[HN Gopher] I don't like making the best things
___________________________________________________________________
I don't like making the best things
Author : herbertl
Score : 426 points
Date : 2023-02-16 07:53 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (internetvin.ghost.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (internetvin.ghost.io)
| LLyaudet wrote:
| Hello,
|
| I'm not a native English speaker and I was wondering why he wrote
| "me things" instead of "my things" 3 times. Is it some kind of
| slang ? or kind of informal, or funny, or childish, or empathetic
| way to speak ? There is no will of looking down on what he wrote
| when I write childish in my question. I just don't get the nuance
| associated to this expression.
|
| Thanks, best regards, Laurent Lyaudet
| bcbrown wrote:
| "My things" are things that are mine, that I own or control.
| When I buy a book, or a car, or a spoon, it becomes _my_ book,
| or car, or spoon. But that doesn 't mean it was made with me in
| mind.
|
| A "me thing", and this is just my interpretation, is something
| that is "about, of, or from me." If one tries to create the
| "best thing", it's impossible, because it's always possible to
| imagine another version that's somehow better. In trying to
| create a "best thing", I will strip or polish away aspects of
| myself that I see in what I create, because I'm chasing an
| ideal that is "outside of me", "objective", "universal".
|
| If I instead choose to create a "me thing", that means
| accepting and celebrating that the thing I create will be a
| reflection of me, something that no one else can create,
| because it's imbued with the spirit of that who created it,
| namely, me.
|
| Does that help, Laurent? It's not formal, grammatical English.
| It's not a common idiom, or a phrase I've seen elsewhere. But I
| think I intuitively understand what the author is saying, and I
| hope this explanation helps you understand too.
| LLyaudet wrote:
| Thank you very much. I think I get it. He made a "me
| neologism" ;) Kind of meta thing a "me neologism" to talk
| about "me things" :D
| pammf wrote:
| I might be completely wrong, but these days I believe everyone is
| insecure to some degree and just create this "best" facade
| because don't want to look worse than the rest that are bragging
| to be at least aiming for the best.
|
| What is sad to me is that a lot of times I perceive that society
| lauds the bragging ones and overlooks who sincerely (and bravely)
| admit their "weaknesses".
| pdimitar wrote:
| This can likely be related to us using our websites as a
| portfolio and a resume, too. And it does indeed become paralyzing
| if you want to always make a good impression and you can't goof
| around anymore.
|
| My solution will be: have 2 blogs. One strictly professional
| where you post HOWTOs, and another one where you post anything
| and everything.
| scary-size wrote:
| I went for that solution. Got a main blog were I post more
| polished stuff and a microblog. On the latter I can just post
| spur-of-the-moment content. Also significantly lowered the
| barrier of posting to the microblog by just typing in a Notion
| page that's rendered to html and rss every few minutes.
| robotguy wrote:
| I really love the way Ira Glass puts it:
|
| _Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, and I really
| wish somebody had told this to me._
|
| _All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have
| good taste. But it's like there is this gap. For the first couple
| years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good.
| It's not that great. It's trying to be good, it has ambition to
| be good, but it's not that good._
|
| _But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still
| killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what
| you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. A lot of people
| never get past that phase. They quit._
|
| _Everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went
| through years where they had really good taste and they could
| tell that what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it
| to be. They knew it fell short. Everybody goes through that._
|
| _And if you are just starting out or if you are still in this
| phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you
| can do is do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Put
| yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know
| you're going to finish one story. It is only by going through a
| volume of work that you're going to catch up and close that gap.
| And the work you're making will be as good as your ambitions._
|
| _I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've
| ever met. It takes awhile. It's gonna take you a while. It's
| normal to take a while. You just have to fight your way through
| that._
|
| --Ira Glass
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Does Ira Glass have a follow-up to this about people with good
| taste and dream projects? What to do when you have a project
| you don't/can't do twice yet you know your under skilled to
| produce it?
| danShumway wrote:
| There was a designer back when I was in college that talked
| about this, and I don't know if he was summarizing another
| quote or giving his own, but I remember him describing the
| problem of dream projects (roughly) this way:
|
| ----
|
| Sometimes if you're a creative person, you have a vision in
| your head about what you want to make. The problem is, you
| also can see when the things you make aren't quite measuring
| up to that vision. And so when you make things, you look at
| them, and they don't match the vision in your head, and you
| get very discouraged.
|
| The danger is that thinking about the things in your head
| becomes more attractive than building them. The danger is
| that you never actually try to build the things because
| building them is miserable and thinking about the
| theoretically perfect dream in your head becomes more
| satisfying then engaging with the messiness of actually
| trying to construct it; particularly if you know that what
| you construct won't perfectly match that vision. When you
| know up-front that the thing you want to make is going to be
| messy when it's in reality, it starts to feel safer to just
| not have it be in reality, to only think about the
| theoretical finished product.
|
| And if you fall into that trap, you'll spend a lot of time
| thinking about what you want to build, and no time ever
| building it.
|
| ----
|
| That could be a longer conversation, but the short version
| is, I personally think there needs to be a mixture of "I'm
| going to produce something imperfect and I'm OK with that"
| and "I'm going to produce a lot of imperfect things and get
| better at this so it's less theoretical."
|
| There are problems that can be solved by looking up resources
| or practicing, but there are also problems and skills where
| you won't even know what to practice until you start doing
| the thing and identifying issues that you didn't know
| existed. In particular I think about stuff like writing; if
| you have a theoretical idea for a novel but you don't think
| you're a good writer and you don't know how to publish --
| those are not easy problems to solve unless you sit down and
| write things and try to publish things, and make mistakes and
| start to understand what specifically you need to practice.
|
| Maybe that means taking a shot at the project with the
| expectation that you're going to fail, and then saying,
| "well, okay, I've learned X, let's repeat and try it again."
| Maybe it means tackling different projects and building up to
| the dream project.
|
| But the trap is where actually working on the project or
| taking steps to close that skill gap becomes harder than
| doing nothing. Even small steps make long walks. In some
| ways, the problem can be looking at the distance and saying
| "I need to figure out how to cross this distance in one
| leap." Well, no. What are the skill gaps you have, or what
| general areas are they in? How can you practice that skill?
| Do you not really know what the skill gaps are? Okay, fine.
| Build some terrible stuff and after a while you'll learn what
| your skill gaps are. Then repeat.
| QuantumGood wrote:
| This parallels a bit stages two and three in the "Four Stages
| of Competence":
|
| 1. Unconscious incompetence (Ignorance)
|
| 2. Conscious incompetence (Knowledge)
|
| 3. Conscious competence (Skill)
|
| 4. Unconscious competence (Awareness)
|
| https://taskcompetency.com/ shares a method to help learners
| not get stuck at the lower levels, to keep targeting the higher
| levels.
| beznet wrote:
| I love this quote by Ira though I believe the article linked
| and this quote aren't really discussing the same thing but
| certainly have overlapping themes.
| catach wrote:
| Important aspect of this model is that sense of taste is not
| static. Two things:
|
| As skill is improved, taste may also improve at the same rate.
| When your taste gap doesn't close, it can seem like you're not
| actually improving. Constant frustration that you're not as
| good as you want to be, despite actual progress. Comparing your
| work over time is a good way of grounding yourself.
|
| Skill is capped by taste level. If you don't see how your work
| could be improved then you're not aware of how your skill can
| be improved. Expanding taste is as important as chasing it. The
| gap is good.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| I saw a great visualization of this long ago. It plots two
| curves of ability, one for execution and the other for
| evaluation. They both increase with sinusoid curves shifted
| so that when one plateaus, the other is at an inflection
| point at highest rate of increase.
|
| Technique and critique don't necessarily advance smoothly at
| the same rate, leaving a variable gap over time, so sometimes
| you feel better about your work and sometimes you think it's
| trash.
|
| The important thing is to keep practicing.
| franciscop wrote:
| It took me 8-10 years of programming and literally hundreds of
| projects before I started being happy with the end result of
| what I was doing. Never ashamed though, I look at my early
| projects like how you'd look at a child's "paintings", with
| this sort of feeling of innocence and naivety. It's still
| different, because a child's painting has no higher goal, while
| I was trying to build something good and just couldn't, but
| still there's no shame in learning so don't punish the younger
| you. And I do remember I was always happy doing it, even though
| I wasn't proud of the result back then, the challenge and the
| learning felt like my brain was expanding.
|
| And talking about taste, as a frontend dev you need two: the
| usual actual design taste and the code organization taste.
| Which are more similar than dissimilar in my experience, but
| still two totally different beasts and I didn't even have a
| proper design taste and had to learn that as well. Or at least,
| I had to learn how to put my innate taste into practical rules
| to follow, things like https://lawsofux.com/ were massively
| useful for that.
| afgrant wrote:
| I've looked at my work from 7-8 years back and realized that
| it's actually better. I'm not sure yet what this means.
| floppydiskette wrote:
| Perhaps you were more curious and interested. You certainly
| weren't more knowledgeable.
| wizofaus wrote:
| Or working with better people, particularly those setting
| the requirements. The worst code I've written/worked with
| has always come about because of unclear/unstable
| requirements.
| manaskarekar wrote:
| ZenPencils' illustrated version of this quote:
| https://www.zenpencils.com/comic/90-ira-glass-advice-for-beg...
| aredox wrote:
| It's so obvious once you put it like that. I wish I had seen
| those words earlier.
|
| I (40 y.o.) will try to start again and not quit this time.
| TheRealNGenius wrote:
| it's referred to as the taste gap
| rcme wrote:
| > But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is
| still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell
| that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. A
| lot of people never get past that phase. They quit.
|
| I find a lot of people who should quit don't. Their taste
| becomes compromised and they fall in love with their own work.
| I have high school friends who have dedicated the first 10-20
| years of their adult lives to artistic pursuits. Some have
| succeeded and some have failed. What's interesting, to me, is
| that it was already clear who was going to make it in high
| school, but some people just didn't know when to quit. The
| common factor among those who failed was that they felt their
| work was good, i.e. it met their "taste", when a neutral
| observer could plainly see it wasn't very good.
| yCombLinks wrote:
| I agree with you most of the time, but nearly all truly
| original work will be generally unliked initially, because
| it's unfamiliar. The other problem is success often comes by
| struggling forward even when you don't have support.
| quietcomments wrote:
| A related idea is George lucas's dis-satisfaction with his
| own work. He spent so long working on it he can see where he
| fell short of what he wanted to do and how it's held together
| with duct tape and glue.
|
| He has a low opinion of his own movies. When I know the
| tradeoffs I make to get the project finished, I come to
| similar feeling.
|
| When I'm working just for my own pleasure/hobby, sometimes
| any old thing will work to make me feel good about it, even
| when it's not great.
| failrate wrote:
| I also have a low opinion of most of his movies and find
| that in reworking them, he has overworked them. My favorite
| remains THX-1138. Just bare bones and mostly quiet
| performances.
| tasuki wrote:
| I'm very surprised by all of this and understand none of it.
|
| > Some have succeeded and some have failed.
|
| By "succeeded", do you mean something like "well liked by
| other contemporary artists" or "made money"?
|
| > What's interesting, to me, is that it was already clear who
| was going to make it in high school
|
| Was it clear to you or even to most people? In what way was
| it clear, why? I'd expect the ones with more business acumen
| to "make it" as artists.
|
| > The common factor among those who failed was that they felt
| their work was good, i.e. it met their "taste", when a
| neutral observer could plainly see it wasn't very good.
|
| I don't know about neutral observers. Successful artists
| often make kitch that sells. Would you say Vincent van Gogh
| failed in his artistic pursuits?
|
| In my view there's little corellation between whether someone
| makes good art and their outward success.
| rcme wrote:
| > By "succeeded", do you mean something like "well liked by
| other contemporary artists" or "made money"?
|
| The definition of success was "earned a living wage" but
| some were much more successful than that. I was thinking
| about this particular issue recently because a good friend,
| one who falls squarely into the "should have quit"
| category, has recently become homeless.
|
| > Was it clear to you or even to most people? In what way
| was it clear, why? I'd expect the ones with more business
| acumen to "make it" as artists.
|
| It was clear to most people. The best way I've seen the
| feeling described is the scene from The Sopranos when Hesh
| says: "There's good and there's not good ... Talent is
| talent ... a hit is a hit" [0]. The point is, you can
| recognize talent, but that doesn't mean you can necessarily
| articulate what makes it good. There is something
| tautological about taste: it's good because it's good.
|
| > I don't know about neutral observers. Successful artists
| often make kitch that sells. Would you say Vincent van Gogh
| failed in his artistic pursuits?
|
| Most people aren't Vincent van Gogh.
|
| 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sSIE-o2V9g
| waboremo wrote:
| I believe this is where the highly self-critical perspective
| has its roots. From the outside, it looks like a bunch of
| compliment baiting, but actually it seems to be a necessary.
| Without that intense scrutiny from yourself, how are you
| supposed to grow when you don't know what you did wrong?
|
| This is also partially why some creatives stop making
| progress even if financially successful to a degree. They get
| enough fans, they make enough money, so they stop looking for
| things to nitpick and start blindly believing. See Rob
| Liefeld, who notoriously has received a lot of bad feedback
| about his work but way after he was successful in the 90s -
| to the point where he's gone on record saying he doesn't know
| why he's so "controversial".
| adversaryIdiot wrote:
| How are you supposed to enjoy things if you're constantly
| ridiculing yourself?
|
| Does that mean the person who enjoys the things they do suck at
| what they do?
| danShumway wrote:
| I've been struggling with this a _lot_ recently, but what I
| 've been trying to do lately is dissect that exact question
| and sort of question the axioms it's based on:
|
| - is it _actually_ impossible for me to critique myself and
| enjoy the things I 've made, or is that a restriction that
| I've just made up in my mind?
|
| - is it actually necessary for me to think something is high
| quality to enjoy it? Is it OK for me to enjoy something even
| if the flaws are obvious to me?
|
| - is there a process here that's enjoyable independent of the
| output, regardless of whether or not what I make is good?
|
| - is my 'cringe' about the things I make primarily motivated
| by my internal taste, or about my worry that the things I
| make won't meet other people's expectations? Is my desire to
| create things that look good to other people different from
| my internal pride about my own work, and should I treat them
| differently?
|
| - is there an enjoyable aspect to stretching myself even if
| that means I fail more often? If I put a game to a higher
| difficulty, do I have less fun just because I'm being
| challenged more and die more often? So similarly, if I
| explore a medium or try a programming task that I'm not great
| at, should I be getting so discouraged about occasionally
| "failing" at it?
|
| ----
|
| I think that it's not necessarily the case that enjoying
| something needs to be linked to its overall quality. And
| especially with creative work, I've been trying recently to
| get better about releasing things that I think are explicitly
| _bad_ , and saying, "okay, I stink at this and the end result
| is terrible, but that doesn't necessarily mean I should feel
| bad looking at it or showing it to other people." And I'm not
| sure that getting rid of all the criticism centers of my
| brain or convincing myself that I'm a genius is necessary to
| get to that state. I think it's possible (albeit very
| difficult) for me to look at something I've made and see 100
| flaws and still say, "I like the parts of it that aren't
| flaws, and I think those parts are cool."
|
| I'm not sure that it's healthy as an artist to even focus at
| all on whether or not you're good at something, just focus on
| getting better regardless of what your current skill level
| is. "Good" is kind of a wishy-washy term anyway. And I'm not
| sure it's healthy (at least for the way I work) to couple my
| enjoyment of the things I do to whether or not I think I'm
| good at them.
|
| But :shrug: I'm not sure. I do think that the original quote
| is less about "here's how you _should_ think of your work,
| and is more about "you probably already have a tendency to
| think about your work this way, so don't feel so isolated
| about that or get too discouraged." Because it is
| discouraging and I think a lot of artists and creators
| struggle with the fact that they can see very clearly where
| they want to be and where they are, and they're not where
| they want to be -- and speaking personally, it's not
| something I had ever really vocalized to myself before
| originally hearing that quote, and I remember it being very
| cathartic to realize, "actually yeah, this is why I'm
| frustrated about everything I'm doing -- because my ability
| to critique my work is more developed than my ability to make
| it." It's not really saying that's the ideal, it's just
| describing a thing that happens to a lot of people.
|
| The original quote I heard was in a slightly different
| context: it was a game dev who brought up the same idea and
| then cautioned that the way a lot of developers internalize
| that mental conflict is that they never implement ideas or
| finish projects, because thinking about the theoretically
| perfect version of the thing in their head is always easier
| than looking at the objectively less perfect, sometimes kind
| of terrible thing they've made. His advice was, if you're in
| that position, recognize it and try to take steps to get more
| comfortable with messiness and imperfections, because it can
| be a huge barrier to ever actually implementing and
| practicing ideas.
| arnklint wrote:
| Recently read "The Art of not Giving a Fuck", which might be a
| good book for people relating to the feelings that the author
| expresses.
| ByteBoost wrote:
| [dead]
| b0afc375b5 wrote:
| This was me as well. For a long time I put off writing my blog
| because I wanted to write something
| impactful/meaningful/substantial.
|
| However, I came across one blog which had numerous entries,
| starting from when the author was in college until today. The
| blog entries were about emacs tips and tricks, clojure, and other
| software engineering topics. I found it because I was trying to
| setup tree-sitter for clojure/clojurescript. I was grateful for
| the blog, learned a thing or two, and thanked the author.
|
| Anyway, what stood out to me was how almost all the blog entries,
| at least the earlier ones, was full of spelling and grammatical
| errors. Then it hit me. I'll never start writing something if I
| don't accept that most of the things I write will probably suck
| and will be read by no one.
|
| Since then I've written a couple of entries for my blog. And
| while I don't expect anyone to read them, it has been a cathartic
| experience for me. It's somewhat similar to meditation in that
| regard.
| __boos wrote:
| It is like meditation because it is self reflection in the form
| of writing, which it is equivalent to maintaining a journal,
| which science tell us helps in improving our emotions, and
| well-being.
| FlashBlaze wrote:
| Couldn't agree more. The last couple of years were the same for
| me: will not post until I have of something impact or will not
| share my art unless it is just the way I like it but this year,
| I have just started putting stuff out.
|
| Whether it is of any use to anyone or whether anyone will find
| my art good is beyond my control. I have just started putting
| stuff out which interests me and which makes me fulfilled.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| The point of this blog is not that it gets read rather that it
| gets written.
|
| That's what I wrote at the bottom of my blog when I started.
| Once that was there, I began to write what I wanted to write
| and not what I thought people want to read.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > The point of this blog is not that it gets read rather that
| it gets written.
|
| Absolutely. A great blog is about the thoughts and ideas it
| puts forth, not really about how well they are written.
|
| And, perhaps paradoxically, what results when bloggers write
| this way is usually great reading.
| pocketarc wrote:
| It's the blog equivalent of shipping an MVP. The sooner you get
| something out there, the sooner you can start improving. After
| writing 100 articles, you will absolutely have improved a
| drastic amount. You'll be much more fluent, have worked out the
| kinks in your writing workflow, and have built a habit. And
| that's before we even get into any benefits that may or may not
| come from people reading what you wrote.
|
| Note to self: Gotta do that, too.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| When things paralyze me, it's because I'm too in my head and need
| to get out in the world:
|
| https://jondouglas.dev/you-suffer-because-youre-not-what-you...
|
| (There's probably writing mistakes as I never went back to
| "perfect" it)
| adammish wrote:
| I read through your post above and it helped me put words to
| what I feel in my mind. A cluttered garage.
|
| Thank you for writing it.
| atum47 wrote:
| I try to publish all my projects that I think is interesting.
| Maybe it's not interesting for a lot of people, but it could be
| for some.
| robalni wrote:
| There are many different things that can be best because people
| value different things. It's pretty easy to be best at one thing
| if it's not the currently most popular thing. You probably don't
| even need to try to be best; as long as there is something you
| care about, you will probably be one of the best at that.
|
| An example of that is that the computer I use is the best
| computer I have ever used but it's far from the fastest one
| (which most people seem to care about).
|
| It seems like most things compete for the same type of best,
| which just makes everything the same, because everything is
| trying to be the same. This is boring because I often want
| something else. The best way to get anywhere is not to try to be
| _the_ best, but to allow yourself to be another best.
| sneak wrote:
| Related Ethan Hawke video about giving yourself permission to be
| creative and play the fool:
|
| https://youtu.be/WRS9Gek4V5Q
| nivenkos wrote:
| If it's stupid but it works, it isn't stupid.
| iamsanteri wrote:
| That's why I set up a subdomain for all sorts of ramblings that
| are not even search engine indexable:
|
| http://sentience.lostbookofsales.com
|
| My main website hasn't seen any activity lately because of what
| you mention, and laziness...
| wood-porch wrote:
| Hey I read your notes on Dr. Yapko's lecture on depression
| which led me to watch the lecture and I found it immensely
| helpful. Do you have any other resources you would recommend?
| iamsanteri wrote:
| I'm glad you found it helpful. I have some one-off articles
| like this one: https://www.davidsongifted.org/gifted-
| blog/dabrowskis-theory... However, in my case I mostly
| connect it with neuroticism on which I have an immense bunch
| of information piecing it all together. It seems to be
| sensitivity and neurotic qualities that are most connected
| with what led towards a rather strong depression.
|
| Ohh, and one absolutely huge website where lots of people
| share their experiences is the followjng:
| https://www.storiedmind.com/start-here/
|
| Spend some time around there, and particularly if you're of
| male sex, you'll probably find it extremely useful.
| iamsanteri wrote:
| Adding to this, I also did a summary of a book from Ernest
| Becker way back in the day, and the section on neuroticism,
| or how psychology is taking over from religion, and such
| broader societal topics you can read about here:
| https://www.lostbookofsales.com/notes/the-denial-of-death-
| by...
|
| It's quite some brutal and heavy reading, but then again,
| if it helps you understand the condition better then it's
| for the best I guess...
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| The author made a mistake. They defined "best" incorrectly, as
| something that is polished or up to some specific technical
| standard.
|
| In terms of making things, the best should be more in line with
| being able to express yourself fully, not in terms of some pre-
| defined metric such as views or approval from the close-minded.
| Thus, a random spontaneous post can be much better than a well-
| researched one if it fulfils that criterion.
| anotheraccount9 wrote:
| Who made a mistake?
| challenger-derp wrote:
| > I used to love X, but now it's been a few years since I've done
| X. What changed? At some point, everything got serious. [1]
|
| > I started to only want to publish the best things, so I didn't
| publish at all. ...
|
| > When I try to make the best thing, I become less happy,
| actually I become paralyzed. ...
|
| > When I try to make the best thing, it feels different. It feels
| like I'm trying to prove something to someone instead of trying
| to discover something for myself. ... I'm just me, so I should
| make me things.
|
| Pleasantly surprised to have chanced upon this piece of writing
| which has, in a few short paragraphs, captured a series of
| complex emotions I'd think are common among creators.
|
| Practically I think it helps to be in touch with a community of
| creators who can offer support, guidance and empathy.
|
| Personally I am far from mastering my emotions to the point where
| I'm comfortable putting my not-best creations up for public
| criticism/discussion while simultaneously recognizing the need to
| build up courage and wisdom to do so. I think for some this
| aversion partly stems from their upbringing's (family, education
| system, peer expectations) lack of openness/encouragement to
| exploration and failure to tolerate failure (failure comes hand
| in hand with exploration).
|
| While eschewing failure appears to be of little detriment to the
| "cog in the machine", cultures that have yet figured out how to
| discuss, accept, and tolerate failures are destined to avoid
| innovation. People who are serious about creating/innovating
| should find means of coping with people who are overly critical/
| dismissive of "not-best" iterative attempts.
|
| Footnotes:
|
| [1] Took the liberty of generalizing the author's post by
| replacing the act of publishing which was the author's original
| focus to "X" with the intention of having "X" being any activity.
| keizo wrote:
| I feel this. Often I work on one thing for a long time trying to
| make it the best thing ever. Iterations get slower and smaller or
| take longer and require more effort. Nice to work on new things
| carefree for the simple love of doing the work and enjoying early
| progress.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I think adding a performative aspect to a lot of things sort of
| kills the joy in doing them.
|
| For like a year I didn't really tell anyone I had a website. It
| was always fun to work on, because I did it for myself when I was
| inspired. Then it got out, and now there's a lot more pressure.
|
| Writing because you feel you ought to because you haven't in a
| few months is about the least inspiring thing I know. That's just
| a chore.
|
| I quite deliberately don't put like or comment features on my
| website to sort of prevent this. Means on average I don't get a
| lot of interaction, since the minimum bar to interaction is
| sending me an email.
| __boos wrote:
| This! Our society as a whole push us toward performing aiming
| to produce more, to consume more again and over again. We don't
| do things because we like them of we want to have fun. We do
| these things to perform, gain wealth, visibility, status. Such
| approach steer us away from the innate human need of exploring,
| playing and mastering for the sake of it, which, surprise
| surprise, it is what make human happy.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| That so true but unfortunately it takes many freedoms to able
| to do this.
|
| Freedom from financial worries, freedom from the worry of
| what others think, freedom from the worries of not knowing
| for what it will be good for (to explore).
|
| We do this as children since all those freedoms are given. It
| is hard to do when one starts out in society that places so
| many expectations on one.
| nurbl wrote:
| Yes, I think there is a risk in doing things publicly. You can
| get stuck in this loop of topping your last performance. We may
| need validation or criticism to improve. But improvement is not
| the only thing that matters. For me, enjoyment is more
| important; I can be quite happy making things that I never show
| anyone else, and obligations can quickly kill the joy. On the
| other hand, sometimes enjoyment falters because of stagnation.
| It is a tricky line to walk, with traps on both sides.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _You can get stuck in this loop of topping your last
| performance._
|
| There's an easy way to avoid this.
|
| Burma-Shave.
| pikseladam wrote:
| wow this post hits home. thank you.
| elseweather wrote:
| That's a lovely photo
| koch wrote:
| Yesterday someone posted[0] a project I've been working on, and,
| while it didn't get much traction, I did get a comment that
| struck me. They said what I made was "very advanced."
|
| Like, holy hell, I'm just trying to keep the lights on by doing
| some small thing every day. Apparently it pays off over time
| though, and it's helpful to have someone point that out to you.
|
| I think sometimes it's easy to forget how far you've come when
| you're in the thick of it day in and out.
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34828474
| JohnFen wrote:
| This is such a key realization.
|
| The way we make large accomplishments is through a long series
| of small steps. How do you eat an elephant, and all that.
|
| One of my favorite moments in a large project is at the end,
| when I'm looking at the completed project as a whole. It looks
| huge and enormously complicated and I can barely believe that
| it was me that did it.
| jasfi wrote:
| An interesting idea is to write to designs. First, the best way,
| second the fast way. This is useful in startups.
| some_random wrote:
| One of the worst things about the internet is the way it brings
| the top 0.01% of performers to your attention at all times. You
| will never be that good at everything you want to be good at, you
| might not ever get that good at even one thing you want to be
| good at.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| There was a recent post on HN about how making yourself the
| primary user of your software makes it easier to build.
|
| Does anyone remember that?
| smp0 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34520537
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Yes!
| raldi wrote:
| This reminds me of http://reddit.com/r/windowshots , a subreddit
| created over a decade ago with the rule, "Post a photo taken
| right now out the nearest window"; the best part about it was how
| real and unstaged they all were.
|
| Every now and then someone would post some beautiful vista
| clearly taken at a well-chosen time and I'd get all annoyed.
| ev9 wrote:
| This post is about the difference between art and design.
|
| Artists make art because there is something they want to display
| to the world for their own reasons, irrespective of the desires
| of the world. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Great art is
| impactful to humans beyond the artist.
|
| Design, on the other hand, is about influencing people first and
| foremost, and causing to take action in some way (could be a
| protest, or buying something, or simply clicking a button).
| Because of this, a designer strives to offer "the best", because
| that causes maximal impact.
|
| I wish the writer great success in his art!
| JohnFen wrote:
| Then what do I do?
|
| I make software to help people solve a problem. It's not meant
| to be an art piece on display, and it's also not intending to
| influence them in any way. It's just meant to help them
| accomplish a task they were already doing, preferably without
| altering the way they do it.
|
| I guess I do neither art nor design, but engineering.
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Helping people with software can be very satisfying,
| especially if there is an immediate positive interaction with
| those people.
|
| Art can be a lonely business especially if no one understands
| what you are trying to express.
|
| The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > It's just meant to help them accomplish a task they were
| already doing
|
| That is influencing the world.
| JohnFen wrote:
| But a different sort of influencing. I'm not trying to make
| anyone take a particular action.
| DarrenDev wrote:
| "Perfect is the enemy of good."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good
|
| The answer.
|
| Seth Godin: "Just ship it."
| lambdaloop wrote:
| I had some similar thoughts a few days ago. In personal projects,
| it's better to value the process rather than the end result. This
| way, you get excited by playing around with a thing and
| discovering new aspects about it. So what if the final result is
| crap? If you put the hours in and value the process, eventually
| the result naturally shapes itself.
| ema wrote:
| For me the noticable distinction is between whether I want to
| create something to express myself (never works out) or for a
| practical purpose (works out more often than not).
| jasmer wrote:
| Perfectionism can be a drag, so be careful about that.
|
| Also finding 'good enough' is a nice skill.
| zethsg wrote:
| Nice!, it reminded me of a quote from Jiddu Krishnamurti "The
| ideal breeds conflict ...It is this division between the
| prototype and the actual that breeds conflict." -
| https://www.jkrishnamurti.org/content/chapter-49-ideal-breed...
| firatsarlar wrote:
| Side effect of -a local optimum- education system.
| writers_bloque wrote:
| I constantly fall into the trap of writing for others. It's so
| easy to forget I'm mostly writing for my own interest or to find
| out what I think about something. The act of publishing is a
| simple desire to share my journey with others (and hopefully
| engage them in conversation so I might learn from them as well).
|
| Last year a friend shared a quote with me: "Writing is an act of
| ego, and you might as well admit it. Use its energy to keep
| yourself going." (William Zinsser, On Writing Well)
|
| Or if you'd like a more esoteric source, how about the Tao Te
| Ching: "When you are content to be simply yourself and don't
| compare or compete, everybody will respect you." (Tao Te Ching,
| Stephen Mitchell translation)
| systems_glitch wrote:
| Had to start taking this approach with designing hobbyist vintage
| electronics related kits. Everyone has their input on what would
| be "the best," sometimes there's even broad consensus (e.g.
| Internet polls show a very clear "favorite option").
|
| Trouble is, those things often weren't popular and ended up not
| being worth the time, money, and effort to do a run of kits. I
| still don't know if that's because I was more fired up for the
| things _I_ wanted to do and less for the things everyone said
| they wanted...or just that what everyone said they wanted wasn 't
| novel or different or whatever.
| seandoe wrote:
| I like this. Thank you for posting.
| smiley1437 wrote:
| Social media invites comparison, and comparison is the thief of
| joy
| Towaway69 wrote:
| Reading HN and the quality of comments makes it hard to write
| anything.
|
| Ironically I did manage to write this comment :)
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| That's zoomers in a nutshell.
| 752963e64 wrote:
| [dead]
| m463 wrote:
| you know, maybe you just make a thing. and it gets better. and
| you get better. maybe it will be best, maybe the dumpster will
| catch on fire.
| j2718h wrote:
| As the Eagles say, "don't let the sound of your own wheels drive
| you crazy!"
| dmd149 wrote:
| I self-published a book about becoming a solo 1099 federal sub-
| contractor.
|
| It's about 60,000 words, full of typos, has a boring cover, and
| is on an ugly looking shopify site. Oh, and it costs $100.
|
| BUT, I knew if I waited to catch all the typos, add in additional
| material that would be useful but not necessary, and build a
| beautiful website, it would never launch.
|
| So I published it and just mentioned on the website that you
| shouldn't buy it for all the reasons I listed above and described
| exactly what was in it.
|
| I've only sold about 50, but the feedback is good and already
| people are implementing the strategies and techniques in the book
| with successful results.
|
| If you have something of value to offer, it's also easy to forget
| that someone else is potentially NOT getting that value now if
| you decide to perfect it and keep procrastinating on launching
| it.
|
| The "About the book" page is below in case you want to see how I
| described the book and all its flaws:
|
| https://1099fedhub.com/pages/whats-in-the-book
| herbertl wrote:
| This is so cool, thank you for sharing! Do your readers mostly
| find your book through search?
| dmd149 wrote:
| Some do! But the more typical route is people find me through
| a few articles I wrote for another website (job boards for
| folks with security clearances).
|
| I tried Google ads but the terms I wanted to use had such low
| volume that I literally got 0 traffic from those.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| I think people would prefer to watch the 1:45 Youtube video
| that shows in wobbly greenish mobile phone video exactly which
| bolt you need to remove to get the thing apart and how, than a
| slick 10:07 video shot in 4k with lots of "don't forget to like
| share and subscribe" that only mentions it for about a second.
|
| Your book sounds kind of like that.
| dmd149 wrote:
| Yea I've learned when people have a specific problem they
| want the solution now and appreciate when they don't have to
| dig to find it.
| acjacobson wrote:
| This reminds me of the pottery class parable from Art & Fear. At
| the beginning of a pottery class the teacher divides the class
| into two groups. One group is to be graded purely on the quantity
| of pots they create, the other group solely on the quality (or,
| make one perfect pot). At the end of the class the group that
| focused on quantity had produced better results.
|
| Somewhat counterintuitively those that riff and just try a lot of
| different things get better over time - exactly what the author
| says makes them happiest. But perhaps we're all just a little shy
| about doing that in public, and pushing past that can a
| challenge.
| dv35z wrote:
| Curious - has this experiment been validated?
| djkivi wrote:
| Is the pottery story actually true? It seems it may have been
| modified from a similar story about photography:
|
| https://kottke.org/20/12/the-credibility-is-in-the-details
|
| Another similar story revolves around graduates from
| Yale/Harvard that set goals vs. those that didn't. Again, that
| story is not true either:
|
| https://ask.library.yale.edu/faq/175224
| racktash wrote:
| Epictetus has a wonderful quote. He is talking about moral /
| philosophical improvement specifically but I find it more broadly
| applicable when overly high expectations paralyse me from doing a
| thing:
|
| "What then? Because I have no natural gifts, shall I on that
| account give up my discipline? Far be it from me! Epictetus will
| not be better than Socrates; but if only I am not worse, that
| suffices me. For I shall not be a Milo, either, and yet I do not
| neglect my body; nor a Croesus, and yet I do not neglect my
| property; nor, in a word, is there any other field in which we
| give up the appropriate discipline merely from despair of
| attaining the highest."
| taneq wrote:
| "...but better by far than a master of one."
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > discipline
|
| "discipline", hu, not motivation ? Duly noted and pointed out
| :)
|
| edit: oops, no more internet for me today :).
| j33zusjuice wrote:
| Discipline meaning "branch of knowledge," or "area of
| work/study," in this case. In the other sense
| (obedience/adherence to something), motivation is often
| considered temporary or fleeting. "Motivation gets you
| started, discipline keeps you going."
| johnchristopher wrote:
| Oooooh, oups my bad, I realize now I am on edge and chose
| to interpret the word in such a way that it reminded me of
| another post and I triggered myself. Guess it's time to
| unwind for the week-end and call it a day :).
| stavros wrote:
| It means "job" or "hobby" here.
| shele wrote:
| That's an amazingly modern take.
| nathell wrote:
| Stoicism in general has aged very well. When I read Marcus
| Aurelius' Meditations, I was amazed at how relevant the thing
| still is, even though it's 1.8K+ years old at this point.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Hum... It didn't age any well before it got a chance to age
| well.
|
| It's coherent with modernity because we have are in a time
| where that mindset is popular, and since there are only a
| few alternatives, we are prone into cycling between them at
| random and revisit each one from time to time.
|
| Eventually, it will pass, and it will become old and unfit
| again.
| slothtrop wrote:
| He has some Epicurean influence as well. In the early days
| they were both popular, then changes in religious sentiment
| and denunciation of Epicureanism as sensualism changed
| that. Stoicism is ingrained with comparatively more
| spirituality and austerity.
| spit2wind wrote:
| It's often claimed that the Meditations are actually Marcus
| Aurelius's own words. When I traced the lineage of the
| text, the best I could find was something like several
| hundred years back with the primary text being possessed by
| the church. None of this takes away from the relevance of
| the text--it stands on its own.
|
| Does anyone know of an accounting of the primary text which
| shows that it wasn't written by a monk or priest of the
| Catholic church?
| racktash wrote:
| I'm definitely no textual criticism expert, but I do have
| a book recommendation.
|
| The Inner Citadel by Hadot is a great analysis of the
| Meditations. It explains extracts from the Meditations -
| such as references to certain people in Marcus's life -
| with facts we know about Marcus from other sources.
|
| For me personally... While it could be an _elaborate_
| imitation, it would raise the question why Marcus
| espouses views that don 't necessarily tie with Christian
| doctrine. Obviously something about the Meditations
| appealed to Christians of the time, but if they were
| inventing it whole cloth, they probably wouldn't have
| included only one reference to Christianity, which is
| arguably negative. (Book 2, chp3)
| programmarchy wrote:
| Both have roots in Platonism so makes sense they would
| have significant overlap.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Just because you were of the cloth didn't mean you were a
| raving fundamentalist. Who else was going to house, feed,
| and protect you and allow you to read and think all day?
| wood-porch wrote:
| It's funny, I've always heard great things about
| Meditations but I found it to be one of the least
| approachable books on stoicism. Perhaps I didn't like the
| terse note format. On the other hand Seneca's letters are
| extraordinary
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| It gives you a really solid framework for not worrying
| about why things happen and who they happen to. A very
| valuable skill indeed in our world where everywhere you
| look there is preventable misery. Modern indeed! It's no
| wonder it's so popular with tech workers.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Epictetus is very good in general.
|
| If you find a good modern translation (Robin Hard is good), I
| emphatically recommend reading the discourses. Don't cheap
| out and suffer through some stuffy 19th century translation.
| slothtrop wrote:
| At the other end of the spectrum, I've suffered through
| some overly-simplified/modernized translations of fiction
| (e.g. Dostoevsky's the Gambler) that was complete butchery,
| but I guess this is less likely to occur with non-fiction.
| genghisjahn wrote:
| Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius and Seneca are all excellent
| reads.
| hammock wrote:
| "Perfect is the enemy of good"
|
| Robert Watson Watt wrote in 1999: "Give them the third best to
| go on with; the second best comes too late, the best never
| comes."
|
| Voltaire wrote in 1770: "A wise Italian says that the best is
| the enemy of the good."
|
| Montesquieu wrote in 1726: "The better is the mortal enemy of
| the good."
|
| Shakespeare wrote in 1606: "Were it not sinful then, striving
| to mend, to mar the subject that before was well?" (don't fix
| what ain't broke)
|
| Chinese proverb says: "Better a diamond with a flaw than a
| pebble without one."
| nradov wrote:
| Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in 2004: "You go to
| war with the army you have, not the army you might want or
| wish to have at a later time." (The troops who got blown up
| due to lack of armored vehicles might not have fully
| appreciated his brilliance.)
| guhidalg wrote:
| Troops enlist knowing they may die, not sure what your
| point is. There is no army that fights a prolonged conflict
| without loses, no equipment is perfect.
| nradov wrote:
| At the time there was a distinct shortage of armored
| vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many troops were dying
| in IED and RPG attacks, and they were forced to improvise
| additional armor in the field out of scrap metal. There
| are always risks in combat and casualties are inevitable,
| but in retrospect the Defense Department leadership could
| have done a lot more at the time to accelerate production
| and deployment of additional armored vehicles and kits.
| Tostino wrote:
| They also enlist trusting their leaders to use them
| wisely. I very much do not believe they were used wisely
| for those wars.
| karmajunkie wrote:
| That quote is damning to his legacy, whatever it might have
| been: we went to a war we started, that was unnecessary,
| and which will taint every history of the Bush
| administration.
| antognini wrote:
| I always liked the way G.K. Chesterton put it: "If a thing is
| worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
| ScotterC wrote:
| The more I've thought about this quote the more value it
| has given me.
| danShumway wrote:
| I'll add to this a general take I have about "improving" the
| world: there is a metric ton of stuff to do in the world, and
| there aren't enough people to do it, and being the _best_ at
| what you do is in no way necessary if your goal is to be useful
| or to produce meaningful things that make people 's lives
| better.
|
| There are so many problems in the world that aren't solved
| literally because nobody has solved them, because the scope is
| gigantic and the people available who want to work on them or
| who are willing to work on them is very small in comparison.
|
| Many of those tasks aren't sexy, and they might not have broad
| appeal, but... I mean, I ported another person's gameboy
| emulator to a format that worked in NodeJS and had basically
| one API change so that you could run the project headlessly
| without a graphics stack, and so you could advance the emulator
| frame-by-frame after inspecting memory. It's a garbage project,
| I have no idea how emulators work. And yet, I've had people
| contact me on Discord and ask questions about it and go through
| support chats and thank me for building it.
|
| Was I the best suited person to do that? No. Could pretty much
| anyone at all with any experience build a better end result
| then I did? Yes. Heck, it would be trivial for someone to jump
| in, fork my project and improve it. And yet. The very specific
| niche case I coded it for didn't have a solution, and then it
| did have a solution.
|
| Sometimes that's enough. People underestimate how easy it is to
| be useful and to make the world better in small ways. It does
| not require you to perfect a skill, it just requires showing up
| and putting in some work and doing the best work that you can.
| And sometimes it means not asking "what's the biggest impact
| problem in the world", and instead asking "what's any problem
| that's close enough to me to solve that nobody is paying
| attention to?"
| cainxinth wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good
| josephg wrote:
| I resonate with this too.
|
| The last few blog posts I've written have been very successful.
| The more that happens, the less desire I feel to write because
| I'll compare whatever I do next to that recent success. If it
| doesn't do as well, I've failed.
|
| I've been doing improv comedy for the past few years. Improv is a
| pretty constant source of upsetting insight into myself. I've
| recently discovered just how much of my capacity for play and
| experimentation is locked behind a door called "Don't disappoint
| anyone" (Or they'll reject you forever). I know its silly - the
| more I'm afraid of looking like a fool, the worse my improv is.
| The less I write or draw, or experiment on the piano. I know
| consciously that playing it safe isn't actually helping, but I
| can't seem to shake the habit. Its been really devastating to
| notice the sheer amount of myself caught in this trap. I feel
| stuck.
|
| Putting myself out there with my creative work - in any of its
| forms - and just letting the world judge me for me? Its
| terrifying.
| herbertl wrote:
| Indeed obscurity is a gift in its own way. Reminds me of this:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20110401093801/https://jacquesma...
| sbayeta wrote:
| > Improv is a pretty constant source of upsetting insight into
| myself
|
| Well, that made me chuckle
| revskill wrote:
| The natural evolution to me is always "less is more".
|
| You can see it with stateless (FP), serverless (lambda), homeless
| (remote work), mindless (AI), codeless (no code)...
|
| It's great when simplicity is the common (implicit) goal.
| cranium wrote:
| I put off starting my blog for so long because I didn't feel I
| was good enough. Each idea worthy of a post felt so inadequate
| when laid down, because of my weak writing. It's agonizing to
| reread the text and be bored by your own creation. _Too much
| context_ , _sloppy transition_ , _feels like fake enthusiasm_ ,
| and so on.
|
| In the end, I partially solved it by separating "posts" from
| "notes". Posts are the nicely articulated ideas; notes: the one-
| shot, the straight-to-the-point, the bullet list, really anything
| with a bit of substance. It's liberating to have _something_ out
| there, knowing it 's not your best.
|
| I'm going to writes notes for a while, until I find one that
| pleases me. And when it'll become a post, it won't be my only
| public expression.
| danShumway wrote:
| I'm planning to potentially start separating my blog posts
| entirely from my website for similar reasons. I've been trying
| to think about why it's easier for me to write long replies on
| HN than it is for me to blog, and I think that putting posts on
| a pedestal and caring too much about formatting everything and
| making sure they're perfect is part of it.
|
| My thought is, I might start writing posts and pushing each one
| to a completely separate subdomain or even completely separate
| domain entirely using something like Netlify. And _separately_
| maybe I start to grab some of them and compress them into an
| RSS feed or copy them to the main site -- but I hate trying to
| think up-front "how does this contribute to my 'brand'?" And
| I'm wondering if having more of a "throw it out into the void,
| link it on some social networks" attitude might help alleviate
| some of that problem.
| a_e_k wrote:
| I really like that way of framing the distinction. I may have
| to borrow that.
|
| I've been thinking about reviving my blog by writing up some
| tidbits from my pen-and-paper notebooks as shorter form
| entries. I've usually preferred to post larger, more polished
| pieces when I felt like I really had something to say, but that
| also has meant sometimes going years between posts.
| CM30 wrote:
| Yeah, if you only try to publish the 'best' things (as the author
| puts it here), you'll never get anything done. You'll keep
| striving for perfection long past the point anyone else would
| consider it good enough, then maybe scrap the whole thing because
| you're your own worst critic.
|
| Plus, that route is a great way to get stuck in the mires of
| feature and scope creep too. It's all too easy to just add 'one
| more tiny feature' or 'implement this idea you've had just now
| that'll be so awesome to see in a tool like this', and get stuck
| doing the same thing over and over again until your project has
| been stuck in development hell for a decade. See for instance,
| Duke Nukem Forever. In the 14 years that game spent in
| development, we could have had 3-4 Duke Nukem games instead, and
| it's probable at least one of those would have been better than
| what we eventually got.
| musically_ut wrote:
| Indirectly related to this is this beautiful paper which looks at
| what motivates people to continue playing versus quitting Chess:
| https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1706530115#:~:text=We%....
|
| > We propose that one's personal best, or past peak performance,
| acts as a reference point by inducing effort when current
| performance would otherwise fall short. Analyzing a massive
| dataset of online chess games, we find that players exert effort
| to set new personal best ratings and quit once they have done so.
|
| There is no direct way of measuring the "Personal Best" in all
| areas of life (unlike Chess), but I believe that one can set
| benchmarks for oneself without articulating it: be it writing
| blog posts, making music, creating an OSS project, etc.
|
| Then beating one's own benchmark, even just once, dulls the
| desire to continue putting in effort. So I can imagine a very
| similar blog post with the title:
|
| > "I don't like making things which beat my personal best
| benchmark over and over again."
| selykg wrote:
| I'm not a huge fan of the book Atomic Habits, but James Clear
| does talk about something similar around goals. Effectively,
| one of the problems he brings up with goals is that if your
| goal is to run a 5k and then you achieve that goal, you're sort
| of "done." Instead he talks about building systems, and
| changing what you see yourself as. I.e. in the case of a 5k,
| instead of running a 5k, change who you are such that you are a
| runner. Then the 5k "goal" doesn't put you in the position of
| "okay, now what? Guess I'm done." type of mentality.
|
| I've always kind of liked this. I doubt it's unique to James
| Clear but it was the book I read that made it sort of click so
| I always go back to that part.
| sdwr wrote:
| Great angle!
| lrvick wrote:
| I am a security engineer so the bar for acceptable is very very
| high. It can make it very hard to justify taking the easy route
| even for personal projects, because others will copy those bad
| habits into enterprise software.
| bartread wrote:
| > others will copy those bad habits into enterprise software.
|
| Who cares? You can't martyr yourself to other peoples'
| ignorance. Right tool or technique, right place, right time:
| people bear their own responsibility for learning these, or for
| finding out about them when the need arises.
|
| There's a comment somewhere else in this thread about how
| developers need to learn the difference between building a shed
| and building a skyscraper. I think that comment is spot on.
| Sometimes a shed is fine.
| erur wrote:
| This isn't totally unique to software engineering (and broadly
| speaking knowledge, science and maybe even content in general)
| but I feel it's better placed here than anywhere else.
|
| We're in a near global, near zero-marginal-cost environment.
|
| If you build a broom that's mediocre, someone can still sweep
| with it and it's worth something. In this realm though, if you
| build a mediocre version of something that already exists in a
| better form, it's likely worth _nothing_.
|
| That shouldn't keep anyone from enjoying building _mediocre_
| things - which might be the only path to get into a position to
| build _great_ things. But it does make sense if your goal is to
| have an impact with the _specific thing_ you 're working on.
| CM30 wrote:
| Depends on the marketing and advertising budget. Plenty of
| mediocre products have made their companies billions of
| dollars, and become hugely successful in their specific
| industries. It's very true that software engineering is a near
| zero cost, global environment, but that doesn't necessarily
| meant the best products win every time.
| BossingAround wrote:
| > In this realm though, if you build a mediocre version of
| something that already exists in a better form, it's likely
| worth nothing.
|
| That is technically true, though realistically, many companies
| will spend money implementing mediocre projects. Alternatively,
| a company might lose their edge and slip into a mediocre mode
| after gaining great market share.
|
| In other words, while in long-enough run, you are right that
| such companies will not "make it," they will happily pay
| mediocre salaries for mediocre programmers in the meantime.
| Consequently, "being a mediocre engineer" and "building
| mediocre things" is a sufficient and realistic career goal.
| simonw wrote:
| My best advice for writing more online is that it's crucial that
| you learn to hit publish while you're still unhappy with what
| you've written.
|
| If you strive for perfection in your writing you will inevitably
| end up with a folder full of hundreds of drafts (I still have one
| of those) and a blog with no content.
|
| A key thing to remember is that no-one else will ever know how
| great the thing you wanted to write would have been!
|
| You might find your post thoroughly disappointing because of all
| of that missed potential... but other people who read it and
| learn something will be thankful that you posted it.
|
| This is one of the big reasons I'm such a fan of the "TIL" (Today
| I Learned) format: it reduces the bar for writing about something
| to "did I recently learn a new thing?"
| mpreda wrote:
| One of my favorite English words is: kakorrhaphiophobia
|
| Abnormal fear of failure
|
| Kakorrhaphiophobia is an abnormal, persistent, irrational fear of
| failure. In clinical cases, it's debilitating: the fear of even
| the most subtle failure or defeat is so intense that it restricts
| a person from doing anything at all.
|
| https://joshkaufman.net/fear-of-failure/
| robbiejs wrote:
| This resonates with me beautifully
| kentrf wrote:
| Same here.
|
| On one side, it is "just ship it".
|
| On the other side, "internet is so full of outdated advice".
| pringk02 wrote:
| "The best is the enemy of the good" -- Voltaire
| JohnFen wrote:
| I empathize with this.
|
| For my own projects, that only I will ever use, I don't want or
| need them to be the best that I can do. 80% of the way is more
| than sufficient -- plus, I like the things I use to be imperfect,
| have personality, and not seem new and perfect.
|
| When I'm working on a project for someone else, I want it to be
| the best that I can possibly make it. Even then, cost and time
| constraints make it rare that I can accomplish the best result
| possible -- but I can get 90% there.
| user38575848 wrote:
| Can relate to the author.
|
| I find this desire to create the 'best' solution often results in
| analysis paralysis.
|
| Better is to strive to iterate.
| cjfd wrote:
| Yes Iteration is great. That is the reason I love TDD so much.
| You can iterate, nothing you write has to be perfect but
| continuous improvement soon creates something that is much
| better than what I would have made if I had set out to write
| something perfect.
| Zobat wrote:
| Nota bene: I spent all of fifteen seconds "reading" the blog
| post.
|
| I would sum this up as: "Don't let perfect be the enemy of done."
|
| Which is a really good advice.
| notpushkin wrote:
| > I don't like making the best things (ghost.io)
|
| For a minute I thought this is an article from the Ghost
| corporate blog. Would be super weird tbh.
| sussexby wrote:
| Currently in the throes of stepping back my career dramatically
| as I realise two things:
|
| 1. I genuinely miss working alongside people (6+ years now of
| hybrid but mostly remote working) and by that I mean actually
| working things out together rather than either being expected to
| know, learn solo, or book people's time to learn from them
|
| 2. the pressure of delivering the best of everything in an ultra-
| competitive tech space
|
| Currently applying for jobs 1/3 my salary from last year, having
| already taken a step back to a role 2/3 my salary and still not
| able to take the pressure. Hoping I find peace in being "ok" in
| an "ok" job so I can focus on living life again.
|
| Edit: Inspired by the original post - I've kicked off my own:
| https://heathworks.medium.com/im-quitting-tech-kinda-chapter...
| KerryJones wrote:
| I strongly feel your first point -- there's been a weird ethos
| at the FAANG company I'm employed at where you are encouraged
| to solo-learn, despite many others on the team who could share
| the learning and create camaraderie in far less time. But if
| you want to do that, you're seen as a "lesser" engineer -- so
| instead, everyone struggles for months (average onboarding time
| is 4-5 months) and it's often repeated that you won't know what
| you're doing for the first 3 years.
| sussexby wrote:
| The very notion that you can't lean over someone's shoulder
| and say "hey can you help with something" is a massive
| failure of remote.
|
| The subtlety of human communication and merits of simple
| vulnerability exchanges really detracts from team
| development.
|
| And whilst I do get to see my team - whenever we meet it's to
| discuss the "big" stuff and not actually do our daily work,
| thus we don't get to learn from each other.
| mashygpig wrote:
| It seems really prevalent in western societies (America in my
| experience at least) have a strong culture of career growth. If
| you're not getting better paying positions then what are you
| doing?
|
| I think a lot of people will claim they do this to have wealth
| reserved to be able to spend their time how they choose in the
| future, but they seem to me to just get lost in the cycles of
| wealth accretion and forget to live the life they have.
|
| A friend recently told me that he wanted to stagnate more in
| his career and grow more in his life, and I think that's a
| sentiment that should be shared more.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > If you're not getting better paying positions then what are
| you doing?
|
| Working to live rather than living to work.
| detourdog wrote:
| The problem I see in my western society is that career growth
| and personal growth are separated.
|
| An individual falling into this divide will always feel
| conflicted. Unfortunately in todays climate with no social
| safety net for the individual few may have the privilege to
| hear their inner voice.
| mashygpig wrote:
| Definitely agree. Christopher Alexander's "A City Is Not A
| Tree" [0] speaks to this separation too in the context of
| our physical spaces (based on your comment I sense you may
| be familiar with this idea). It feels that western society
| promotes separation by default.
|
| [0] http://en.bp.ntu.edu.tw/wp-
| content/uploads/2011/12/06-Alexan...
| detourdog wrote:
| I learned of him a year or so ago and bought:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notes_on_the_Synthesis_of_F
| orm
|
| My memory is that it rang so true I didn't need to read
| it. I'm knee deep(decades)in trying to define an
| aesthetic for "Technology" so that it can be judged as a
| media. To put it another way a process for judging
| technical implementations based on universal human needs.
|
| I will check out your reference.
| mashygpig wrote:
| That's neat and makes me feel that if you independently
| came to similar thoughts then there is some universal
| thing here to uncover/define. Would be interested to hear
| more about your thoughts/journey if you have them written
| up somewhere!
| detourdog wrote:
| I'm a big believer that humans share a social sub-
| conconcsious. The ideas I'm sure come from a long Train
| of utopian modernist designers ideals.
|
| Funny enough I think I finally cracked something critical
| last week here.
|
| https://boards.core77.com/t/how-does-one-measure-the-
| aesthet...
|
| I have been practicing sharing ideas on HN and Core77 in
| effort to start an honest effort.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I feel this way too. My solution is that I started enrolling in
| lab classes at the local university (I've done two semesters of
| physics so far--oscilloscopes were involved--and this semester
| I'm starting biology).
|
| It's really fun to be the code wizard in a room full of people
| who only kind-of need a code wizard. There's no pressure, but
| there's plenty of opportunity to help people, which scratches
| the itch for me.
| crabbone wrote:
| As a child and in my pre-teen years I've not been good at sports.
| I was also a little chubby until around the age of 12. I did some
| swimming, but I sucked at it so much that I eventually just quit.
| I also tried judo, then since the class was free on a condition
| that the students represent the class in competitions I had to
| compete in one. Had been beaten in a ridiculously simple way by
| my opponent in the first 10 seconds of the match-up. Then my
| opponent was also beaten by someone else, so I was out of the
| competition pool.
|
| Towards the end of my second year of college I signed up for
| ballroom dancing class. College is about ten years too late to
| start a career in most sports, ballroom dancing is no exception.
| However, I persisted. The reasons were complex and it wasn't
| really the "character strength" or anything like that... until
| about four years in when me and my partner were representing the
| senior (yeah, in ballroom you are a senior once you are 18+)
| division of our dancing club we were competing in the regional
| yearly contest.
|
| We ended up being in the 3'rd place out of 16 couples. But that
| doesn't even begin to describe what it was like to get there. For
| months, hell or high water we'd rehearse 2-6 hours a day. We'd
| sewn our own outfits. My partner cooked me lunches sometimes
| because she knew I skipped eating to get to the rehearsal. One
| day she sprained her ankle and I carried her downstairs and to
| the cab.
|
| But it wasn't just "hardship". Two other couples from our club
| who were close with us would often go to a local pub after
| rehearsals. We'd dance in the pub, mostly to get free drinks, but
| really, to show off. We'd spend weekend nights at other (older)
| couple's place re-watching VHS tapes of Donnie Burns countless
| times. We shared small victories of getting a gig of teaching
| dancing in a local school, or mourned defeats when the leading
| dancer from our junior division broke up with her partner and
| they didn't go the the country contest.
|
| Until that moment when we won the 3'rd place I had no idea what
| it really feels like to try to be the best. The brief moment when
| during the dance you look at the audience, and you see moms who
| came to root for their kids at the side of the dancing hall
| screaming at the top of their lungs "number seven is the best!",
| and you realize that you are the "number seven". Your coach
| getting overly emotional and then running to the dressing room to
| prep you for the next round. Partners younger sister spending an
| hour on powdering and painting your partner's face and then
| crying being overcome with emotion seeing her sister on the dance
| floor.
|
| Never in my life had I felt so acutely the joy from doing
| something and being good at it. It's just a feeling that you'd
| never come across if you never compete against a lot of other
| dedicated opponents and with a good chance of winning. It's in
| the moments like this that you feel that your efforts were
| rewarded, hardship justified, that you accomplished something.
| I'm in my mid 40's, and those moments etched into my memories,
| they are as fresh as they were the day after. It's what in large
| part made my life worth living. I cannot imagine how someone
| could choose mediocrity to be their life goal when they could
| have attempted to be the best.
| ForgotIdAgain wrote:
| Damn, I tried really hard to be good at computers and only
| achieved mediocrity. It was lonely, made me miss lots of other
| stuff in life and now I can only try to just be barely
| competent. I am really happy for you, but it just reminded that
| I have almost surely missed my shot at life and at getting
| those kind of memories. Hey at least I get to live in
| interesting times.
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