

The Geek "Must Do Before You Die" Checklist - superberliner
http://www.dailycupoftech.com/2009/05/04/the-geek-must-do-before-you-die-checklist/

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wlievens
A lot of this is IT "stuff". Am I the only geek in the world who doesn't like
this crap? I love programming and I'm really into geek culture and tech, but I
absolutely hate installing or fixing operating systems, hardware and utilities
software. These are painful time sinks you have to undergo to set up a
productive work environment, but I don't derive any fun from messing around
with configuration files or formatting disks. Sorry.

Related: I'd rather sweep the streets than work as sysadmin.

~~~
edw519
I agree, but for a different reason.

I prefer to work on things that no one else is working on. Either because they
don't know about it, they don't think it can be done, or they don't know how
to do it.

Every time I catch myself doing sys admin work, I think, "There's probably a
million other people who could do this, why am I?"

OTOH, analyzing a business problem, then designing, developing, and
implementing a software solution that no one else ever has, now _that's_ the
kind of stuff this geek must do before he dies.

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mechanical_fish
Is it just me or are too many of these things entirely too easy? There are
surely people who have done most of these things before they were twenty years
old. (I'm not one of them, but then again many of these things weren't
invented by the time I was twenty.)

Aspire to something that can't be done by following an Instructable.

(That's probably why this list is such weak beer: Every entry is an excuse to
link to the equivalent of an Instructable. The goal that can be outlined in
one page is not the true goal.)

~~~
jncraton
This list was a bit of a let down. I'm 21 right now, and I definitely had over
half of this list done before my 20th birthday.

It's not so much a list of things that geeks must do as much as a list of
things that people with geeky personalities have already thought about doing
or have actually done.

I was really hoping for a list of things that geek types should try to do that
they naturally wouldn't.

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helium
My Programmer "Must do before you Die List"

1) Implement lisp within itself. Implement lisp in ruby.

2) Write your own Webserver.

3) Truly understand Haskell and Monads

4) Write a useful genetic algorithm.

5) Build a working neural net.

6) Finish SICP.

7) Work through and finish On Lisp.

8) Build a highly concurrent server application with erlang.

~~~
spatulon
Nice list, but you'd be surprised how little work it takes to build a
functional web server. I know I was when a couple of friends and I wrote one
in Haskell on a rainy day. We were just scratching an intellectual itch of
course, so there was plenty of stuff it didn't do, but it served up HTML files
and images just fine.

~~~
jgrahamc
I agree. Writing a web server is a trivial programming task. Want to do
something networking that's hard? Write a TCP/IP stack: that was my first real
job.

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mhb
Meh.

1\. Build a telescope by grinding your own mirror and use it to see Saturn's
rings and Jupiter's moons.

2\. Make a chain mail shirt

3\. Build a Stirling engine and/or steam engine.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
> 2\. Make a chain mail shirt

...from pop can ring tabs. :)

~~~
mhb
<http://www.lloydianaspects.co.uk/armour/mail/mail.html>

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cousin_it
Wow, the Russian programmer scene must be very different from the US because
I've literally never met anyone like this in Moscow. Maybe some of my sysadmin
friends would score around 10%, but not more. As for those of my friends who
went on to work for Google, Microsoft Research or started their own tech
companies - I don't think any of them would score above 5% ("Make A Website
With HTML").

Upon some thought, the very idea of a "geek checklist" seems misguided to me.
I've always tried to do 1 new thing instead of 100 old things, and anyone who
succeeds in that gets my respect automatically regardless of their geek
points.

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San
Most of these seem to be easy means to rather shallow ends, to me at least.
Paying my sixteen-year-old nephew to do these things for me would be easier,
and just as satisfying.

The only activity on this list I actually enjoyed was learning how to pick a
lock. Not as a means for breaking and entering, but as a skill and an end in
itself.

To me, it is all about learning to create something, preferably with a certain
artistic value. Over the last few years, I have:

* Designed and built a clock (out of wood, steel and ropes).

* Designed, printed and bound a few notebooks and diaries, and two books.

* Improved my writing skills; both fiction and non-fiction. Wrote several short stories and started a working on a book.

* Bought a fountain pen, re-learned proper penmanship and developed a personal script.

* Learned how to run correctly and started running barefoot (I run 50 miles per week now).

* Borrowed my uncle's SLR camera, learned a lot about photography.

* Wrote, recorded and edited a short movie with some friends.

* Studied music theory and started playing the piano, albeit with to much ambition. I'm just not able to express myself through classical music. These days, I prefer to play blues on my guitar, or jazz standards (1930s-1940s) or stride piano when the mood is right.

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ianbishop
1\. Write a compiler

2\. Compile a Linux kernel

3\. Write a web server

4\. Finish SICP

5\. Work on a major (ok - at least widely appreciated) open-source project

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helium
The "won't ever do before I die" programmer list:

1) Prove P = NP

2) Build a quantum computer

3) Write a program that will pass the Turing test

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mgrouchy
There is no doubt that I am a geek, but I was really surprised I had done as
much of this list as I had.

Seems to me this is a list of stuff that if you are a geek you have probably
done most of.

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nopassrecover
There aren't really life "things to do" but just sys admin tasks that you
should probably do if you wanted cred within that circle.

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nazgulnarsil
1: invent holodeck 2: ???? 3: no longer care about profit

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igrekel
I these are all mundane things, are geeks supposed to so much without ambition
that there is nothing truly grand or life changing on the list?

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jgrahamc
The geek thing that I (currently) fancy doing is build a OISC using relays for
the logic, punched cards for the program and magnetic core memory.

Probably use the subneg instruction.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_instruction_set_computer>

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durandal
I can't imagine anyone thinking "I must 'Shrink a Website URL' before I die!"
That list seems more like things today's geek (Geek 2.0, as illustrated on
that site) would brag about to his/her other friends while sitting in a coffee
shop (via Twitter, of course).

~~~
nollidge
Not to mention that anyone who's ever posted a link via Twitter has probably
used a URL shortener.

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joubert
What about tangential activities that aren't techie per se but are connected
to the geek mindset at a deeper level?

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joubert
These aren't very deep.

