I don't have side projects, instead I spend that free time training for and running triathlons. I can't show as impressive a GitHub as my peers, but I'm sure as hell a lot more healthier and physically active. Whether that means anything to recruiters, who knows.
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Nobody on HN seems to want to address it, so I will. It's pretty obvious: Notch is incredibly wealthy and no longer is interested in programming. Can you blame the guy? Most of us would probably stop programming if we had his never ending flow of income. Minecraft is like milk: It's always selling and he hardly has to think about working anymore. Mojang doesn't even have to update Minecraft, the community drives it. The mobile version has reigned the iOS store for months. It's the holy grail of perpetual passive income we all wish we had that Notch has obtained.
Speculative and inaccurate. Notch loves to program and design games, he released a new game a couple of days ago. He's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, sure, but that doesn't change that he built Minecraft out of a love for games, not for money. He'll be programming until the day he dies.
No - I presume most on here are hackers and not only in it for success. The difference is that I'd stop coding for others, and do it for myself, pursuing the challenges that excited me, independent of the income they could generate. Which is what I think Notch is doing - he doesn't owe anyone anything.
What about the difference between 'programming' and 'hacking'?
No doubt everyone would keep hacking if they had unlimited money, after all, it's fun.
But programming? Tediously banging away on edge cases so a random consumer doesn't get frustrated? Polishing bullshit after the fun work is done so you have a 'product'? Maybe 3% of people enjoy the sheer grunt work involved with programming. Very few people would keep that up if they had unlimited money.
Much more likely, they'd do what we see notch doing right now. jump from interesting project to interesting project, discarding as they go along.
That's what I was going to say! I'm sure for most of us, programming is FUN when you're doing it for the enjoyment, the puzzle-solving aspect, and working on a project you love, isn't it?
Once I'm wealthy and financially free, I might take some time off of work initially, but eventually I expect I'll do fewer of others' projects and more of the things bouncing around my head right now. I just love working on this kinda stuff!
That was the feeling I got from this article -- since Notch doesn't need the money, he works on something that interests him until it doesn't anymore, regardless of whether it's the best money-making option, don't you think?
I doubt my personality would let me just shelf a project when I'm in the middle of it, though... once I start something I can't help but see it through to completion!
Given access to massive funds though, you might find that your interest in programming now has to compete with ideas like traveling the world, building rockets, flying aircraft or solving malaria.
I think we might be seeing a bit of 80/20 rule playing here...as the old saying goes, the first 80% of the project takes 20% of the time, and the remaining 20% is the most arduous.
If I had piles of cash in the bank, I might be less inclined to see something through once I hit that 20%...from what I hear this seems to be how Notch writes code in general, and now that he is very wealthy...well....
That makes a lot of sense. Once you get to a certain point where the core of the functionality is built and the rest seems easy and/or tedious, it might be tempting to hand that part off to someone more interested/with more time/etc. wouldn't it?
>Most of us would probably stop programming if we had his never ending flow of income.
If I had a never ending flow of income, I would program more. You might see less output, though, as I would be more liable to jump to whatever project seemed the most fun at the moment. If Notch's success is the cause of less output, that's the more likely reason.
If I had enough money not to care anymore, I'd still write code because I feel it achieves something worthwhile. I've contributed a bunch to KDE in the past, I would just work on it "full time" (aka, whenever I wanted to).
Notch is human, he thought the space idea might pan out, apparently it hasn't for him. That guy was born with a keyboard in his hands. He's trying different things like the programming competitions, when he finds something that truly inspires him and captures his imagination, it will be the next Minecraft.
i agree with everyone here, even if i had millions i would still program, i just wouldn't be programming what my managers and higher ups tell me to program. I would work on projects that I like to work on and thought might go somewhere if i could put in 40 hours a week on them. I sadly need focus/direction on my side projects so i have trouble finishing them or sticking with a single project for long enough.. I've been building a multiplayer mobile version of Acquire for months now...
Surprising that this isn't on the front page of the website with the community most empowered by Ubuntu. Use Ubuntu as your main OS? Run a server using Ubuntu?
I thought Reddit was fairly pro-Microsoft? I mean, if we're talking Reddit as a whole and not /r/programming. Reddit has a lot of general users who use Windows, especially any gamers, so they take kindly more to Microsoft. I remember articles on Reddit that mocked Bing and most of Reddit seemed to support Microsoft.
Yea, I don't like the article's insinuation that programmers aren't middle-class. Programming is not a upper-class job, like say lawyers or doctors. We are not making that much money. I would definitely say upper-middle-class though.
What I don't understand is why people don't go where the jobs are. Historically if there was a market boom in a certain industry, people then sought out those skills and went for those jobs. I realize programming is computers and computers are a foreign language to a lot of people, especially middle-class people, but that doesn't mean it's impossible to learn if you just take the time to learn it and maybe some classes or training.
I feel like non-techie middle-class people never even consider a programming job, because it requires doctorate level education or something. It's a total misconception. Anyone can learn Ruby in a couple months if they put their mind to it and get a decent job.
Even lawyering and doctoring is not upper-class. The defining feature of upper-class in America is making money with money, so the only upper-class lawyers or doctors are the ones that (for example) own a practice instead of working day-to-day, much the same way that a programmer who now owns his own billion-dollar tech company would be upper-class.
> Most young technology workers order food and supplies online, so she doesn't run into them at the corner store. They keep their noses buried in their smartphones when they walk on the streets and don't volunteer in the community, Flandrich said.
This is true even outside Silicon Valley. A techies community is the Internet. GitHub, Reddit, Hacker News, forums, etc. This trend will only get more prolific as the Internet becomes more immerse.
Eh, no mnemonic device? Most people memorize things by simple repetition. If you're implying anyone can have eidetic memory by "removing their limits", I don't buy it. It's something developed at a young age.
If you're implying anyone can have eidetic memory by "removing their limits"
What I said is that most people don't try to memorize things because they think that they can't.
Most people memorize things by simple repetition
Sure, and most people don't try to memorize things because (again) they think that they can't no matter what technique they use.
I don't buy it
I'm not selling anything. I'm merely passing on my own experiences and those of my friends. If you choose to continue to believe you can't memorize things because of some innate lack of ability, it doesn't affect me at all.
> Sure, and most people don't try to memorize things because (again) they think that they can't no matter what technique they use.
Citation? I mean, you're saying "most people" after all. If we're just talking anecdotes here, I've never met anyone who couldn't memorize something with simple repetition technique. When people say they have "poor memory", they are referring to not having eidetic memory. For example: "I don't remember her name! I have terrible memory." Well, it's probably because you only met her once in passing. It's not like you went home, wrote her name on some flash cards and crammed it into your memory. You weren't holding yourself back thinking "I can't remember her name because I have terrible memory!" It's simply that some people have eidetic memory and some don't. You can't learn eidetic memory by "thinking you can" or sheer will. It's developed at early childhood. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidetic_memory)
> I'm not selling anything. I'm merely passing on my own experiences and those of my friends. If you choose to continue to believe you can't memorize things because of some innate lack of ability, it doesn't affect me at all.
Citation? I mean, you're saying "most people" after all.
I think you may be the most confused person in this thread. Go ahead and re-read this particular branch of it.
You said most people first. I then quoted your use of "most people". So I guess the appropriate thing for me to do at this point is to snarkily ask for your citation?
> I'm not selling anything. I'm merely passing on my own experiences and those of my friends. If you choose to continue to believe you can't memorize things because of some innate lack of ability, it doesn't affect me at all.
