imuli comments on Programming-like activities? - Less Wrong

6 Post author: robot-dreams 08 January 2015 12:37AM

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Comment author: imuli 08 January 2015 05:46:56PM 6 points [-]

You cannot date independently. Dating requires at least one other person. One of the amazing things about programming is that I can sit down anywhere at any time and create. Computers are handy, but even pencil and paper will do in a pinch.

Comment author: [deleted] 11 January 2015 06:13:32AM 0 points [-]

They have online dating now. Yuo can prety much do this at any time you can do programming.

Comment author: James_Miller 08 January 2015 06:55:53PM *  0 points [-]

I'm an economist not a programmer, but shouldn't the goal of programming be to write code that other people value? Also, you do need other people to program, the people who build the hardware, operate the power system, grow your food..., it's just that with extremely high probability you can count on them being there for you.

Comment author: robot-dreams 09 January 2015 08:17:44AM 4 points [-]

What you say is absolutely true on a large scale.

When I say that programming is a very "independent" activity, what I'm trying to describe is the fact that at any time, I can think to myself, "I want do some programming", and within 30 seconds, be doing some programming. In particular, I don't have to call someone, convince them that "no, this will be fun", fail, try convincing someone else, succeed, wait for them to head over, etc. etc., by which point my impulse to do some programming has completely disappeared.

You might be surprised how much of a difference this makes, especially for an INTJ like me ;-)

Comment author: 4hodmt 09 January 2015 05:33:28PM 1 point [-]

You can program to solve your own problems. It's very likely that other people have similar or identical problems, so your code can benefit them even if you didn't plan for that.