> Similar to how students who spend most of their time practicing what they are studying with actual exercises achieve higher grades
This is spot on.
> build a mental model of the code with every new line of code
This idea has been explored in depth in the Peter Naur's excellent paper, "Programming as theory building" [1] (also extensively discussed on HN [2]). If you haven't read it yet, I bet you will enjoy it a lot. :)
"Eliza" is a bit unusual for Zachtronics as it's not a programming/puzzle game but a visual novel. But it's excellent and I think it's one of their most under-appreciated games. It's well-written, well-acted, and very prescient. Highly recommended!
What a great and timely question! :) I quit a week ago to take a year-long sabbatical.
> 1. What pushed you to do it?
The pursuit of curiosity, for the most part. That's what makes quitting a lot harder when you have a good job and nothing to complain about: you feel like you're making a huge mistake on a whim. Doubly so when you consider the state of the job market at this time.
That said, we don't live to work; we work to live. It's a lot of risk and uncertainty, but you should remember that while some unknown bad things can happen in the future, unknown good things can happen too! [1] When you own your time, you increase your luck surface considerably: you have more opportunities to travel, to wander, to play, to meet new people, to tinker, to discover.
So I've been thinking and reading about this a lot. The final push came from two books I read: "The Pathless Path" by Paul Millerd [2] and "The Inner Compass" by Lawrence Yeo [3]. I can't recommend them enough.
> 2. What will you be doing? (Even if nothing!)
I have a huge Steam backlog to beat... :) Besides that, I'll be studying computer science and maths. Programming language theory, compilers, and functional programming are particularly close to my heart.
> I've rarely seen a repo and a problem that claude can't chew through with the right prompt
> a skill/PEBKAC issue
But then I remember how Anthropic couldn't fix the flickering issue for many months. It just does not compute.
Is it that people working at Anthropic can't prompt and it's a "skill issue" too? I mean, the terminal does not flicker in a lot of other complex TUI apps that I use every day - Midnight Commander, Emacs, tmux, etc. These are open source, Claude could be prompted to "just do what Midnight Commander does". So what is it?
It's not just Google AI Studio, it's also Google proper. Just one search result page consumes gigabytes of RAM. How did this happen? I've switched to DDG and never looked back.
> Is this what getting old feels like? Hating everything the rest of society is racing to embrace?
I don’t think so. Some societies are racing to embrace mass surveillance and abuse of civil rights. Pointing this out and complaining about it is not “hate” and not reserved for old people only. :)
I think spreadsheets have been severely undervalued by software engineers and they're generally under-researched. It's definitely possible to use them in more non-obvious and interesting ways. E.g., see AmbSheets [1]
I have a feeling that the same idea absolutely does apply to code. Writing code is much closer to writing prose than it may seem. And the act of writing code also makes you think as you write. Even if you're writing boilerplate. Because how else would you uncover subtle opportunities to reduce the boilerplate and introduce new, better abstractions?
> only to have it completely obsoleted a few years later
Not really. There aren’t as many fundamentally new ideas in modern tech as it may seem.
Web servers have existed for more than 30 years and haven’t changed that much since then. Or e.g., React + Redux is pretty much the same thing as WinProc from WinAPI - invented some time in ~1990. Before Docker, there were Solaris Zones and FreeBSD jails. TCP/IP is 50 years old. And many, many other things we perceive as new.
Moreover, I think it’s worth looking back and learning some of the “old tech” for inspiration; there’s a wealth of deep and prescient ideas there. We still don’t have a full modern equivalent of Macromedia Flash, for example.
I strongly recommend to check all other papers and articles on https://okmij.org/ftp/, every single one of them is brilliant and insightful. I love the pedagogy, the writing style and clarity. Oleg Kiselyov is one of the best technical writers I've discovered recently.
I'm a systems engineer with 8+ years of experience in Rust. Solving problems in low-level programming, design and implementation of compilers and programming languages.
> Has google completely stopped working for anyone else?
Yes. However, I found that https://scholar.google.com still works perfectly well. It feels just as the old Google without all the crap they've been adding in the last years.
Technologies: Rust, compiler engineering (LLVM, interpreters, query languages, code generators, dev tools, programming languages), Linux kernel (eBPF, io_uring, low-level networking)
Résumé/CV: systems engineer with 8+ years of experience in Rust. Solving problems in low-level programming, design and implementation of compilers and programming languages, software optimisation.
Technologies: Rust, Linux kernel (eBPF, networking), LLVM and compiler engineering (query languages design and implementation, code generators, dev tools)
Résumé/CV: systems engineer with 7+ years of experience in Rust. Solving problems in systems programming, API design & implementation, compilers, networking (including advanced aspects such as P2P + NAT traversal), and software optimisation. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nbaksalyar/
> I would argue "lifestyle startups" are largely a low-interest rate phenomenon.
Could you elaborate on this?
I'm curious because I thought it's the opposite: VC-fueled startups are "growth at all costs even if it means no profits" whilst "lifestyle startups" is more like "I have a $1K MRR and it's just enough to subsist eating ramen". Maybe we understand the term "lifestyle startups" differently? :)
My blog: http://nbaksalyar.github.io/