One thing I have noticed is that the boldface on unread articles appears to be off.
For example, one of my subscriptions is Hacker News (https://hackernews.hn/rss). If I 'mark all as read' then the unread count goes to 0 and all articles titles appear in plain text, as expected. 10 minutes later the unread count is now 4. Click on that subscription and there is now maybe a dozen or more titles in bold text - and not just the top dozen (the most recent) but randomly spread out.
Losing faith is a form of procrastination, and procrastination is a way of not experiencing some feeling that for some reason we are unwilling to experience. As a general rule we procrastinate because we are scared of the results we would get if did not procrastinate.
In a roundabout way the feelings we are unwilling to experience end up running our life. So maybe it would be a good thing for you to take the quiet time to discover what is beneath the behaviour you abhor.
One way to do this is to ask yourself what is it that you would lose, or tightly held belief that would be invalidated, if you were incredibly successful. And then rather than try to answer this question with reason or your intellect, just write a page or two without thinking, and see what comes up.
With regard to the 'call to action', I wouldn't under estimate the difficulty in changing the context (duration, specificity or 'me'-centricity) of our judgments because:
a) our need to judge is not causeless. It arises for our self-concept and
b) changing our thoughts is nigh impossible if they conflict with what we fundamentally believe is true.
So this whole things comes back really to what we believe is true about ourselves.. Is our self-concept true or is it a figment of our imagination?. Our judgments, and therefore how we 'see' anything, arises from that. Like the Paul Simon said, '...we see what we want to see and disregard the rest'
So how do we see what is true?
This is tricky because the mind that asks the question is the same mind that has created the self-concept.... and so it can never reason it's way beyond itself. We invest a lifetime justifying, aggrandising and clinging to the thing we call 'me' and so seeing ourselves as we really are in not going to happen using the old familiar tools.
It seems to me that to know the simplest of truths requires an openness that few of us are used to -- no thinking, no talking, no reasoning, no calculation, no busyness, no effort of any kind. Simply holding in mind what it is we needs to know and leaving an open and welcome space to be able to hear.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh nails this for me: "The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient..... Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea."
Can you see now why approach is particularly troublesome for hackers? We have brought up to be value knowledge, reasoning skills and discourse... and ashamed of ignorance. Yet it is ignorance that is called for!
So what to do?
Not the place to attempt that one here (perhaps a blog post) but it seems that our own path through life is itself this process of becoming willing to let go of our clinging to our pre-conceptions -- of answering the fundamental question 'Who am I without my judgements'. Life will always find some way to pry our hands away from clinging, even if our clinging is to the need to no longer cling.
I've found that when we are confident, relaxed and grounded in the present moment, prioritisation tends to take care of itself, in as much as 'what's next' becomes quite clear and obvious. So (at least to me) the problem of priorities is really a symptom of the greater issue of how stay relaxed and centred in the natural 'flow' of your project/start-up. This is not so easy, particularly if this is your first start up because, almost by definition, you are working outside of your old comfort zones. But I wrote a little piece* about this that might help.
Also, it can help if you keep a list of low complexity, low priority tasks that you can pick from as your fancy takes you, when your motivation is low or you are just having an off day. You'll be suprised how ticking off these low priority tasks will give you a sense of progress that restores your clarity and motivation to tackle those bigger, more complex milestones. Good luck :)
Paul, in emphasising code brevity I think you are missing a greater good. I believe most of us subconsciously look for a language that is frictionless -- one that allows us to express our ideas without the language getting in the way. To me this is a far more appropriate measure of a language's power than the length of a program. I'd love a language that would allow me to stay in flow* and express my creativity without having to stop and think about the actual language itself. That would be the ultimate Zen power tool.
To be more specific here are three attributes that seem to aid frictionless flow. (perhaps in order of importance) -
--> Expressiveness -- i.e. simple, explicit and unambiguous abstractions.
--> Obviousness and readability. -- i.e. no need to decipher tokens, and the code structure illuminates the intention and flow of the process.
--> Terse. -- i.e. apart from the obvious benefit of requiring less work it also helps me 'keep the whole program in my head'.
There's nothing wrong with brevity of course, but when pursued for it's own sake it seems to be counter productive, in that when you focus on terseness alone there can be a tendency to ride roughshod over the more important attributes: expressiveness and obviousness. You then end up with code that's not as enjoyable to create and whose beauty is lost, except perhaps initially to it's creator.
BTW Paul, this is a great first shot, so a big thank you. I, for one, am routing for Arc to be a widespread success, if only so I can do most of what I need to do in a language that I really enjoy.
I think by aiming toward brevity, what he is actually aiming for is the ability to refactor code into something more brief.
The idea is that by ensuring the progression of long code becoming shorter, and by upholding his second principle (axiomaticity), he is making sure that the code he does factor out will be useful to future programmers. He is removing the need to write common boilerplate code -- and giving the ability to remove boilerplate code to all programmers.
And that supports the idea that PG likes about Lisp -- that the language evolves with the program. The reason it seems to only be good for web programs is that his principle application is a web program. If he were to work on some other kind of program, say a word processor, you would see different kinds of abstractions.
The point is that the language can be adapted to ANY kind of application. That is what he is aiming for. And that's why he doesn't want you to have to count library import statements. He wants to compare the code you have to write repeatedly, not the once-off code. He is claiming that the code you have to write repeatedly indicates how expressive a language is. If you have to repeat yourself, then the language does not adequately represent the abstraction you want to capture.
That's what _On Lisp_ is about. That's what basically all of his Lisp essays are about. Paul Graham is aiming for brevity so that he knows that any programmer can make their program brief by evolving the language. Brevity is a sign of a tight fit between language and the concepts expressed in the program.
Two of us working on a web service that should make blogging more 'two-way' and social, as opposed to the rather one-way broadcast activity than it is at present. Hopefully it will help web-surfing be a far richer reading experience and encourage higher quality Internet conversations.
"OOP to me means only messaging, local retention and protection and hiding of state-process, and extreme late-binding of all things. It can be done in Smalltalk and in LISP. There are possibly other systems in which this is possible, but I'm not aware of them."... Alan Kay 2003
You tend to find that 'hard work == discipline == genius' is the illusory conclusion made by those on the outside looking in. When we are truly inspired, in the 'flow' if you like, doesn't that feel like the easiest, most natural state you have ever experienced?
Ptn nails it in his comment - "they left out the inner spark". Absolutely. Genius is simply the release of the inner spark and that process is not something that could be characterised by effort.
"Genius is simply the release of the inner spark."
Good remark. I think you still need effort, but that's the kind of removing obstacles between the spark and the outcome, rather than the kind of blindly digging here and there hoping you'll find a gem. I guess that's the reason of the importance of the mentor mentioned in the article.
And yes, it's simple, yet so difficult to achieve for even a slight bit of ego, lazyness or even over-eagerness get in the way... (from my experience of >20yrs of practicing instruments and acting; yet there's long way to go).
You are quite right Shiro.. it does take effort, but only as long as we believe that it takes effort ;-)
The central thesis of 'The little book of Flow' I linked to above is that those sublime moments when we get in touch with our inner spark, where inspiration gushes, answers flow from us before the questions, and we have all-on just keeping up... are simply the moments we, per chance, relax into our true nature, our natural (though perhaps forgotten) state. Notice that these moments invariably occur when we are happy and relaxed and the mind lets slip it's incessant control over of our life.,, and we suddenly feel more alive and connected to everything. If this is true (and it's not difficult to test this for ourselves) then what preparation or effort or understanding could be needed to know our own nature?
Of course, the ego doesn't want us to hear this - as our 'self-concept' it's under threat as once our mind expands to a greater awareness of reality it's impossible to shrink back again. So it's the nature of the ego (the human condition if you like) to believe that we must strive, practice, seek answers. But that doesn't make it either necessary or true.
At end of the day it can, if we wish, come down to a simple choice: - Shall I be true the truth as I find it - 'the spark', or true to the latest idea about what is still needed?
What I am long-windedly trying to say here Shiro, is that from my experience the problem is not the 'obstacles between the spark and the outcome' but the belief that there are obstacles between the spark and the outcome that need to be overcome. Does that make sense?
Yeah that makes sense. Whether the obstacles are there or just a phamtom created by our ego, my point is that the "effort" here is more like a round-trip journey, which can be quite enjoyable even if you'll eventually come back to the same place. Do we need that? I don't know, maybe not. Is it fun? I bet it is.
My wife once asked me how I could practice the same piano piece over and over and over, for hours, without being bored. It seemed to her that I was making a great effort. To me, every time I play, I discover something new, about music, about myself, about the instrument.... Even the least interesting basic exercise piece like Hanon (which roughly corresponds to the sit-up or squatting to build your body), if I concentrate on how every parts of my body works to interact with the piano, it's an unlimited source of discovery. I wish I'd known that when I was younger and taking lessons---I discover how to enjoy practicing long after I stop taking lessons.
Shiro, you are definitely one of the lucky ones. Very few know what it is to do something solely for the joy of doing the thing itself... and the great paradox is that when that is our only motivation, the 'success' that we would have wanted had we been goal (instead of process) orientated comes easy and naturally.
This is how to let the inner spark shine -- allow whatever we choose to do to be it's own reward with no preconditions or ulterior motives. What flows from that is always perfect. And what's more, somehow serendipity starts kicking in.
All great works are created from a sense of joy, not pain. If there is a 'secret' to genius, then surely this is it. Does this help answer your question tyn?
Well, it's certainly inspiring, just a little remark to add: some things are entertaining by nature (e.g. playing soccer) while for other things you need to make an effort (oops, here it is again) to discover the joy in them (e.g. for the procedure of building the right body to play better soccer). Most people will certainly devote more time to the first category of activities (what I've called entertaining by nature).
How fun can it be to make hundrends of sit ups everyday for a long period? Yet, strong abdominals might be a must in order to be top in some fields (let's say to be a soccer player in Chelsea) or to be the actor that plays Leonidas in 300. Building strong abdominals IS painful and boring and it takes a lot of motivation to do it.
Not necesarily boring. What if your dream is to become the best body-builder? "Fun" and "boring" are relative. Some consider fun to go out every Saturday to hit a disco, but I don't really like them (way too noisy). On the other hand, I consider programming fun, but there's a lot of guys that think that me coding in my free time is weird.
You are speaking based on a gut feeling, and the article cites what appears to be pretty thorough research and investigation into actual, real life geniuses and what they had in common.
