

Dreamers - jcsalterego
http://tom.posterous.com/dreamers

======
Alex3917
"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

~~~
spitfire
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.

~~~
potatolicious
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.

~~~
spitfire
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.

1\. <http://www.kzwp.com/lyons/leo.htm>

------
iamwil
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.

~~~
tdavis
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.

------
yan
"When I was six, I wanted to create twitter apps and new ways to manage your
to-do list!"

(No one looks on the flip-side..)

~~~
potatolicious
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!"

------
ssharp
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.

------
akmiller
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.

------
wglb
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!"

------
nopassrecover
Profound

~~~
nopassrecover
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.

------
nopassrecover
I had a similar thought recently - conservatives are motivated by fear,
idealists by hope.

~~~
nopassrecover
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).

