[HN Gopher] I live my life a quarter century at a time
___________________________________________________________________
I live my life a quarter century at a time
Author : CharlesW
Score : 275 points
Date : 2025-01-06 22:22 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (tla.systems)
(TXT) w3m dump (tla.systems)
| jpm_sd wrote:
| Great story, and a thought-provoking title. I LLOLed at "We'll
| just tell Steve you did move."
|
| I'm 45, so I'll mark my 2nd quarter-century in the not-too-
| distant future.
|
| Very approximately, so far:
|
| 0-25: learning
|
| 25-50: doing
|
| 50-75: TBD
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| 75-100: Hopefully not dead.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| Depends on how 50-75 goes!
| BadHumans wrote:
| I'm a couple years into that range and I'm not dead yet!
| Only 90% of a quarter-century to go!
| nine_k wrote:
| Not dead but disabled and dimwit, an annoyance to those who
| used to love the person you previously were, likely also
| short on money all the misery which that entails? No, this is
| seriously _worse_ than death to me.
|
| Either it's a life worth living, or forced shutdown for me,
| while I still have a say.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Wow - what a bleak answer.
|
| You can't imagine being healthy at 75?
|
| Most of my family members 75+ are still doing quite well.
|
| My great grandma lived to 99 and wasn't particularly
| unhealthy until 98.
|
| My mom's best friend's dad is 98 now, and was in pretty
| good health until 96.
|
| None of them were poor and burdens on society.
| nine_k wrote:
| Of course it's best to stay healthy at 75 and beyond!
|
| My bleak answer is a refutation of the idea that merely
| "staying alive" is a goal. Staying physically alive is
| not enough.
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| > I LLOLed at "We'll just tell Steve you did move."
|
| It made me remember about that rumor of Musk firing people at
| random, but afterwards their immediate superiors just make them
| to move to another office whatsoever - Musk won't remember the
| next time he'd be there.
| turnsout wrote:
| They told the same exact yarn about Steve back in the day. I
| think both are probably exaggerated.
| codazoda wrote:
| I worked at Iomega (Zip Drive) from 1994 to 1998. The VP
| was rumored to fire people on the spot for the smallest
| thing.
|
| One day we worked an all nighter. The entire department.
| The next day we were still there. Having solved the
| problem, most of us were asleep at our desks.
|
| The VP made an unannounced visit and walked through the
| office. None of us noticed him. He walked to my bosses
| bosses office and asked him to assemble us in the meeting
| room.
|
| He walked into the meeting, said he was impressed with how
| hard we were working, pointing out that our heads were down
| in deep thought. Then he left.
|
| These days, I think he was trolling us.
|
| I got to know him quite well later in my career. I never
| saw him fire anyone.
| jwr wrote:
| That timescale... got me thinking.
|
| In my case it was closer to:
|
| 0-25: dicking around, with some incidental learning
|
| 25-35: learning how one gets screwed in business deals (by
| getting screwed in business deals)
|
| 35-40: dicking around pretending to work and thinking this is
| called "startups"
|
| 40-50: actually doing stuff, working on meaningful things that
| people pay for and making a good living off that
|
| I am looking forward to the future :-)
| y1n0 wrote:
| You've peaked. The rest is just the same story in reverse.
| j45 wrote:
| Or you can never stop peaking and growing in different ways
| :)
| bitwize wrote:
| I'm 47. 50+ is looking a lot like "struggling to run the red
| queen's race to keep my wife and furbabies safe, sheltered,
| and provided for, while watching the eventual deterioration
| of my body into uselessness and decrepitude begin, and
| watching ageism diminish my opportunities in the field".
| Affordable rejuvenation therapy in the next couple of decades
| is pretty much my only hope. Maybe then I could claw back
| another decade or two of vigorous life with my wife with
| greater wisdom than I had the first time around.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I'm 50 now and have plans to run a 5K in at around 30
| minutes by the end of the year. I haven't run a 5K in over
| 15 years. Even though I have worked out continuously since
| I was 12.
|
| But from my current training, I don't see any reason that
| isn't achievable. No part of my body is giving me warning
| signs and the training isn't any harder than it was 15
| years ago.
|
| As far as "ageism", I changed jobs at 40, 42, 44, 46, 49
| and last year at 50 and neither time did it take me more
| than 3 weeks to get a job. I got my first only and
| hopefully last job at a "FAANG" at 46.
|
| None of those were management jobs and I'm now a "staff
| software engineer" at a third party cloud consulting
| company.
|
| I'm well aware that my body will decline over the next 20
| years. But no need to give up prematurely
| BytesAndGears wrote:
| I listen to a podcast called Crushing Iron. One of the
| two hosts realized he was in poor shape and his friends
| were starting to decay. I think he was about 50 when he
| had that realization.
|
| He decided not to let it happen to him, so he got into
| triathlon. Now, he's doing Ironman races every year for
| the last ~10 years, and he started at around 50 (maybe 49
| or 48, don't remember).
|
| Other host was an alcoholic who bounced back into a very
| healthy life. Both are inspirational, but I think the
| other applies to you more.
|
| Point is, you can do it! You don't have to do a whole
| Ironman, obviously lol, but making choices to be healthy
| like you are is an amazing step. And it's absolutely
| possible to start at 50.
|
| If you want motivation, the Crushing Iron podcast has
| some great episodes (and some kinda boring ones). Check
| out this one, "Out alone in the dark".. I like their
| episodes from a couple years ago (and older) the most.
| Also 667 and 685 are a couple I had saved recently as
| good ones.
|
| Out alone in the dark:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crushing-iron-
| triathlo...
|
| #667 Play like a kid:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crushing-iron-
| triathlo...
|
| #685 stop waiting for life:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crushing-iron-
| triathlo...
|
| Couple bonus episodes I love:
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crushing-iron-
| triathlo...
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/crushing-iron-
| triathlo...
| achenet wrote:
| Look up Clarence Bass [0]
|
| You can stay impressively fit well into your 80s :)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarence_Bass
| scarface_74 wrote:
| My dad is still active in the yard and is mobile and
| independent at 82. But age is slowing him down. His
| eyesight and hearing is deteriorating.
|
| My mom is 80, active and I don't see her slowing down,
| she is still comfortable driving from south GA to central
| Florida where we live and the other surrounding states as
| long as it's daytime.
|
| I'll be happy if I can still be as active as my dad
| purple-leafy wrote:
| Ha for me its been:
|
| 0-25: Arrogance, ignorance, stupidity, delusions, boring normal
| person
|
| 25-50: Obsessive learning/study, application, and passion,
| finding myself
|
| 50-75: Not there yet
|
| I just turned 30 and I'm having a blast learning graphics and
| audio programming, mostly in C! Found my passion, raycasting,
| audio engineering, and building desktop software
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Yeah the only thing i dont love about the framing is that it
| implies you cant still be in the learning phase later in
| life. Neuroplasticity can be encouraged and cultivated.
| interludead wrote:
| Learning has no expiration date
| peterlada wrote:
| Or as Shakespeare would have put it:
|
| 0-25: Act I 24-50: Act II 50-75: Act III, the final act.
| dasloop wrote:
| I`m pretty sure that most of us will be alive after that
| final act ;)
| scarface_74 wrote:
| For me:
|
| 0-22 - I'm someone else's responsibility - graduated college
| degree in CS
|
| 22-36 - shuffled aimlessly between two meaningless jobs, a
| horrible mistake of a marriage (and divorce), got into real
| estate too heavily and the crash of 2008, taught fitness
| classes on the side as my only outlet.
|
| 36-46 - got remarried and became an instant father to a 9 and
| 14, rebuilt my career from scratch and hopped between 5 jobs,
| got my finances under control after walking away from 5
| mortgages, built a strong marriage and both (step)sons
| graduated. "Retired my wife" when she was 44.
|
| 46 - present - transitioned into consulting, got first and only
| job at BigTech, (working remotely cloud consulting department),
| moved permanently into what was a vacation home in Florida, and
| start traveling extensively post Covid including doing the
| digital nomad thing. Left BigTech and enjoying a nice balanced
| life with my wife while I work remotely and she enjoys her
| passion projects.
| VoidWhisperer wrote:
| What does 'retired my wife' mean in this context?
| asdf6969 wrote:
| She's unemployed and he pays for her lifestyle
| scarface_74 wrote:
| The official definition of "unemployed" is you are out of
| work _and_ looking for a job.
|
| Honestly, though her spending money was a matter of
| selling 2 shares of AMZN pre split every six months when
| I was getting RSUs.
|
| We cut our fixed expenses dramatically after Covid and
| our younger son graduated, downsizing and moving to a
| state tax free state.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| "not engaged in a gainful occupation"[1] "not having a
| job that provides money"[2] Maybe not official as in
| dictionary definition, but official as in political /
| statistical lingo?
|
| [1] Kagi's response provided by WordsAPI, I'm not sure if
| linking a technically paywalled would be the reasonable
| thing https://kagi.com/search?q=unemployed+meaning
|
| [2] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/u
| nemploy...
| scarface_74 wrote:
| You are not considered "unemployed" by the government if
| you are not actively seeking work.
|
| The official definition as far as the BLS.
|
| http://www.mississippi.edu/urc/downloads/econ101-01_15111
| 8.p...
|
| > _Finally, other individuals who are not working or
| seeking work for pay or profit are not included in the
| labor force._
|
| > _BLS considers the unemployed as those individuals
| without a job who have looked for one in the past four
| weeks and are available to work. Looking for work
| involves an individual taking some action to obtain a
| job, such as completing an application, sending out a
| resume,contacting an employment center, etc. Individuals
| who have been temporarily laid off are considered
| unemployed regardless if they have looked for work in the
| last four week_
| ok_dad wrote:
| The government's definition is designed to make things
| look nice, not gauge the actual level of unemployment. If
| you're not looking for work because you gave up trying,
| you're not counted even though you're unemployed. Retired
| or disabled is a different thing, and being a home maker
| and taking care of kids should be counted in the numbers
| as employment, otherwise everyone should be under
| unemployed.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| This has been the standard definition of unemployed and
| being part of the labor force forever.
|
| This is the same definition the UK uses
|
| https://www.ons.gov.uk/file?uri=/employmentandlabourmarke
| t/p...
|
| Australia
|
| https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/detailed-methodology-
| infor....
|
| And the international OECD
|
| https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/unemployment-
| rate.ht...
|
| I couldn't find a single English speaking country that
| didn't use the same definition.
|
| The percentage of people who are working/total adult
| population or a subset is the labor participation rate.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Yea and? The government isn't the people, they want
| things to look as rosy as possible, every one of them.
| The people's definition for unemployment is you'd want to
| work but you can't find a job. Your definition is just
| appealing to authority.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| So I'm "appealing to authority" by using the global
| definition of "unemployment" in the entire English
| speaking world?
|
| Why would the OECD want things to look "rosy"?
|
| And how would someone "find a job" if they aren't
| actively looking?
|
| What exactly is "the government" if it's not "the
| people"? Every country I cited is one where the
| government is democratically elected.
|
| We should instead use a definition that a random person
| on HN think is more appropriate?
| ok_dad wrote:
| Nearly anyone who you ask will say you should count
| someone who has no income and can't find a job as
| unemployed for the numbers, otherwise type ignoring
| problems. What if you have 10% of your population that
| can't find a job and gives up to live on the streets due
| to loss of hope? Do you just not count them as
| unemployed? That's stupid. Your rapid fire set of
| questions carefully worded to sound reasonable is just a
| way for you to avoid the crux of my argument that
| government numbers for unemployed are low due to the
| twisted definition they use.
|
| Tell me why they shouldn't count the hopeless as
| unemployed?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| > Tell me why they shouldn't count the hopeless as
| unemployed?
|
| Because "Words Mean Things". Every single country's
| government that I could find - including non English
| speaking countries (I just looked up the definition in
| Japan) define unemployment the same way.
|
| The unemployment, the homeless and the labor
| participation rate are all statistics that are reported
| by the government and one isn't ignoring the other.
|
| And you don't think it is "unreasonable" to make up
| definitions instead of using ones that are accepted
| globally?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I made enough so she doesn't have to work anymore. Before
| Covid, she was a special needs bus driver. I didn't want
| her on the bus after Covid for both her health and mine.
|
| By the time Covid lifted, we had decided to fly around the
| country taking one way trips and she was deeply into her
| passion projects.
|
| We got rid of everything we owned that wouldn't fit into 4
| suitcases. Our official home was our vacation home in
| (state tax free) Florida that was being rented out while we
| were traveling as a short term rental.
|
| The "state tax free" came in handy when I was getting
| RSUs/pro rated signing bonuses
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| > Our official home was our vacation home in (state tax
| free) Florida that was being rented out while we were
| traveling as a short term rental.
|
| States typically define residency as either based on
| domicile, or a statute. In other words, some of the
| states you "traveled" to undoubtedly have laws stating
| that if you are in the state for a certain number of days
| out of the year, you are automatically a resident, not a
| visitor, and liable for taxes on your world-wide income.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Besides Las Vegas where we ended up staying a month and a
| half and two cities in Texas where we were in Dallas and
| Houston 3 weeks each, we only stayed in one place for a
| maximum of 3 weeks.
|
| It just happens to be a moot point in Nevada and Texas
| since they were both state tax free states.
|
| When we do it again probably in summer 2027, those also
| happen to be the two states we will be spending the
| majority of our time. My wife knows a lot of people in
| both states
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| She's been 'taken care of'...
| interludead wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what do you think was the biggest turning
| point for you?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| The biggest turning point for the worse and for the better
| was not having a good stable home life.
|
| I am not saying you have to be in a relationship to have
| stability. Of course it's better to be single than being
| involved in a bad relationship.
|
| Looking back, what really started things going bad was a
| lack of self confidence and wanting to be in a
| relationship.
|
| I was a short computer geek, kind of awkward. I got better.
| Now I'm very comfortable talking to anyone. It's my
| $Dayjob.
|
| Ironically enough though, I had no trouble being in front
| of people at 28 and had been a part time fitness instructor
| for 3 years by then as hobby. I was in great shape.
|
| I met someone who was physically attractive and was
| interested in me after being friendzoned all of my adult
| life. I got married and I should have seen the signs.
|
| That led to everything else that happened for the next 6
| years - staying at a job too long, getting too heavily
| invested in real estate trying to make more money,
| stagnating both technically and financially. Got divorced
| at 32.
|
| At 34, in 2008 around the time of the real estate crash, I
| just had to accept the fact that everything I had done up
| to that point was a waste and be comfortable starting over
| from scratch.
|
| I got ready to interview after being at my second job for
| over 9 years and did a vertical move to another job that
| would let me get some real world experience with an in
| demand language - C# and the startup was working with
| ruggedized mobile devices right when smart phones were
| taking off.
|
| I wasn't trying to date anyone at that time and my now wife
| had to basically shove her number at me once we had been
| working together for over two years. She was in another
| department. I told her all of the shit I was going through
| at the time with my real estate and she was still
| interested.
|
| We both got laid off when the company went out of business
| and she got a job quickly that had benefits and I got a
| good paying contract without benefits. I proposed to her
| while I was working as a contractor with the plan for us to
| get married after I got a permanent job.
|
| She suggested we get married sooner so I could be on her
| benefits. That arrangement kept until 2020 when I was 46.
| It allowed me the freedom to jump back and forth between
| full time and contract jobs to build my resume.
|
| In 2020, as a direct result of me being able to
| aggressively job hop, a remote position at AWS
| (Professional Services) fell into my lap in 2020.
|
| The _difference_ between what I was making pre-AWS and post
| AWS was 3x what she was making. But there is a direct line
| from her supporting my career to me being able to do that.
|
| I have no problem with my wife not working so she can
| pursue what she wants. It gives us a chance to travel like
| crazy and it's not like my life is stressful once I left
| AWS.
| archagon wrote:
| Sounds like you've built yourself a great life!
| throwaway657656 wrote:
| suggested edit:
|
| 0-25: learning
|
| 25-50: earning
|
| 50-75: returning
| sudhirj wrote:
| Old Hindu philosphies have a similar split.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%80%C5%9Brama_(stage)
|
| 0-25y grow and study
|
| 25-50y develop your household, your family, your community and
| gain wealth (non-extractive, provide value).
|
| 50y-75y hand over all worldly things to the next generation,
| advise, teach and help those around you. Focus on your
| spiritual enlightenment.
|
| 75y- renounce the world and disappear into the forest as a monk
| / hermit.
| beebmam wrote:
| I hope more people read comments like these and ask
| themselves: "What warrants these life suggestions? Are they
| justified? What would make them justified? What alternatives
| are there?"
| apocadam wrote:
| Indeed, why wait till 50 to start giving back.
|
| Edit: Not talking purely about financially giving back, but
| also volunteering your time.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| There's an argument to holding on X money will let you
| make more money, therefore making your actual
| contributions larger / more valuable
|
| You can more easily invest your second million than your
| first (Because you probably need that (Or at least a
| portion of that to live)
|
| There's also no significant reason to start earlier (or
| later), unless you factor in dying as your stopping
| point, worthwhile causes aren't going anywhere
| jpm_sd wrote:
| Because by then you've mostly finished spending money on
| raising your own children.
| sincarne wrote:
| I turn 49 tomorrow, and my kid's next birthday will be
| her 11th. I have a _lot_ more spending on her ahead!
| keiferski wrote:
| Similar to Andrew Carnegie, although I am not sure if he
| quite disappeared from the world:
|
| _The "Andrew Carnegie Dictum" was:
|
| - To spend the first third of one's life getting all the
| education one can.
|
| - To spend the next third making all the money one can.
|
| - To spend the last third giving it all away for worthwhile
| causes._
| bix6 wrote:
| I've only ever heard these sequentially so was interesting to
| read they need not be.
|
| "while in the original system presented in the early
| Dharmasutras the Asramas were four alternative available ways
| of life, neither presented as sequential nor with age
| recommendations."
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Almost everything in Hinduism is not prescribed strictly
| because Hinduism is really an amalgamation of many separate
| beliefs systems / traditions / ritual / books, etc. which
| were followed by local cohorts.
|
| That's why many books contradict each other. Some books
| prescribe an age and order for such steps, others don't,
| etc. They weren't meant to be all collected, all studied,
| and all chosen piecemeal by one observer. But over time it
| has evolved into a much different thing than when it
| started
| moffkalast wrote:
| Can we just skip to disappearing into the forest as a monk?
| The rest of it seems a bit unnecessary.
| kamaal wrote:
| I hope there was something like a fun quarter some where in
| there.
|
| Perhaps whatever we might call it.
|
| 0 - death -> Doing things.
|
| This is just how it unfolds.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Just turned 50.
|
| Unfortunately I already feel like a theme of 50-75 is
| "forgetting."
|
| I remember very well the stuff I learned from 0-25 but damned
| if I remember last month.
| neilv wrote:
| [flagged]
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Pretty sure your potential future employers are not reading
| my self-deprecating humour on HN before considering your
| application.
| neilv wrote:
| YC started by funding 20 year-olds with no experience,
| and telling them they were the best people to be doing
| startups.
|
| We know that our field already has a lot of age
| discrimination.
|
| Why reinforce that message with grassroots chatter that
| impressionable new startup founders and young engineers
| will see on HN?
|
| AFAIK, representatives of _other_ discriminated-against
| groups aren 't coming to HN to voice silly negative
| stereotypes directly related to workplace performance.
| BriggyDwiggs42 wrote:
| Anyone who can't see the value in hiring someone with
| some wisdom is really damn stupid imo. Easily worth it
| even under a cynical, money-focused outlook.
| ronyeh wrote:
| Denzel's Learn, Earn, Return.
|
| https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx1T-qoilkYC6vZ48N8US2aM9nHiFTq2I...
| safety1st wrote:
| I think it's interesting that everyone's timeline here stops at
| 75, meanwhile we're about to inaugurate a 78 year old
| President, who is replacing an 82 year old President.
|
| As much as everyone loves to hate these guys, they're the most
| powerful men in the world and they clearly didn't get there by
| fading into retirement from the age of 50 onward. I guess it
| depends on what you want in life but I wouldn't mind taking a
| hint from them. You clearly don't need to stop when you're old.
| For some, life appears to be a continual doubling down for
| higher and higher stakes.
|
| I'm in my mid 40s and as my resources expand all I want to do
| is ante up and wrestle with bigger demons. Every decade for me
| is one more chance, maybe the last, to reclaim the stolen
| aspirations of my youth. The ticker will give out someday, but
| until then I don't want to ever stop. I'm the healthiest and
| probably also the angriest I've been in 20 years. Whatever else
| may transpire I hope to be a bit like those croaking old
| fuckers and never go gently.
| vnce wrote:
| effin' a :)
| kelseydh wrote:
| Reminds me of that old guy in the documentary Ren Faire who
| absolutely refuses to step down and pass power down to the
| next generation.
| yzydserd wrote:
| 0-25: learning
|
| 25-50: doing
|
| 50-75: enjoying
|
| 75-100: leaving
| leoc wrote:
| > Fiche bliain ag fas,
|
| > Fiche bliain faoi bhlath,
|
| > Fiche bliain ag meath
|
| > Agus fiche bliain gur cuma ann no as.
|
| "Twenty years growing,
|
| Twenty years in bloom,
|
| Twenty years in decline,
|
| And twenty years when it makes no difference if you're there or
| gone."
| generic92034 wrote:
| > And twenty years when it makes no difference if you're
| there or gone.
|
| That does not seem to picture today's reality all that well,
| considering that most power in the world is concentrated in
| the hands of 60+ year old people.
| pchristensen wrote:
| Some describe the three phases of your career as learn, earn,
| return (e.g. philanthropy, advising, etc).
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Drag Thing. What a trip down memory lane. I had totally forgotten
| about playing around with this application in my youth.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I loved that utility.
|
| One of the things about Aqua, was that it _really_ slowed
| things down.
|
| We had gotten prerelease OS X, but it basically used Classic
| UI.
|
| Once Aqua came out, things like window drawing, dragging, and
| general responsiveness, went way down.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| I noticed that. I was always on the cheapest hardware so I
| made peace with it.
| dcrazy wrote:
| Aqua would rather drop frames than produce incorrect or
| partial draws.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| For the purpose of organization, 15 minute intervals, is how you
| should look at your day. You only have abut 64 of these in your
| day to allocate (if you sleep 8 hours) So make the most of them.
| smorchyborch wrote:
| Kinda funny watching people OOoh and Aaaah over something that
| Windows had launched 5 years earlier with Win95. The Mac/Windows
| flamewars back then were still as vivid as they are today.
| re wrote:
| If you're talking about the Dock demo (vs the Windows taskbar),
| it's not so much the Dock itself getting that reaction but more
| so the Genie effect. Mac OS X 10.0 and its Quartz Compositor
| did enable window effects beyond what Windows was capable of at
| the time--Windows didn't get a compositing window manager until
| Vista was released in 2007.
| incanus77 wrote:
| I don't recall Windows 95 spatially minimizing windows into the
| bottom of the screen while preserving their dynamically
| updating contents. Did it? Or was it full of identical grey
| rectangles and moved window contents just by their outline, not
| their contents? The Aqua interface was a cut above given the
| landscape even five years later.
| eru wrote:
| > Or was it full of identical grey rectangles and moved
| window contents just by their outline, not their contents?
|
| It moved the whole window, but you could enable the effect
| you mention to save on system resources. (If memory serves
| right.)
| dcrazy wrote:
| I believe full-window moves were an optional Windows 98
| feature. Possibly also available in Windows 95 via registry
| tweaks or if you had Microsoft Plus! installed.
| eru wrote:
| My memory might be from Windows 98, yes.
| bitwize wrote:
| I remember full-window moves from Windows 95 and even the
| Windows 95 preview skin for Windows NT 3.51.
| ben7799 wrote:
| It's kind of easy to forget OSX did this but it was glacially
| slow at first.
|
| I remember seeing the Betas in 1999-2000 or so and they were
| on an iMac and the whole UI barely worked.
|
| And I think in 2004-2006 I was still turning the animations
| down or selecting the simpler ones. I maybe started leaving
| them on when I got a monster Mac Pro in 2006.
| bitwize wrote:
| Kinda funny watching Windows nerds ooh and aah over something
| Jobs launched 7 years earlier with NEXTSTEP :)
| dcrazy wrote:
| The Dock was an evolution of the applets that had originated in
| NeXTSTEP several years before Windows 95's UI team iterated the
| "system tray" into the taskbar that actually shipped.
| qingcharles wrote:
| And I guess Windows 95 was sorta building on the fact you
| could stack your open windows at the bottom of the screen in
| Windows 3.x. The early versions of 95 I was running still had
| the 3.x look to the taskbar/dock:
|
| http://toastytech.com/guis/chic58.html
| dcrazy wrote:
| As the author notes, Windows 95 was remarkable for the
| iterative process that Microsoft's UI folks undertook. They
| published an article in the ACM [1] on how they completely
| discarded the previous approach of designing from first
| principles in a vacuum in favor of rapid iteration and
| frequent usability testing. This let them abandon their
| fear of changing too much--in fact, the article directly
| addresses the evolution of taskbar icons from the version
| shown in your linked screenshots to what eventually
| shipped.
|
| [1] https://dl.acm.org/doi/fullHtml/10.1145/238386.238611
| leoc wrote:
| That's not too dissimilar to the folder tabs which appeared
| at some point in classic MacOS, though I don't remember
| when: quite possibly after '95.
| kergonath wrote:
| IIRC that was with MacOS 8, which was in 1997.
| varjag wrote:
| And whatever was in Win95 was in Motif, right? Come on it was
| distinctively superior when it came out.
| kergonath wrote:
| The dock has more to do with NeXTSTEP's than with the Windows
| taskbar. They really are quite different (though maybe less so
| these days compared to back in the late 1990).
| jbjbjbjb wrote:
| As a software engineer from the U.K. I always wondered if mega
| big tech did any interesting work outside the US. Hopefully
| things have changed now?
| aardvark179 wrote:
| They do quite a lot of interesting things, but often either
| through acquisitions or by collecting up a whole load of
| specialists when somebody else closes an office. You also find
| some interesting stuff being done in the UK and the EU because
| salaries aren't as high over here.
| eru wrote:
| We did some interesting work at Google Sydney. Google Wave was
| developed there, for example. (But that was before my time.)
| qingcharles wrote:
| Definitely. Megacorps often outsource projects to development
| shops in the UK, even if they're not working directly for
| Megacorp. It's just hard to hear about it because NDA hell.
|
| source: experience
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Cork had Apple engineering. A lot of work was done in Apple
| France as well. (For example I worked with the French team that
| wrote "Data Detectors" when I worked on Preview at Apple).
| Pretty sure a lot of the French accents I heard on the Photos
| team were engineers that had decided to move from France to The
| Valley.
| kergonath wrote:
| Indeed. There was a developers teams around Jean-Marie Hullot
| in Paris up until 2005. They were responsible among others of
| iCal and iSync, and I believe iPhoto (Hullot was a
| photographer and a photo nerd).
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Yes, they do. On the top of my head, Meta Fair labs has a big
| office in Paris for instance. Google/Meta have offices in
| Europe (including pretty big ones) and have interesting teams
| there.
| runamuck wrote:
| I laughed at the title! My friends and I say the original quote
| way to much, even 25 years later. (From "Fast and Furious - Vin
| Diesel says "I live my life a quarter mile at a time.")
| bthrn wrote:
| At work I coined the phrase "Fast & Furious Planning" to
| describe teams that plan only a quarter at a time (without
| regard for longer term thinking).
| blitzar wrote:
| For those 10 seconds or less, they are free.
| eru wrote:
| Small tangent:
|
| > As a final note, when I left Apple for the last time, and
| emptied out my drawers, at the very bottom of the last drawer I
| found my distinctly unsigned NDA.
|
| I wonder if that legally makes any difference? There's probably
| an oral or implied contract for this kind of stuff, if you keep
| showing up to work and they keep paying you?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I've always wondered about the opposite. That is can an NDA
| even be legally enforced?
| eru wrote:
| Why wouldn't it?
|
| I was wondering the opposite: even if you don't explicitly
| sign some contracts, as long as you have seen them and behave
| as-if you are following the contract and the other party
| gives you their part of the bargaining, that might be legally
| (almost) equivalent to having signed the contract. (I'm not a
| lawyer, and this is speculation.)
|
| It seems the legal term of art for this in 'an implied
| contract'.
| jpc0 wrote:
| Terminology I head in law classes over a decade ago is
| tacid contact and definitely was a legal contract although
| difficult to prove in court when I did study the little
| contract law I studied.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| The NDA could say that by signing this I am to hand over my
| first born but it isn't enforceable. An obvious straw man
| example I admit but to make the point that signing a thing
| doesn't give a thing some kind of godly power.
| rcbdev wrote:
| How do you "imply" non-disclosure?
| eru wrote:
| Well, you hand your employees that very sheet of paper that
| the protagonist found unsigned in their drawer. And trade
| secrets are a fairly widespread concept, too. So judges
| wouldn't have a hard time believing that a reasonable person
| would recognise trade secrets in most cases.
| bbarnett wrote:
| The reverse is true. They asked to sign an NDA, the person
| looked at it, decided not to agree, but they kept them on
| regardless.
|
| It would be better to have never handed te person the
| formal agreement, than give it and be ok with them not
| signing.
|
| (not keeping track is just as bad, it marks the NDA as
| unimportant)
| griomnib wrote:
| Wasn't the dock part of next step?
| klntsky wrote:
| To tell a story about slapping a few desktop buttons in a way
| that makes it interesting to read is a talent
| myvoiceismypass wrote:
| It seems sorta trivial at a surface level but we as developers
| are always standing on the shoulders of giants. What seems easy
| and simple was not always so without the tooling, compute,
| language advances, and knowledge sharing that we have today.
| drummojg wrote:
| I feel this in my soul. I work in higher education, and every
| major contribution I've made has been ripped from my hands and
| either dashed like the first copy of the ten commandments or
| handed over to someone shinier. I'm still proud of all I've done.
| leoc wrote:
| Well, that seems to be a significant new insight into the mystery
| of what does or does not happen in Apple Cork
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42255412 .
| nbzso wrote:
| This year, I push 50. Ideal time to start learning c/c++ and
| watercolor painting.
|
| Don't limit your mind to a predefined timeline.
|
| I have a friend, his grandfather 69, completed a law degree and
| opened an office.:)
|
| P.S. The tech industry ageism is standard which must be outlawed.
| It is not objective and moves the industry in the wrong
| direction.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| 0 - yesterday: can't really remember but happy with whatever I
| did to get here.
|
| Future: stay the course.
|
| I've never much liked who I was yesterday, but I'm (almost)
| always happy with who I am right now.
| Lammy wrote:
| > I loved doing UI stuff, but somehow ended up working on a
| command line Mac OS X Server authentication component for At Ease
| that was to be used with a new line of diskless netboot computers
| that nobody had actually seen. It turned out I'd actually been on
| the iMac project all this time, and in the end they got hard
| drives.
|
| Relevant: Macintosh Network Computer
|
| -- https://tedium.co/2018/04/12/larry-ellison-network-
| computer-...
|
| --
| https://web.archive.org/web/20130603044116/https://sw.thecsi...
|
| --
| https://web.archive.org/web/19961220160908/http://www.macwee...
|
| --
| https://web.archive.org/web/19961220043823/http://www.macwee...
|
| --
| https://web.archive.org/web/20000531132121/http://www.theapp...
|
| "During a speech trumpeting the network computer for the Harvard
| Computer Society earlier in December, Larry Ellison, Oracle chief
| executive officer and Apple board member, responded to a question
| about Apple's role in the NC space.
|
| Ellison said the Macintosh NC would be available in April, with a
| near-300-MHz processor and a 17-inch screen. The Mac NC will run
| on the Mac OS and cost less than $1,000, according to attendees.
| Ellison added that the NC would not ship with a hard drive, but
| one could be added to the unit for an additional $100. "
| kelnos wrote:
| This is a fun story, but also just reminded me of how
| destructively eccentric Jobs could be. All the shenanigans to
| pretend the author lived in the US, flying him back and forth
| from Ireland, planning his interactions (or lack of interactions)
| with Jobs so the deception wouldn't be exposed, and everything.
| What a colossal waste of time, money, and stress just to cater to
| the ego of Steve Jobs.
|
| And then they threw all that work away, seemingly mainly because
| it was done out of the _wrong office_. Presumably the final Dock
| that shipped was significantly different from the author 's
| version, but throwing away _all_ the code and doing a full
| rewrite is rarely warranted.
| rob74 wrote:
| I assume that the Cork development team was built up before
| Jobs took over, which also explains why they were all laid off
| shortly after the author quit. Jobs probably wanted to have all
| (significant) software development happening in Cupertino? If
| he were still around, he would probably hate home office/remote
| work and join Elon Musk in the "people can have all the home
| office they want as long as they work 40 hours per week in the
| office" camp...
| leoc wrote:
| One wrinkle here is that Jobs himself was by all accounts the
| person most responsible for Apple opening a Cork facility in
| 1980, and for whatever Apple and the Irish government
| promised each other as part of that deal. There's some
| indication that Irish governments were unhappy with what they
| got from it
| https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/state-
| papers-... but it's hard to be sure exactly what happened
| there: Apple was probably not in the best shape to carry out
| ambitious relocation plans for much of the '80s, for one
| thing.
|
| While I don't have boundless love for either Jobs or RTO
| mandates, and as an Irishman I would very much rather not see
| Cork getting the dirty end of the stick, I have to defend
| Jobs' desire for centralisation a bit here. There's
| considerable evidence that having nearly all the central
| product and design people within easy reach of SJ stalking
| around 1 Infinite Loop did in fact work very well for Apple
| in the second Jobs era. Maybe it was still a wrong decision,
| despite appearances, but you can hardly say that it was an
| eccentric one. (And in 2000 the tools for offsite or multi-
| site collaboration weren't even as not-entirely-great as they
| are now.) It was other people who brought in the madcap
| element of trying to hide things from the boss, not Jobs
| himself.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| All else being equal, for team-based, creative, knowledge
| work, having everyone collocated is more productive.
|
| But not all is equal. You can't necessarily attract the all
| the talent. It doesn't scale without extremely disciplined
| organizational and physical space design - working remotely
| in the office, is the more common norm. Your team is spread
| over different locations and buildings anyway so you aren't
| really working locally in practice. Strong communication
| and collaboration practices are what dominate - so just
| having people together in one place and expecting osmosis
| doesn't beat good async tooling and discussion practices
| (like those from the best OSS projects).
| kergonath wrote:
| > Jobs probably wanted to have all (significant) software
| development happening in Cupertino?
|
| Looks like it. There were still people working on iSync, iCal
| (and presumably software for the first iPhone) in an office
| in Paris. I think that ended in 2005.
| eddieroger wrote:
| In an alternate and very charitable timeline, after being
| healed of his cancer by top doctors, Jobs grows greatly in
| love with science and medicine, and faced with the covid
| pandemic, makes Apple permanently remote work (with office
| option for those who want it), and donates sums of money to
| bootstrapping vaccine production for all the world.
|
| A boy can dream.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "how destructively eccentric Jobs could be"_
|
| I miss Steve Jobs. He was clearly an asshole at close range,
| but at heart he was a humanist and a bit of a hippie. He made
| money but also left the world a better place.
|
| Such a massive difference to today's crop of tech billionaires
| like Thiel, Andreessen and Musk.
| SteveSmith16384 wrote:
| History would suggest otherwise. Ripping Woz off springs to
| mind. And is giving the world expensive Apple products making
| it a better place?
| Clubber wrote:
| I mean electric cars, solar panels, and rockets so we don't
| have to rely on Russia to get to and from space ain't
| nothin'. Then there's that torch thing.
|
| I can take or leave the other two. Netscape was pretty cool.
| pavlov wrote:
| As a customer I find a stark difference between Musk and
| Jobs. I have a Tesla and I was also a customer of Jobs's
| Apple since 1999.
|
| The big difference is that Jobs never lied to me. Sure, he
| was an enthusiastic salesman, but the products actually did
| what was promised. (I even bought Mac OS X 10.0 in a retail
| box. It was rough but it showed that their new OS is
| delivering.) Apple products fit my purposes and I kept
| coming back to buy more.
|
| Musk sold me a very expensive feature that still does
| nothing, six years later. He knew that he was lying about
| the capabilities of the cars, but still took my $7,500 for
| a feature that was worth zero. I'm never buying anything
| from him again.
|
| The same approach of bald-faced lies is evident in most of
| the tech industry today. Cryptocurrency products don't
| serve any purpose but enriching people like Andreessen. AI
| is almost as bad. And now these titans of misinformation
| are barging into global politics. They don't care about
| empowering people and creativity like Jobs did, they just
| want more personal power.
| Clubber wrote:
| >Musk sold me a very expensive feature that still does
| nothing, six years later. He knew that he was lying about
| the capabilities of the cars, but still took my $7,500
| for a feature that was worth zero. I'm never buying
| anything from him again.
|
| I assume you're talking about auto-pilot?
|
| >The same approach of bald-faced lies is evident in most
| of the tech industry today. Cryptocurrency products don't
| serve any purpose but enriching people like Andreessen.
| AI is almost as bad. And now these titans of
| misinformation are barging into global politics. They
| don't care about empowering people and creativity like
| Jobs did, they just want more personal power.
|
| Yes, the tech industry went from promising Star Trek like
| future to Demolition Man meets 1984 where Taco Bell owns
| everything and spies on you. It's not great. Stallman was
| right, but he got conveniently pushed out of the
| conversation.
| browningstreet wrote:
| > I assume you're talking about auto-pilot?
|
| Full Self Driving. Tesla doesn't charge extra for
| Autopilot.
| yapyap wrote:
| Jobs lied all the time, only difference was that he had
| the luck of not being busted cause he could realize the
| lies before the due date.
|
| Not saying this makes him worse than Elon Musk though,
| Elon is obviously much worse. You can see this in just
| how he interacts politically and how he used his social
| media platform to influence elections.
| euroderf wrote:
| It's not "lies" it's "reality distortion". So much more
| pleasant!
| 9rx wrote:
| _> The big difference is that Jobs never lied to me._
|
| I'm sure he will get around to providing FaceTime as an
| open industry standard any day now...
| kergonath wrote:
| That is not because of him. They ran into patents
| problems and lost a lawsuit about this.
|
| They did contribute a couple of industry standards,
| including zeroconf/bonjour and OpenCL. I haven't seen
| anything or anybody saying that the FaceTime thing was a
| deception.
| 9rx wrote:
| Supposedly he announced it off the cuff, without
| consulting anyone else as to the viability, not even
| notifying the FaceTime team beforehand. You can get into
| a semantic argument with yourself about whether that is
| actually a lie, but no matter what you conclude, that
| seems to be the same kind of "lie" that Musk makes.
| leoc wrote:
| Jobs is on the whole probably better than the modern "tech
| right", yes, if only because supposedly he turned down
| opportunities to get seriously into politics. OTOH, who knows
| what kind of strange political or personal journey he might
| possibly have taken if he'd been around for the past decade
| and more. And in fact I think he may have contributed to the
| US getting where it is now in (at least) one significant way.
| By committing his options-backdating caper and then avoiding
| punishment for it he contributed to the feeling that the
| Special Boy is too precious to suffer criminal consequences
| for his actions, something which has likely had consequences
| for the later career of Musk in particular.
| jkolio wrote:
| Oh, I'm sure it's even fuzzier than that. Apple's cachet
| over the past 25 years was built on the type of class
| consumerism that reflects and then amplifies a lot of
| America's particular brand of social dysfunction. Much of
| tech during this time was focused (and continued to focus,
| to their market detriment, until they "wised" up and
| stopped) on a sort of egalitarianism; if the proposition
| is, "Anyone can benefit from our product," most companies
| whispered the qualifier, "...if you can afford it." Apple,
| on the other hand, shouted that last part from the
| rooftops, also encouraging the addendum, "...and it makes
| you better than people who don't use our products."
|
| Apple was a standard-bearer for the toxic exclusivity and
| gatekeeping that's kind of always been a part of American
| society, but that we occasionally see some chance of
| finally throwing off.
| antonvs wrote:
| > ... but that we occasionally see some chance of finally
| throwing off.
|
| That seems optimistic to me. What are you thinking of?
| endemic wrote:
| > it makes you better than people who don't use our
| products.
|
| It seemed to me that this was more of a product of the
| fandom. "Even though this Apple computer is less
| popular/useful, I'm a discerning tastemaker and am better
| than the unwashed Wintel masses."
| yapyap wrote:
| don't get me wrong Jobs definitely progressed the technology
| of that time by leading Apple but what exactly did he do to
| make the world a better place?
| achenet wrote:
| if you believe that enabling people to easily communicate
| with each other and access basically the sum total of
| humanity's knowledge whenever they want is a good thing (ie
| if you think giving people iPhones so they can message each
| other and read wikipedia is a good thing), then you can say
| his work did help with that.
|
| You can also say that Macs have helped many people express
| themselves creatively (iMovie, Garage Band, Logic, Final
| Cut...), which you might think is a good thing.
| SteveSmith16384 wrote:
| The technology to do all of those things existed well
| before iPhones & Macs appeared. You may argue that "yeah
| but he made them popular", but the iPhone & Mac users
| were never in the majority.
| interludead wrote:
| Maybe (I think so) it was more about aligning every detail with
| the standards Jobs had in mind...
| yapyap wrote:
| > how destructively eccentric Jobs could be
|
| last thing he destroyed was himself, by going the bonkers
| "alternative healing" route on cancer.
|
| not saying he deserved it but he had an out and he chose to
| ignore it till it was too late, hard to feel sorry at all for
| him at that point.
|
| also I heard he was a massive twat irl
| euroderf wrote:
| If he'd've gone into politics, the net total outcome could've
| been much much worse.
| kergonath wrote:
| Luckily there is no indication that he was interested in
| this sort of things. Contrary to...others.
| alternatex wrote:
| Insert Bill Burr on Lance Armstrong "just keep him on the
| bike" quote.
| stonesthrowaway wrote:
| > last thing he destroyed was himself, by going the bonkers
| "alternative healing" route on cancer.
|
| People who tend to go the "alternative healing" route usually
| do so because the traditional healing route hasn't worked.
|
| > he had an out and he chose to ignore it till it was too
| late
|
| Did he? Guess you are the expert.
|
| Cancer treatment isn't an exact science. Millions of people
| who go the traditional route die. It's always the know-
| nothings who talk with such confidence of absolutes.
|
| > also I heard he was a massive twat irl
|
| Did you now? I guess it takes one to know one.
| kstrauser wrote:
| It was widely documented at the time that Jobs chose non-
| medicine over medicine very soon after diagnosis, and then
| went through heroic real-doctor efforts once it was too
| late: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2011/10/24/
| steve-j...
| stonesthrowaway wrote:
| It's hard to take an article seriously when they write
| "was one of the 5% or so that are slow growing and most
| likely to be cured."
|
| There is no cure for pancreatic cancer. There are people
| who survive it, but nobody knows why.
|
| > and then went through heroic real-doctor efforts once
| it was too late:
|
| If it was "too late" why did these "heroic real-doctor"
| exert any effort? Shouldn't they have known better? Being
| "heroic" and "real" doctors.
|
| The guy chose to be a lab rat after his 9 months of
| "alternative medicine" and 5 years of "real medicine"
| failed him. These "heroic doctors" failed him just like
| the "unheroic doctors".
|
| As I said, cancer isn't an exact science. People who
| think it is either know nothing of cancer or are just
| unthinking bootlickers. Hopefully one day we'll have a
| cure for cancer.
| basilgohar wrote:
| I think one of the first things we need to adapt is
| calling it more than just "cancer" instead of something
| more descriptive. Like Alzheimer's, it's not actually
| "one" thing but many things together or separately are
| labeled with it. Each type of cancer can have its own
| cause, treatment, and prognosis.
|
| Once we better recognize it's a family of ailments, the
| populace can better understand the challenges to its
| various treatments and how we need to invest more into
| it.
| kstrauser wrote:
| "Heroic" had a specific medical meaning:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroic_measure
|
| I wasn't saying the doctors were heroic. I was saying the
| drastic measures to help him after he dicked around too
| long with fake healers meet the description.
| pxc wrote:
| > last thing he destroyed was himself, by going the bonkers
| "alternative healing" route on cancer.
|
| The tragic last act of Jobs' infamous reality distortion
| field
| kernel_cat wrote:
| I just hate the Dock. I wish there was a way to make it
| completely disappear. I have no need for it, everything I can do
| via Terminal/open, Spotlight, or cmd+tab app switcher. It's
| really annoying how baked into the OS it is.
|
| Even trying to auto-hide the dock in new versions of MacOS is a
| huge pain in the arse.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| Right click the divider line > Turn Hiding On
| kernel_cat wrote:
| Not complete without setting the autohide delay which doesn't
| have a GUI option, need to set with a 3rd party tool or
| `defaults`.
| rm445 wrote:
| > You all know the Dock, it's been at the bottom of your Mac
| screen for what feels like forever (if you keep it in the correct
| location, anyway).
|
| On a website with huge margins at the sides. I think the OSX Dock
| is a pretty good thing, but it makes so much more sense to keep
| it on the side of the screen and preserve vertical pixels. Unlike
| (some versions of) the Windows Taskbar, the icons are all square
| with no text, so you're not even sacrificing readability.
| abroadwin wrote:
| I just set mine to auto-hide. Right now it's showing just shy
| of 30 icons, and I feel it really benefits from the additional
| horizontal width.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "I was shown some prototypes and basically told that six
| people had seen it, and if it leaked they would know it was me
| that had talked"_
|
| This near-paranoid level of secrecy was because Apple leaked like
| a sieve in 1997 when Jobs returned as interim CEO.
|
| There were sites like Mac OS Rumors that reported about internal
| meetings and projects in almost realtime. Nothing that was
| started before Jobs's return was secret. Leaking seemed to be
| part of standard office politics at Apple.
|
| Jobs wanted to clamp down on that. Who knows if they actually had
| measures like described in the article (which suggests that every
| screenshot of Aqua carried a steganographic hardware id) but the
| threat worked.
|
| The leaks were obviously bad for Apple, but as a teenager in my
| first tech industry job I found them fascinating reading. It was
| a rare insight into the inner workings of famous tech company in
| faraway California (even if it was the company that everybody in
| the media was convinced would be bankrupt in a year or two, but
| that just made the product drama more poignant).
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Yeah Jobs was probably afraid of anyone involved in sensitive
| stuff, not based in Cupertino, to be engaged in games or tricks
| like that. And they would be too far away to closely monitor.
| lukeh wrote:
| I remember an internal website (circa 1997) having the Mac OS
| Rumors logo with a big cross through it. :)
| p_l wrote:
| The mention of Finder being built with Carbon APIs using OS9 as
| dev environment makes me wonder if that's not why some Finder
| APIs in 2020 still used classic Mac pathnames (with colons as
| separators).
|
| Had to find some gnarly AppleScript to convert pathnames when
| interacting with Finder
| lukeh wrote:
| I suspect using Carbon also helped shake out Carbon itself.
| Eventually the Finder was rewritten in Cocoa. Maybe one day
| it'll be rewritten in SwiftUI and some SwiftUI bugs will get
| shaken out ;)
| p_l wrote:
| Maybe one day it will stop using classic paths then...
|
| fortunately I don't have to deal with it anymore ;3
| dwighttk wrote:
| Earn a penny Owe a dime...
| pbrum wrote:
| The story is great on its own, but that ending was absolutely
| magnificent
| julik wrote:
| I wonder how many HN readers remember what DragThing was and have
| used it... memories.
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