"Now class, today we will talk about what you want to be
when you grow up. Isn't that fun?" The teacher looks
around and spots the child, silent, apart from the others
and deep in thought. "Jonny, why don't you start?" she
encourages him.
Jonny looks around, confused, his train of thought
disrupted. He collects himself, and stares at the teacher
with a steady eye. "I want to code demos," he says,
his words becoming stronger and more confidant as he
speaks. "I want to write something that will change
peoples perception of reality. I want them to walk
away from the computer dazed, unsure of their footing
and eyesight. I want to write something that will
reach out of the screen and grab them, making
heartbeats and breathing slow to almost a halt. I want
to write something that, when it is finished, they
are reluctant to leave, knowing that nothing they
experience that day will be quite as real, as
insightful, as good. I want to write demos."
Silence. The class and the teacher stare at Jonny, stunned. It is the teachers turn to be confused. Jonny blushes,
feeling that something more is required. "Either that
or I want to be a fireman." --Grant Smith
The funny thing is that with all the talk of "dreamers" and "aiming high" on HN, there's a horrible horrible groupthink that goes on here.
An obsession with the latest fad, to the complete disregard of substance. Buzzwords over basic utility, lists over productivity,
I would argue that demosceners (like little Johnny) are the dreamers
while much of HN consists of internet hucksters. Back when
I was writing demoscene code I bent my computer over my knee and
made it beg (Wrote a flat real mode extension for borland pascal).
Phong shading on a 486? Check. realtime raytracing on that same
486, in the same demo? Check. (10fps btw).
These days people struggle to handle a few thousand users of a text
based website on a quad core system with gigabytes of ram.
PS: Sorry this was a little off topic. Follow your dreams, don't
let the man get you down!
N.B. Although the S/N here is often quite poor, it is at least
an order of magnitude better than other places I know about. At
least once a day I read an article that is very much worth my time.
> there's a horrible horrible groupthink that goes on here. An obsession with the latest fad... ...Buzzwords over basic utility...
As far as I can see, HN is populated by desperate prisoners (of the 9-to-5 cube farm variety) driven mad by fantasies of escape (through earning "fuck-you money".) In that light, I find it somewhat easier to forgive the universal obsession with get-rich-quick nonsense.
> Back when I was writing demoscene code
If we can bring the Age of Cruft to an end, these days could come back.
> These days people struggle to handle a few thousand users of a text based website on a quad core system with gigabytes of ram.
> Although the S/N here is often quite poor, it is at least an order of magnitude better than other places I know about
I'm still looking for the secret pure thinking-people haven which surely lurks somewhere on the net. I might eventually take a crack at building it myself.
In the web hucksters' defense (not that I am one, mind you), fitting a few thousand users onto a quad core system (as opposed to a few million) improves maintainability, reliability, recoverability, and a multitude of other things that simply aren't major concerns in the demo scene.
The guys building big rigs care about performance - but never to the same tune as the guys designing F-1 racing cars. Different goals demand different approaches.
If you want to design jet fighters, go do that - and push the hardware to the absolute limits of human ability, but there is a glory in designing commuter jets too, you know.
That was part of my point. I don't see why we can't have a fast and good in the same piece of software. I've written software like that before, it's not difficult at all. Just keep your CS knowledge in the back of your mind and be a little pragmatic.
This is something that bothers me a lot. We've made huge, massive, spectacular progress in hardware. We know what the characteristics of our problems
are (usually they're quite simple like CRM), yet software seems
to ge slower, and more complex. With more layers of added complexity.
I simply do not see why continue to produce such bad software as
a society. We continue to build on quicksand when a few hundred
yards to the side is solid bedrock (lisps, ada, smalltalk, erlang, etc).
Back in the 50's we had teahouses in england [1] that fully automated their accounting/payroll system. On 50's hardware. Yet today we still need quad xeons to do even a fraction of that. It makes me very very
angry to throw more hardware at a problem that has already been solved
with orders of magnitude less.
These days people struggle to handle a few thousand (ed. concurrent?) users of a text based website on a quad core system with gigabytes of ram.
Which is subject to completely different requirements and restrictions. I think just flatly comparing that to 'writing demoscene code' constitutes a 'disregard of substance'.
BTW, reminiscing about writing demoscene code or actually returning to it may very well be the latest fad.
Depending on what you've lived through, what that snippet derides might not sound too bad. I mean, for those from war torn places, immigrants who worked hard, a secure job to take care of your family and see your children grow up isn't a bad dream at all. We simply have the luxury of making that our baseline.
If anything, my take-away is to recognize that those things aren't bad in it of themselves, but just don't mistake the dreams of others for your own.
Right, so I wasn't saying that having a "normal job" is objectively bad, merely that in certain circumstances people have a tendency to "settle" for their lives and mistake rationalized contentment for happiness. I used it as an example since it's something many people in this particular country (U.S.) can relate to -- or could, if they took the time to look at their lives.
There is truth here - there is a large, unspoken sector of the internet startup world that is consisted of poor ideas with equally poor implementations whose sole purpose of existence is to flip to someone equally clueless for a profit.
There is nothing glorious in this, though entrepreneurs you will still be.
"When I grow up, I want to create failing businesses that I can convince people to pay me tens of millions of dollars to buy!"
I didn't realize that the best course of action in life is to follow the dreams you had as a 9 year old. While the idea might sound romantic, by age 10, these kids realized that they didn't actually want to be president.
I think its a little more apt to figure out what you want to do with your life when you're 18, 21, 30, 40, 50, etc.
I like this post. I'm not sure it's as much about what you want to do, or be, as opposed to what you don't want to do. I believe that figuring out what you want to do with your life is much more difficult than figuring out what you definitely don't want. The problem is that nobody ever asks you, "What is it that you don't want to do when you grow up?". I think that question, presented to us when we were younger, would give far more direction to our lives.
Well presumably you still have the ability to dream. For myself, I asked myself "what would you do if you had no fear" and I find that process useful. George Patton says " ... When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!"
Wow downvoted here heavily too, I wonder if this is because the comment added little value (other than a recommendation to check out his thought which i thought had clarity) or because people disliked the article.
Er wow I got downvoted here heavily. I was just making the point that he talks about some people being happy with stability (avoiding fear) and some happy with chasing the ideal (hope).
Jonny looks around, confused, his train of thought disrupted. He collects himself, and stares at the teacher with a steady eye. "I want to code demos," he says, his words becoming stronger and more confidant as he speaks. "I want to write something that will change peoples perception of reality. I want them to walk away from the computer dazed, unsure of their footing and eyesight. I want to write something that will reach out of the screen and grab them, making heartbeats and breathing slow to almost a halt. I want to write something that, when it is finished, they are reluctant to leave, knowing that nothing they experience that day will be quite as real, as insightful, as good. I want to write demos." Silence. The class and the teacher stare at Jonny, stunned. It is the teachers turn to be confused. Jonny blushes, feeling that something more is required. "Either that or I want to be a fireman." --Grant Smith