
| I hired someone well educated from a Top Ivy League university
| but they had no motivation whatsoever. I tried my best, gave
| them everything they wanted (money, work style, tools,
| training) but they just wouldn't want to be motivated and we
| failed collectively. They were very smart otherwise and
| definitely could learn the skills.
|
| When I am hiring, for me the biggest things are motivation,
| curiosity and caring for your own career. If you don't show me
| those traits, I am very hesitant to hire you. I meet a lot of
| candidates who have no idea why they applied, what they want in
| life for themselves but are just randomly sending their Resume
| hoping it sticks.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > I meet a lot of candidates who have no idea why they
| applied, what they want in life for themselves but are just
| randomly sending their Resume hoping it sticks.
|
| The problem is that finding something isn't optional, so when
| your dream doesn't work out, it is just a matter of finding
| what else might accept you.
|
| So many people, when asked about what they want from life,
| are essentially asking back, "what are my options?"
| theyx wrote:
| > caring for your own career.
|
| It is often the problem that employers equate "caring for
| your career" to "caring for my company's profits".
| Jensson wrote:
| It isn't that people from Ivy League universities are
| unmotivated, it is that those people has so many options that
| unless you are a top company you almost surely wont see them
| unless there is something wrong with them.
|
| > When I am hiring, for me the biggest things are motivation,
| curiosity and caring for your own career. If you don't show
| me those traits, I am very hesitant to hire you.
|
| Yet you just explained that you hired this person just
| because they had a Top Ivy on their resume. You might not
| repeat that mistake but you did do it once.
| codegeek wrote:
| Yep pretty much.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > I meet a lot of candidates who have no idea why they
| applied, what they want in life for themselves but are just
| randoming sending their Resume hoping it sticks.
|
| Yeah, well, while I'm working on that I still need to put
| food on the table, so I'll apologize ahead of time for faking
| like I give a rats ass about a career long enough to get
| through the interview process.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Indeed. Having a career of some sort isn't optional if you
| want a decent life.
|
| I suspect those candidates know very well why they applied.
| It just is a socially demanded requirement that they don't
| give that particular reason.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Gotta jump through the hoops- technical and social
| theyx wrote:
| Exactly this! I cannot believe someone is naive enough to
| think total strangers will start caring about some
| company's progress, profits and reputation just because
| they are being paid minimum wage.
|
| Sorry, literally 99% of people who are seen as "do-ers" or
| motivated are only putting up a show to be hired and to
| keep their jobs. Being hungry and homeless is a great
| motivator. None is genuinely excited about your business as
| much as you are, and if you require them to be, then pay
| them a CEO salary.
| theyx wrote:
| Everyone knows why they applied, but for the benefit of
| employers, we have created a society in which it is not
| acceptable to say "I'm only here for the money, I literally
| do not care about your company."
| wongarsu wrote:
| Imagine there are two applicants who are equal in every
| way, just that one genuinely likes the job and has the same
| goals as the company, and the other is just there for the
| money. It's not hard to see why anyone would prefer the
| first candidate. That's the one who is motivated and will
| go above and beyond if required.
|
| As a secondary effect, applicants of course notice that
| they are more likely to be hired if they just pretend like
| they care. And if everyone pretends, the one person who
| says they are just there for the money is at a disadvantage
| to everyone else.
| version_five wrote:
| I could agree if you're referring to low skill or some
| entry level jobs. For later professional jobs, this may be
| true for some, but a lot of people really do have
| professional career interests, and all things being equal,
| it's normal for an employer to prefer people who want to be
| there for more than a paycheck.
|
| I've had a few glimpses of what it's like to hate your job
| and just be there because you need or want the money, and
| personally, I'm motivated by never wanting to be in that
| position.
| carabiner wrote:
| This only applies to entry level jobs for new grads. What else
| do they have to go off of? After 5-10 years they don't care
| about your formal education.
| mrVentures wrote:
| I don't think Harvard Business School is a name that fades
| away until you will it to.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >but it doesn't actually say anything about their present state
| in terms of motivation
|
| If you take the set of all applicants with education and the
| set of all applicants without, would you claim there is no
| difference in the distributions of 'do-er'-ness?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, there definitely is - in my experience - but it actually
| isn't in the direction that you would probably expect it to
| be in. I don't know how relevant my sample is and of course
| the sample size is going to be somewhat reduced but in my
| experience the people without fall into two groups: those
| that are not motivated at all and those that are highly
| motivated but in a direction orthogonal to what the education
| system would expect. Everybody else gets educated normally
| and ends up somewhere in the middle.
|
| So the really smart people are the high end of the educated
| ones and the high end of the non-educated people (and with
| educated I mean university degree and onwards), and between
| those the gap isn't all that large, it's just that there are
| many more of those than that there are university educated
| ones (at least, around me).
|
| Now, obviously if your circle is exclusively composed of well
| educated people then you will come to a different conclusion,
| and once you go outside of tech/IT the distribution will
| likely be a completely different one again.
|
| So that 'set' has many subsets with very different
| distributions between the subsets.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| This question is somewhat irrelevant, considering you have
| more information to work from. Given the other constraints
| you can apply, is level of education _still_ a useful proxy?
| m463 wrote:
| I remember the joel spolsky hiring article. He wants: smart,
| gets things done
|
| EDIT: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/10/25/the-guerrilla-
| guid...
|
| on the other hand, here was the quote on choosing officers,
| which might be a different position altogther:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord#Cl...
| bambax wrote:
| Thanks for that quote about officers, it's excellent! Indeed
| hardworking and stupid are dangerous. I'm not sure if clever
| and lazy should be put at the top, but they will often find
| the best solutions.
| HugoDaniel wrote:
| Where does taking the code from Bethesda falls into that?
| asciimov wrote:
| I'd rather hire a hard worker than someone just motivated. It is
| laughably easy to kill someones drive and motivation (see
| burnout), where a hard worker is still going to put forward their
| best effort regardless of how they feel about the work they are
| doing.
|
| But if you are a big company it that can burn through people, it
| might be better to hire the motivated as they tend to put in free
| extra hours, where as a hard workers tend to quit at quittin time
| and go do something else.
| ndesaulniers wrote:
| This is why I don't like when bigco's interview process discounts
| candidates' open source contributions; it's the only proof of
| someone being a "do-er!"
|
| As an example, it's pretty hard to fake that you're a top
| contributor to an open source project.
| Jensson wrote:
| Open source contributions aren't discounted, they are treated
| just like any other development experience you have. A multi
| year effort at a job receives a few seconds worth of attention
| as they read the few lines you put in your resume and helps you
| get hired at higher levels. Open source gets similar levels of
| attention per level of effort expended by you, if it is a hobby
| project you spent a few hundred hours on then that is as
| relevant as a job you stayed a month at, ie not relevant at all
| unless the project is successful and headed by you.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I am reminded of one of my favourite sitcoms - Blackadder
|
| (shortly after burning Dr Johnson's only manuscript of the
| Dictionary, and realising it will take ten years to re-create):
|
| "No, I love the dictionary, and would like to have my manservant
| Baldrick read it. Unfortunately it will take him about ten years
| to learn to read, so please leave it here."
| whatever1 wrote:
| The educated knows that the thing that the CTO asks for is
| infeasible. Hence the lack of motivation.
|
| The Doer in his ignorance, will embark on a trip of endlessly
| trying satisfy his boss, thinking that they are making progress,
| but they are not.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Hey, hey, hey! You're stepping on my turf, there!
|
| Everyone knows that it's _our_ (old people) job to say "It
| can't be done!"
|
| Younger folks are supposed to be "boundary pushers," because
| they don't know that it can't be done. They keep trying, until
| they give birth to beautiful unicorns.
|
| Has nothing to do with education, and everything to do with age
| and [lack of] experience.
|
| Disrupt! FTW!
|
| At least, that's what they tell me, while dissing my
| experience.
| jonwilsonmn wrote:
| Giving birth to a unicorn sounds painful.
| paulcole wrote:
| If a CTO asks me to do something I think is initially
| infeasible, that's my opportunity to try my best to figure it
| out not my free pass to sit and complain about what I was
| assigned to do.
|
| If it really is infeasible it's a win win. Either I figure out
| how to do something nobody else could have done or I end up
| giving the next person tasked to take a swing a lot of info
| about what doesn't work and maybe they figure it out.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| John Carmack works on cutting edge technology, so he embarks on
| things that are already difficult and the answer is not known
| ahead of time. Now if you are talking about deadlines, then
| sure. It can be intuited if the deadline is unreasonable. There
| are problems out there where the answer isn't known or even
| close to being known without significant effort. A "Do-er" in
| the case is valuable because they are willing to go the
| distance to try things. Though I will say, its unclear why an
| educated person cannot also be a Do-er. Those are two
| independent variables IMO. I would say I'm a Do-er and I got
| educated so I could "do" more.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I tend to think of "educated" as meaning "having done this
| before", while do-er is someone who will maintain motivation.
|
| Someone who thrives on novelty will be an uneducated-doer at
| the start of a project, then convert to an educated-apathetic
| after completing it. They won't be inspired to do the same
| thing again because it's not novel. But while it is novel, you
| can bet they will dedicate a lot of time to it.
|
| Someone who thrives are familiarity will start as an
| uneducated-apathetic. They will get frozen due to not knowing
| what to do. But with guidance they can be taught what to do,
| then will go on to be an educated-doer. These people are happy
| to keep doing the same projects over and over again. They like
| what they know.
|
| Most of us fall somewhere in the middle. But I'm sure most of
| us have worked with both types: the hyper-focused person who
| works 80 hours a week to get some cool PoC out the door; and
| the "stick to the process we have in place, please" type. Both
| are valuable in certain situations, and a liability in others.
| Carmack and Torvalds appear to be the first kind of person --
| granted, I've never met them -- but they do seem to like to
| build amazing things, then hand them over to someone else to
| maintain.
|
| I know lots of successful devs who are the latter. They crank
| out the same kind of code for clients project after project,
| and will happily work with tools like Wordpress because that's
| what they know and it makes them money.
| nvarsj wrote:
| I have a lot of respect for Carmack but I wish he wouldn't tweet
| things like this. It just feeds into confirmation bias. You could
| say the same thing about the work ethic of immigrants... well
| yes, it's self selecting. Just like the autodidacts who make
| careers without formal education. For the vast majority of us, an
| education has huge benefits. And for the hard sciences and math,
| it's generally just too hard to "do" without learning first.
| TillE wrote:
| It's always odd when people with at least a somewhat scientific
| world view decide they can draw broad conclusions from their
| extremely limited experience, especially when they start
| throwing around hopelessly vague, impossible to measure terms
| like "do-er".
|
| It's great to share your personal experience, that's not
| worthless, but you gotta understand and accept the limitations
| of that.
| javajosh wrote:
| I am increasingly of the opinion that there is little difference
| between doing and learning. In fact I would argue that anyone who
| thinks you can learn without doing is simply wrong.
| [deleted]
| Jensson wrote:
| So then you'd default to always pick the educated person since
| to you they are by definition a doer?
| adolph wrote:
| Interesting coda to the "Curiosity Is Better Than Being Smart?"
| thread:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28753560
| adrianmonk wrote:
| Partially depends on how skilled you are at educating and at
| motivating.
|
| Tech is a very thing-oriented and idea-oriented line of work, and
| motivating others is a people-oriented task. You need to be
| inclined toward knowing other people and understanding what makes
| them tick. Then you can show them connection between that and the
| work you're doing.
|
| There's no reason one person can't be good at all of that, but
| the field attracts people who are good at the thing-oriented and
| idea-oriented stuff since that's the main need.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Carmack hit the nail on the head again. In high school, I had
| lots of incredibly smart friends who all turned their nose up at
| the idea of learning how to program. The only person I knew who
| seemed interested was a sophomore who was retaking his freshman
| math class. Despite that, I humored him and taught him the basics
| of Linux one afternoon. The next week when I saw the kid, he was
| talking about an FTP server he had set up to share movies with
| his family.
|
| I still get mad about it, because even though _I was the one_ who
| taught him, I can 't help but feel like I've never done anything
| as cool as that. I most certainly could, but the whole idea jades
| me and sends me back to the documentation I'm pouring over.
| Another good example is the "nerds vs hippies" generalization
| that people like to make: half the world's programmers are
| immobilized by choice, while the other half is motivated by
| blindness. Only together can they achieve great things.
| mrlanderson wrote:
| Interesting. Can you elaborate on the last sentence you wrote?
| Where is it from?
| genjipress wrote:
| In one of the other forums I hang out on, people come in all
| the time asking if programming is a good way to make tons of
| money. These people typically dabble for a little bit, get
| bored, and move on. The ones who just like to mess around, to
| play with programming, they flourish.
| ivan_ah wrote:
| > I still get mad about it, [...] never done anything as cool
| as that.
|
| Quite the contrary, you should feel proud. IMHO, the real
| metric of success in life is not what you have achieved, but
| what your "students" have achieved, so in that metric you're
| the boss!
| tomohawk wrote:
| Had my share of educated, but unmotivated people I've had to work
| with. They often have the skill of passing classes, but not other
| things. It seems like they don't know what a job is, or care to
| know.
|
| On the other hand, some of the best people I've worked with in
| software engineering were never officially trained for it.
| Hokusai wrote:
| > My experience has been that it is easier to educate a Do-er
| than to motivate the educated
|
| So, if someone wants to do something to give that person tools to
| achieve it will be productive. If someone does Not want to do
| something it is very difficult to talk them into doing it.
|
| Makes sense. But I do not know in what context this is discussed
| our what is the supposed implications.
| nescioquid wrote:
| I agree. It really only suggests that incentives are more
| important than current skill/information.
|
| a) someone has an incentive to do something, but knows not how
|
| b) someone is very agreeable or pliant in their personality,
| and is willing to carry out instructions if they don't already
| know how
|
| c) someone's incentives are not well aligned to do the thing,
| or are not agreeable/pliant enough to do it anyway, but knows
| how to do it
|
| If I know how to set up and administer a mail server, under c)
| I won't do it if there are no incentives (e.g. pay). If I need
| a mail server, but don't know how to do it, as under a) I will
| pay someone to do it, or to teach me.
|
| b) is probably quiet and long-suffering, but may never
| understand the whys and wherefores.
|
| So incentives are probably more important than analyzing things
| in terms of "doers" vs. "non-doers". Could have implications
| for hiring policies -- less important that candidate does not
| have 5 years of Frobnitz framework experience, more important
| to provide an incentive for the candidate to become proficient.
|
| But I think this was not the point. He said "read what you love
| until you love to read" which sounds like Stockholm Syndrome.
| So, I don't really think he was saying anything deeper than
| "follow your bliss", unfortunately.
| imbnwa wrote:
| As a mediocre frontend dev, this hits hard. I bought a bunch of
| texts to up my DS&A and college level math skills as I'd like to
| eventually be able to excecute on 3D animation in the browser,
| but the books end up sitting on my desk as I consider I'm too
| old/there're too many people who _do_ have these skills already,
| etc.
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| Never measure yourself by others. Compare yourself to who you
| were yesterday. You'll always be happier with yourself than you
| were yesterday and eventually you'll look up and realize
| someone is looking up to you.
|
| This is especially relevant now as we have instant exposure to
| the best of the best of any field simply by opening a social
| media app.
| imbnwa wrote:
| > Never measure yourself by others.
|
| Yeah this is something I definitely struggle with
| designcode wrote:
| Learning by just consuming textbooks isn't going to get you far
| with motivation.
|
| Pick a small goal and work towards that.
|
| Break the problem down in to small steps and find ways of
| solving each step that works best for you.
|
| You might find you don't even need any of those textbooks.
| dorkwood wrote:
| What sort of 3D animation do you want to do? If you're talking
| about shaders, you might be doing yourself a disservice with
| the bottom-up approach.
|
| In my opinion, learning to use math functions as tools rather
| than having a deep understanding of how they work is an equally
| valid approach. I know several great WebGL developers who
| really aren't very good at math.
|
| Consider the following definitions of the dot product:
|
| A) Algebraically, the dot product is the sum of the products of
| the corresponding entries of the two sequences of numbers.
| Geometrically, it is the product of the Euclidean magnitudes of
| the two vectors and the cosine of the angle between them. These
| definitions are equivalent when using Cartesian coordinates. In
| modern geometry, Euclidean spaces are often defined by using
| vector spaces. In this case, the dot product is used for
| defining lengths (the length of a vector is the square root of
| the dot product of the vector by itself) and angles (the cosine
| of the angle of two vectors is the quotient of their dot
| product by the product of their lengths).
|
| or
|
| B) The dot product takes two vectors as inputs, and returns a
| value of 1.0 if they're pointing the same direction, -1.0 if
| they're pointing in opposite directions, and 0.0 if they're
| perpendicular (as long as they're unit vectors of equal
| length). This function can be used for diffuse lighting
| calculations (i.e. is the light direction facing the same way
| as the surface?), checking if a point is in front of another
| point, etc.
|
| In my opinion, the second definition is much more useful for
| someone interested in 3D on the web, but it's something you
| won't find in math textbooks.
| imbnwa wrote:
| > What sort of 3D animation do you want to do?
|
| This is perhaps where I go wrong, as I assume it's 'all the
| same thing'. I currently work on a web app that provides an
| editing interface for 2D animation with DOM objects (so,
| rectangles), so I have a notion of using matrices for camera
| transforms but the extension into 3D animation seems like
| another planet. I get what you're saying with the tool
| perspective, but I'm usually nervous about "how do I fix
| something if something breaks".
|
| In the past when I've spoken of what I work on with friends
| of friends who're professionals in other fields, and I'd
| frequently be asked about my 3D animation skills as they had
| some business idea they wanted to execute on. This experience
| was primarily my motivation to looking further into 3D rather
| than say gaming so gun to my head 3D modeling and editing
| would be the first stop.
|
| But the comments here have been helpful
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| (The second definition is also wrong - it's true only for
| unit vectors.)
| jimbob45 wrote:
| If you express your vectors as scalar multiples of unit
| vectors, it works, right?
| Jensson wrote:
| Then you'd still multiply those scalars. In your example
| you just replace 1 and -1 with the product of the vectors
| length.
| dorkwood wrote:
| That's why I wrote "as long as they're unit vectors" in my
| definition.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I swear I double-checked the paragraph before replying...
| Sorry for the "correction".
| shane_b wrote:
| 3D demand is only growing because browsers haven't been able to
| handle it until recently.
|
| Anecdotally, I develop webgl and the tooling is meh. Far from
| figured out and even harder if you want to port to React Native
| too.
|
| As far as math, some is required. But mostly understanding the
| relationship between position, velocity and acceleration for
| animations. As well as sin cos and tan for viewport and
| triangles.
|
| Don't give up. Age doesn't matter. Do a little a day.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Math can be hard to learn independently.
|
| Luckily, the math for rudimentary 3d is pretty accessible and
| well documented. There are tons of quality libraries out there
| for doing linear transformations, so you likely won't need to
| learn the nuts & bolts unless you really want to. As a bonus,
| working in 3d is the best way to build an intuition for a lot
| of linear algebra subjects.
| noizejoy wrote:
| Just keep looking for different niches until you find one that
| intrigues you enough to get into it without thinking about
| money. Maybe that niche isn't even programming.
| westurner wrote:
| ~ "Imagine that one could give you a copy of all of their
| knowledge. If you do not choose to apply and learn on your own,
| you can never."
| Jensson wrote:
| It is a lot easier to find an educated person than a person whose
| motivation lasts long enough to make up for the education though.
| leetrout wrote:
| Maybe. Lots of perspectives and opinions that come along with
| that for better and worse.
| swalsh wrote:
| Part of the problem finding these people is they probably
| aren't looking to work for you. They know their resume isn't
| going to pass your assumptions. So instead of applying to jobs
| they're never be considered for they're out trying to do
| something instead.
| shadofx wrote:
| Also easier to convince someone ignorant of the problem domain
| that they have an adequate understanding of the problem domain,
| than to convince someone with an comprehensive understanding of
| the problem domain that the problem is solvable and worth
| investing effort into.
| giantg2 wrote:
| You still have to motivate a do-er. They have to want to work on
| your specific thing.
| aaron695 wrote:
| > It is easier to educate a Do-er than to motivate the educated
|
| I really like the current HN title.
|
| It has nothing to do with the tweet which I don't understand at
| all.
|
| The comment the tweet is based on is also really good -
|
| > "Read what you love until you love to read"
|
| It's why we need to get internet porn, shopping, Netflix and
| video games to the poor. And burn to the ground the idealists who
| want to get them Wikipedia.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I like that.
|
| Carmack is a pretty sensible chap. I find his viewpoints to be
| practical.
| swayvil wrote:
| Look at school. They force you to fake enthusiasm on threat of
| bad grades and parental disapproval. It's grotesque.
|
| There are people who actually enjoy research, scholarly stuff,
| making stuff, solving little engineering puzzles. Writing papers.
| Inventing stuff. All the sciences started with people who were
| naturally into that. Art and music too.
|
| But that ain't most people. It shouldn't be most people. People
| are naturally pretty casual.
|
| So we're all just gonna fake enthusiasm for that stuff. That's a
| huge amount of fakery. I mean we're looking at whole culture of
| fakeness.
| aroundtown wrote:
| This completely ignores the why somebody is unmotivated.
|
| I remember being beat down very early in my career. I took
| advanced math classes, could build compilers, loved embedded
| device work, wanted to work on more advanced things (operating
| system level, backend, devices, etc). The only people that would
| even talk to me were people that wanted web pages built. All
| because I wasn't fortunate enough to go to a big name school or
| any education beyond a BS.
|
| Often the only motivation I had at that point was to not starve.
| But after working for an abusive boss and 2.5 bad companies. I
| was burned out, used up, and left with nearly zero motivation.
| wara23arish wrote:
| How is your situation now? Were you able to transition into
| different work?
| unemphysbro wrote:
| how do you recover?
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