

Why Learning to Fly (or Code) Is Easier Than You Think - budu
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/01/why-learning-to-fly-or-code-is-easier-than-you-think/69324/

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mquander
_Why Writing For_ The Atlantic _Is Easier Than You Think_

I expected there to be some sort of rigorous process--a waiting period? a
physical? some paperwork?--before I'd be allowed to publish an essay to
hundreds of thousands of readers. But here's what happened instead: On a whim,
I called a friend of mine who's a columnist for his local alt-weekly and set
up an appointment for a $79, 45-minute lesson. Two weeks later I picked a
mildly unusual experience of mine and gave a brief, rushed overview of it,
remaining about as deep as a kiddie pool throughout.

Thanks to my friend, I knew the secret to writing modern middlebrow pop-
culture essays -- just draw some arbitrary connection between your topic and
another topic that seems, at first, to be totally unrelated. Unfortunately, I
ran out of time before my deadline, and I never really found an interesting
connection. But it's hard to complain when you're playing in the clouds.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
On a related note, is it just me, or everyday are we seeing articles from
theatlantic.com?

I didn't notice so many a year or two ago. Seems like every time I bring up
the front page any more, there's an article from there.

Not complaining really -- some are really good articles (although I'm not so
crazy about this one, and many do have a tendency to run on a bit). Just
weird.

------
unoti
When I was in my 20s during the dot com boom, I decided I'd take up flying to
peruse a lifelong dream. I was loving it. After a couple of months I was
almost ready for my first solo flight.

Then I started looking at my total monthly expenses for instruction and plane
rental. When I looked at the numbers, I decided that this must be a good time
to buy a house. I was spending what was, for me, a great deal of money. The
money I was spending on flying easily paid for a house payment once I made
that decision.

One other thing that was quite unexpected. At the time, I was working as a
consultant doing large ERP system implementations for fortune 500 companies.
As anyone who does this for a living will tell you, this can be a very
stressful occupation. The multitasking aspect of flying was like: watch 15
things all at once, make sure nothing goes wrong, and if you screw up, the
consequences will be extremely dire, and everything is very time critical, and
all eyes are on you as you make very important actions. At some point, it
occurred to me: "hey! This is exactly the same kind of stress I feel at work!"

Another thing that surprised me initially about flying small planes. It feels
like being in a flying lawnmower, nothing at all like being in a commercial
jet. It made me feel very sick at first. They say you get used to it with
time.

I think, though, that at some point the situational awareness and multitasking
becomes second nature, and you can do it feeling merely alert instead of
stressed and overtaxed. But I never spent enough money on flying time to get
to that point personally.

There's nothing like the fun of staring at a map and plotting where you're
going to go, though, I hope I'm financially successful enough to get back into
it some day when other affairs are in order.

------
TGJ
Flying is easy, paying for the lessons and gas is not.

------
stevenbedrick
One of my advisors once summed up aviation-as-a-hobby in one sentence: "The
times in your life during which you've got adequate free time to devote to the
hobby, you don't have the money... and when you've got the money for it, you
don't have the free time."

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blackrabbit
"The net effect of which is to make "programming" an exercise in (a) wanting
to do something, (b) realizing that someone's probably done it before, (c)
looking up what they did, and (d) tweaking it a little bit. As I tweak I begin
to understand, and to become less a user of all this wonderful mess than a
contributor to it."

I wouldn't say that's what programming is. I would say that's a good way to
just create something simple. A thoughtful understanding of the entire stack
is necessary to create a solid base, but given the fact many people just wan't
something quick his approach should be fine.

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naba
Maybe its just but I couldn't get any connection between flying planes and
coding from the article. But I do have learning to fly planes on my to-do list

~~~
aaroneous
Try a discovery flight. It's a cheap, no-commitment way to see what flying
small planes is like.

After you're back on the ground you'll probably find yourself bumping up the
priority of flying lessons on your todo.

------
rexreed
Except the penalty for crashing when you fly is much more severe than when
code crashes.

~~~
borism
unless your code flies the plane :)

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udp
I don't know if anyone else has noticed this, but - as interested as I
genuinely am in learning to fly one day, why is it that so many flying-related
articles tend to crop up on HN over the months?

~~~
nkurz
It's an interesting question. The logic of the article isn't great, but
perhaps there truly are some deep similarities between flight and code. As he
points out, both have a tradition of learning by on the job experience, and
providing a sense of freedom to those willing to master the basics. Both also
have an somewhat uneasy interplay between the 'professionals' and the
'amateurs'.

From the article, the most salient part for me was the "World War II
attitude". There are tons of regulations for flying, but in end one is truly
in charge of the vessel. Pilots and engineers are among relatively few
professions where one can answer 'unable' and presume that the rest of the
conversation will take this as fact. You may have to deal with the
consequences later, but in the moment you are the expert in control.

