If you are given a choice, then isn't it easier to pick what you are most familiar with from a productivity standpoint? If your first choice is rejected, then the question comes as to what the next choice has to offer. There is no point in being obstinate about using a Mac or not using it. A lot of FOSS enthusiasts and contributors use a Mac and a great many of them don't. If, as a matter of principle, you are against a Mac or a PC and would instead insist on IBM/HP/Dell PC running Linux, assess your principles again (Remember: I don't always die for my principles, what if they are wrong?). If they still make sense to you and the company refuses to provide you with that kind of hardware, reject the offer. Can you? Ultimately what value you produce with what you have trumps what you have. No?
I think there is a question of progression through your career as well. For talented programmers, (I believe) it is less likely to feel 'stuck' at some point. Over the years, they can handle increasingly more complex challenges with same relative ease. Others have to do significantly more efforts to handle abstractions well enough to ensure 'cruising' along.
We have previously discussed something similar [here](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6709631). The book, Free to Learn, by Peter Gray discusses the promise of democratic schools with a historical and social perspective. He even calls the Sudbury Valley schools "America's best kept secret".
I attended the open house of the closest (around 50 miles from where I live in CA!) local Sudbury Valley School (called Diablo Valley School, DVS) a few months ago. We, of course, went there with the kids. After coming back home, I asked the kids which school they would rather attend -- their present school or this one and they had no doubt in their mind that they wanted to attend the DVS.
But for some reason, I am not able to make the switch to the idea that the democratic schools are the way to go, although Dan Greenberg (the founder of SVS, back in 1968 in Framingham, MA) has been running this 'experiment' for past 46 years. Maybe, as a parent, I feel overly responsible for my kids and insist that I know more about them than they do. And we know, as Kahneman (Thinking fast and slow) and others have repeated shown, how little we know. It's a sad impasse.
Oh, this is a timely discussion. I just wrote an article on this topic: http://bit.ly/recurse-iterate. What I thought was good about go to statement was that it helps us understand how recursion works and how one can eliminate it in favor of iteration.
Incidentally, I am reading Cal Newport's "So Good ..." and the thoughts in this article resonate with some of those expressed in Cal's book. Half way through the book right now, and I can say that it is an unusual advice made to a society that harps the passion hypothesis. An interesting thing is on Amazon, the book that allegedly started/fueled the passion hypothesis (What Color is your Parachute?) gets 5 stars from 62% of the reviews, whereas "So Good ..." gets 5 stars from 56% of the reviews!
If you are born and brought up in a setup where passion hypothesis is predominant, the advice "passion is rare and is a side-effect of mastery/hard-work" and "skill trumps passion" comes as an eye-opener.
The essence of the article is about effectiveness of technology/trade in reducing the 'gaps' between the capabilities of workers/artisans results in lowering their average compensation. But I think there's something missing. Professor Katz famously suggested not to become scientists [1] because getting your research funded becomes top priority than the assurance that 'all you'll do is research'. In a way, since we live in a society, workers need to feel personally responsible for /constantly/ finding the appropriateness (value) of their skills and elevate them as necessary to make sure they have a steady income and their craft is still valued by 'customers'. If you stagnate there, then you will gradually (or rapidly) become replaceable. And as you age, being indispensable becomes harder. So, perhaps, it makes sense to learn things that ensure stability of demand for your skills.
I like the essence of this blog post. I have applied similar strategies and although I am not a 100% sure about them being the 'right thing' to do, I am fairly convinced that they are a 'way to go' about learning new things. One thing is clear though (like Malkiel says in his book 'Random Walk Down the Wall Street' -- you become rich slowly, you only become poor fast), you have to learn to be patient -- you are going to get better at things only gradually.
Sometimes however, you need a more direct feedback if you are 'making progress'. I have seen that maintaining a blog or two is very effective in getting that feedback in two different ways. Making video lectures of your own is also an attractive option, but requires more effort. If you just write down something you think you understand as succinctly as you can, it helps to solidify your understanding. And if your (understanding of the matter and hence) writing is any good (of course, you should actively promote it), the magic of Internet will make your writing visible to many. People will flock to your blog and will ask you all kinds of questions, sometimes they will point out your mistakes and then you learn more what you thought you had already learned.
Is it the lack of making enough money that bothers you? If you dig deeper, what would you say? If you were to ask yourself "What it is that would keep me motivated?" -- what answer emerges?
In his book, "Drive", author Dan Pink argues mostly successfully that it's not the salary or the stock options or other perks that keeps effective individuals motivated. He summarizes that it is the pursuit of that illusive trio -- "Mastery, Autonomy, and Purpose" that keeps people motivated in their work and in their life.
In my experience, if remaining in a job or switching jobs cannot be traced to one of these three, then the decision one takes (remain in a job or switching jobs) is not likely to turn out to be a good decision.
Kahneman attributes a lot to 'luck' of what experts achieve especially when it comes to predicting something. I am a bit surprised that PG does not give 'shear luck' its fair share.
I am assuming that many (most?) of the startup founders, when they are being interviewed by the potential investors, are 'complete strangers'. By focusing objectively on ideas than subjectively or intuitively on people doing them, they believe that they mitigate the so-called risk. I am not convinced that by judging people rather than by judging ideas (in supposedly short amount of time) the chances of succeeding go up, because if we are often wrong judging ideas, what makes us good at judging people who are ever changing too?
Of course, there is an undeniable 'credit history' part wherein if a 'successful' founder comes back with another idea, many investors are ready to 'shower money' on her/him -- I don't find anything majorly wrong with that attitude, but that alone does not guarantee success, I believe.
I would have said reading, until I realized that some things can be made more explicit in the video. But in most cases, it is by reading. Specific examples were I liked videos explaining something better (or perhaps as good as the book) are: Unix System Calls (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHu7qI1gDPA) and Suffix Trees (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLsrPsFHPcQ). A lot depends upon how much effort has been put into making of a video. Codeschool's guide (https://gist.github.com/olivierlacan/4062929) is a great start.
One issue I see with books/articles is typos. Not many technical book writers are diligent about typos and outright mistakes and coming up with updates for a book is perhaps hard. I become especially infuriated and it stalls my progress when a particular concept/paragraph written in the book is either wrong or I am confused about it and the author is not immediately reachable for clarification. Same might be true with videos, but many videos are live talks and such mistakes are rarer in those settings.
Thank you for this reference! The good measures taken in the past seem to help tremendously.
Looking at the drought maps was depressing enough and that was compounded by the fact that the Bay Area does not feel anything like an area that is experiencing one of the worst droughts ever! I have always wondered how we (I live here) could survive all this time with water to spare for swimming pools, 24-hour tap-water supply, many-minute-long daily showers, restaurants full of water supply and wastage. Having been born and brought up at places where there were severe droughts and poor historic water management measures made me extremely cautious while using water, but it seems like that behavior was largely irrelevant here.
Whereas I like the comfort provided by California Water Project and pray for enough rainfall this year, I do hope that the approach of Bay Area Californians toward water preservation improves.
This is a very good thought! It's important for an author to break the barrier to entry for the potential readers of his/her work. It's not always easy or practical. Another way of doing this is publishing something in book form what you have already published elsewhere, e.g. your blog. After all, what a reader of free books, user of free and open source software is spending is the often neglected non-renewable source of energy -- her/his time!
Sometimes however, authors consider their book(s) as their 'life's work'. It's hard to imagine giving it away for free. Psychologically speaking, though best things in life are often free, some people think that something that is 'expensive' is 'good' -- they somewhat erroneously believe that 'cheapness and quality don't go together'.
A related point that I have always wondered about is deciding the price of your creation. For stable businesses it is perhaps a straightforward thing to name the price of a creation, but I imagine it would be hard for an author to come up with the price of her book. By making it free on the website and leaving it up to the publisher to do the hard work seems like a reasonable way to get around this problem.
This is a great achievement. Though I am a Vishy Anand fan and I really liked the way the contest was fought, I do think that Carlsen deserved to win. World chess championships, with their rich history are our treasure!
In general, open sourcing is helpful decision (it's also a practical business decision in several cases)! And the possibility of running C# on *nix really creates opportunities in a way that contributors grow. It's a win-win.
Should I ignore this as a typo? How am I to rely then on this as a classified information?