Something this article glosses over is that JavaScript achieved all the benefits of ES6, ES7, gradual typing, etc, without breaking backwards compatibility. I can still pull in a library written 10 years ago alongside my fancy new async/await code.
Perhaps this can be partly credited to JS's decision to go with a more minimal standard library, meaning it didn't end up with the Python 2/3 situation as standards evolved.
I can do the same with a Python program written 8 years ago given that Python 3.0 was released in December 2008.
I don't think that it's Python's large standard library that was the issue since that was immediately compatible with Python 3, rather it was the large ecosystem (in fact particularly a small number of popular packages) which held things back by not porting soon enough.
The biggest issue was Python standardizing on Unicode by default in Python 3 and breaking backward compatibility with a lot of (bad) string handling code the hard way by also forcing developers to unlearn a lot of old habits.
JS won't experience a directly similar thing because it started with default Unicode strings support (because it had to, and also because JS is slightly younger than Python and had that advantage).
React Native is primarily aimed at writing cross-platform UI code. When it comes to performance critical code, or integrating heavily with native UIs (eg the media streaming abilities of Spotify) it's perfectly fine to drop down to native code. RN provides an easy way to bridge between the JS and these native components.
For anything which I can't figure out a way to tie to one of my current goals, a helpful general rule of thumb is that, it may not actually be that important to hold on to. There are of course exceptions, but they're few enough that a nice folder structure on my hard drive can catch the rest.
I've been using Pinboard for a while as a bookmark list, but find the lack of any structure beyond tags a bit limiting. Just feels like I'm dumping links for the sake of it and will never really end up referring to them again.
Very cool that you've shipped! Are you doing this fulltime?
(re pinboard: I'm using pocket as my over-powered bookmark list. It reformats all pages for easier reading, also on mobile, and you get to tag everything. With the pro version it also does full-text indexing)
Thanks! Not at the moment. It would be nice to one day, but given that I'm bootstrapping, the rate of growth is quite slow, and I don't think it's reached the scale yet where it would make sense to do full-time.
Nope, sorry, I'm fully focused on the SaaS model. If it helps at all, I've tried to remove as many concerns as I can associated with storing these kind of things in something cloud-based. See the list of pledges on the homepage, and the privacy policy.
I approached this problem and decided to try and solve it for myself just over a year ago. Firstly, I decided that instead of knowledge being segregated by medium (notes -> evernote, bookmarks -> Chrome, etc), it should be organised by purpose.
The most important purpose, I decided, was personal goals. Knowledge/information which is relevant to helping me achieve my own goals is the most important thing I should be focusing on, and should be extremely well organised and easily accessible. Any other interesting info that falls outside that is a bit of a shame to lose, but ultimately just a distraction and clutter. For this purpose, I developed this tool: https://nachapp.com
I believe the next level of information down would be general learning/knowledge. Stuff that doesn't fall under any specific goals, but is still useful information to know and understand (and may in disparate ways tie into core goals). For this, I'm currently using https://pinboard.in, although it's not ideal as it's again limited to a single medium. I have a solution in mind, but haven't started developing yet. If you're interested, feel free to get in touch and I can keep you updated (contact info in profile).
Agreed. The site now... looks more like every other site. But why's that a good thing? Old design had a more unique personality -- new one looks very much like a Bootstrap deploy with tweaked colours.
Minecraft is tricky because it gives that long-term feeling of accomplishment (the same you get by creating a real-world artwork, or developing a software project), but it's not immediately obvious to some how untransferrable that time investment is to any real value or skills.
Something that can really help with this is getting out of the mindset of identifying yourself by your achievements. You talked about stoicism and being in the present, but it sounds like you're very preoccupied and anxious over how others will percieve your potential success/failure.
One of the aspects of experiencing the present moment is cutting away that ego - realising that ego isn't actually part of conscioussness, it's just something you're choosing to cling onto and identify with.
That doesn't mean that you can't pursue goals and achievement - just that you're not tying them to your happiness. To quote Power Of Now by Eckhart Tolle (which you may want to consider reading):
"Does it matter whether we achieve our outer purpose, whether we succeed or fail in the world? // It matters to you as long as you haven't realised your inner purpose. After that, the outer purpose is just a game that you may continue to play simply because you enjoy it. It is also possible to fail completely in your outer purpose and at the same time totally succeed in your inner purpose. Or the other way round, which is actually more common: outer riches and inner poverty, or to 'gain the world and lose your soul'. Ultimately, of course, every outer purpose is doomed to 'fail' sooner or later, simply because it is subject to the law of impermanence of all things. The sooner you realise that your outer purpose cannot give you lasting fulfillment, the better. When you have seen the limitations of your outer purpose, you give up your unrealistic expectation that it should make you happy, and you make it subservient to your inner purpose."
This is pretty much the same approach I took to largely overcome ADHD-like symptoms. I happen to believe that, if you've fallen into a routine, it's time to re-evaluate, anyway - so the tactic of engineering a more stimulating environment seems like a great idea regardless.
Second, it's very important in discussions like this to qualify the target audience. A LOT of people have SOME of the symptoms, even to levels that impair their lives. NOT a lot of those people have full-blown ADHD.
If you have SOME symptoms and things like that help you, that's fantastic. In my direct and social experiences, however, those with clinical ADHD diagnoses are assisted with such suggestions, but very rarely do they improve things to the point that there is no longer a significant impairment to that person's life. THAT is when medication is a good fit: clinical diagnosis, life and environment changes haven't significantly helped, and there is still a negative impairment on one's life.
I realise there are others that likely have much more severe manifestations of the symptoms than me, but I don't think it's quite as black and white as you're making out. Surely the line you describe as "full-blown clinical ADHD" is somewhat arbitrary, when the symptoms exist on a spectrum?
I didn't attempt to get myself diagnosed, but yes, it was a significant impairment towards my life, and yes, there still is quite a negative impairment. If I wanted to get routine tasks done with any kind of consistency, I may well have to look into medication.
But instead, I structured my life around a very diverse range of stimulating past-times, and set myself up with very few obligations (e.g. no employer). This leaves a lifestyle of jumping between stimulating and challenging activities, which allows me to be a lot more productive, and achieve much more, than I ever did when I was in formal education or working a repetitive office job.
> In my direct and social experiences, however, those with clinical ADHD diagnoses are assisted with such suggestions, but very rarely do they improve things to the point that there is no longer a significant impairment to that person's life.
How far did they take the suggestions? Did they quit their job and start their own startup? While I agree that medication is probably the best solution for certain types of lifestyle, I do think adjusting one's environment is an underrated and underexplored solution, that could do with more research.
> Did they quit their job and start their own startup?
They forget to shave and flush the toilet, so no. When I mean full-blown clinical ADHD I don't mean interrupting people and being unable to finish a coding project on time. I mean "gets fired from Mickey D's for randomly staring at the walls". Inattentiveness on a scale that's not being discussed in this article or this thread.
Perhaps I feel so strongly about all of this because I've attended group sessions with non-tech people that are truly suffering because of this thing and I don't have any way of bridging the understanding gap with mere comments on a website. This is a difficult malady for those in tech. Outside of tech? It's sink or doggy paddle, and when you sink there's a whole ocean under you, not a swimming pool.
Nice to see someone else viewing pledges as a potential solution.
Something I think would make this even better, is if the pledges were standardised, so they followed some mutually agreeable guidelines. I had a go at doing this here:
I have it in place on my app (https://nachapp.com), and plan it include some/all of the pledges on future products I launch. Haven't yet come in contact with any other founders who are up for including it on their product... but if you like the idea and want to help improve the draft (even if it's just for the "long-term service" pledge), feel free to get in touch.
Perhaps this can be partly credited to JS's decision to go with a more minimal standard library, meaning it didn't end up with the Python 2/3 situation as standards evolved.