I'll add one more thing. People ask me about getting work now that I'm "famous", and I usually just tell them this:
Before I was famous I'd have to scrounge around for shitty jobs. Now they just come to me.
Truth is, I still interview, I still do the stupid coding quizzes, I still send my resume, not because I have to, but because I want to be taken seriously and treated fairly with the understanding that I got hired because I know what I'm doing. Not because of my "fame".
After that, the jobs are pretty uninspiring these days and while the work environment may be pleasant, I rarely find any place that's interested in taking a big risk with my ideas.
Had to laugh cause i had a similar reaction. It's more a reflection of how i view his words rather than the words themselves. Zed was being serious and was talking about how he wants his recruiters to take him seriously,
I suspect that i am spending way too much time on reddit, and should learn to take things at their face value.
Dear everyone who ever gave me shit on HN for browsing the web with JavaScript turned off by default: please see the above image. Without NoScript and ad blocking, the Internet is broken because site owners can fuck up basic UI/UX assumptions.
You're throwing out the baby with the bathwater, and putting yourself into a tiny minority that most web devs will be starting to ignore in the coming years.
That reply makes you sound like you don't know how NoScript, web standards, and good UIs work.
I have access to the Good Stuff that JS enables - and there's lots of Good Stuff! But with NoScript on, I (a) get to see who's following web standards and who isn't, (b) get pages that load faster, (c) get a more secure browsing experience, and (d) by default am spared the UI/UX idiocy that some sites try to perpetrate (especially in the area of intrusive advertising).
Using NoScript and ad-blocking is pretty much like using Instapaper or the new Reader feature of Safari - it is an assertion of the user's rights. It says "no no no, fuck all your irrelevant stuff: give me CONTENT." Not advertising, not fluff, not background images, not boilerplate: CONTENT. I like how Nathan Bowers put it: "If it looks better in Instapaper than in the browser, back to the drawing board."[1] If you purposefully make it harder for visitors to your web site to get the content they care about, you're a bad programmer and a bad person. Bad JS is one of the most frequent manifestations of making it harder to get to the content - and so in my browser, JS is a privilege, not a right.
Speaking of privilege: I am privileged - I'm about 100% able-bodied. If you say 'fuck off' to and ignore users who are not - who are for example not sighted, can't use a mouse, or can't distinguish certain colors - then you're also a bad person, in a different way.
Please, tone down the rhetoric and try to be more civil.
Your comment was helpful, it taught me things I don't know, it's a great comment. Except, you chose to call others "bad people", not once but twice, for doing something you don't agree with.
I can take you not liking sites that have ads. I can even take you saying that people who make such sites are bad programmers (though I disagree).
But seriously, putting "stuff in the way of content you care about" makes someone a bad person? Even if I halfway agreed with this, you're talking about someone else's site and someone else's content, that they chose to generously share with you. What makes you entitled to not only read that content, but to call them a bad person for putting in ads?
I admit that I haven't disabled Javascript in a long time (and haven't used NoScript), so things might be better now. My impression was that it fails silently where JS is required, but this may not be true. Also, I'm coming at this from the perspective of someone who writes web apps. I'm not talking about uses like the shitty window dressing the parent was talking about.
But no, it's not bad web development practice to ignore the tiny percentage of people who don't have javascript enabled, at least when writing a web app - in fact, ignoring that segment of the population frees you to do wonderful things! Things that aren't possible with straight HTML.
Trying to make things work well for those without JS enabled is like Microsoft's trying to make their new OS software compatible all the way back to DOS, and having to make all sorts of unfortunate design decisions as a result. I would much rather make my website awesome for 95% of potential users and leverage the full power of JS than make it mediocre and usable by 100%. It's a choice, and one that I happily make.
I think more and more web developers will be making that choice in the coming years (not the ones with content sites, maybe, but who knows). That's what I meant when I said they'd start ignoring you.
We’ve taken it into consideration. It's designed for terms one is not familiar with, so “didn't” is kind of unnecessary.
As a note here, though (also for others), it doesn’t pop up just from double-clicking text; you only get a small “Learn more” after that, and the popup only shows up if you then click the Learn More button.
Or on some operating systems, I highlight the word, right click, and select "Look Up in Dictionary". I would add to Almaviva's observation, that webpages should stop trying to do things that others do better.
It will also pop-up if you just hover over the "Learn More" box. There's a little 'progress bar' where the background changes to a different hue of gray. When the background has completely changed color, the thing pops up.
Addendum: it’ll also happen after 1.2 seconds if you keep hovering on the Learn More button (and watch the progress bar fill across). I should have added that in my initial comment.
"I think I also tend to pick off the lower level work because most of my original ideas are usually too weird for a professional setting."
I'd like to see some clarification on this. A lot of the work I do (inside a large organisation) seems to involve inventive approaches to problems. Maybe not like writing new web servers, but certainly the kind of non-routine stuff that keeps a hacker happy. I don't (often) do this just for fun - there's simply not enough time to solve problems the boring way.
"Professionally though, inspiration is for amateurs and I just do my work."
I'd also like to see some clarification on this. Is Zed saying that it's wrong to take a novel approach to one's work? Or that maybe it's better to just do things the way you're told and save the creative juices for personal endeavours? I might just be mis-reading this completely. Any help much appreciated...
I try really hard to get things done at work, sometimes that means doing shit work so someone else can have a good time coding something interesting. That's all there is to it. That doesn't mean I don't try to do the shit work in an efficient novel way, it just means what I'm willing to work on isn't necessarily glamorous.
As for the second comment, I'm just saying that if you have to wait around for inspiration before you can do anything then you're just an amateur. I may not be as into what I do without inspiration, but in my day job I can just do what I need without waiting around for a muse to strike me with Thor's hammer. I find people who walk around screaming that they "MUST BE PASSIONATE!" are either deluded, stupid, or just prima donnas who can't sit down and do the damn job. Personally I'd take someone objective and little critical over some passionate Yes-Man.
Now, that's at work, where usually I'm just slinging code for someone else to make money off of and my interest is really only in doing my job well, not in what I'm doing.
It seems like success as a programmer (or at least Internet fame) requires doing a lot of side projects. Do you ever find that doing the shit work at work saps your interest for side projects? Like if you have to look at another line of code you'll scream?
I don't use the same language and platform at home that I do at work. That's how you stay sane. That and I play a lot of guitar which is way more fun and makes me happy.
I think that it's easy to say when you have other things in your life (i.e. hobby, side projects) that satisfy this "feel inspiration" requirement. This is not true for everybody. If you can't find time for side projects or an hobby is it too much to ask for a work where you feel inspired/that you inspire other people? Personally, I think not.
I admire Zed. His angry rants make me laugh. His ability to pump out decent code is brobdingnagian. He's usually right.
But of course, part of what makes his rants so funny is that even the minimum niceties are dispensed with. I'm not sure if that means Zed can be inserted into a team of ordinary folk without wasteful drama from people with hurt feelings.
I understand Zed's work mostly takes the form of freelancing. That's probably the best fit.
They do, and people who think I'm just a dick, rather than see the truth (which is that I'm a dick to people who treat me and other people like dicks), aren't the kinds of people I want to work with.
Other creative professions have this phenomenon too. In film, there are actors who audition for parts, and actors who have roles pitched to them.
Everyone knows that being famous for your work requires a combination of talent, luck, and hard work, but everyone can't be Zed Shaw. There isn't room. It would be like telling actors "Just do what Jim Carrey did."
Of course we can't all be Picasso (the role was filled by some guy who was hanging out in Paris at the right time), but that is no reason not to try. Trying to raise the collective professional standard is a Good Thing. I think more people should try to emulate Zed Shaw in terms of coding competence (there are already enough people trying to emulate him in terms of 'surly fellow who gets away with being a tremendous asshole on account of being a tremendous asshole who's usually right').
I think it depends a lot on the relative standing between you and the company.
There are a large number of startups and small businesses where I could get a job simply by saying "Hey, I'm interested", walking in, and having a 15-minute chat with the founder. I would probably not want to work for most of them, though, because it's quite boring being the smartest guy in the room.
However, the number of people who could get hired at Google or Facebook without an interview is probably in the dozens to low hundreds, worldwide. And many of them probably aren't interested, because they've got their F-you money, or they have a nice tenured research position somewhere where they can do whatever they want.
1) Is this person knowledgeable and capable of performing the job I need them to do?
2) Is this person a cultural/personable fit for my team?
I think the point of this article is that when you're a "famous" developer with known traits, number 1 is dispensed with. The 15 minute chat is just to determine number 2.
I myself have gotten several jobs after just a recommendation from a friend and a quick drink with the manager.
In case the founder managed to hire you, I would say the founder is much smarter because he could hire the smartest which makes the founder the smartest in the room.
I thought my point was that this is highly dependent upon the organization that you're joining. There are plenty of startups and small businesses where I would be the smartest guy in the room. There are also plenty where I would not. My point is that I'm far more likely to be an easy hire at the former category than at the latter category. If one wishes to work in the latter category, choose appropriately.
Sure, and people get parts in movies because they know the producer. But, the article is about Zed shaw, and I think the comparison to famous actors applies.
I think it's a good point though, that maybe just because you aren't guaranteed to be famous, Zed Shaw probably has some highly effective habits that all developers can learn from. And you don't have to be famous for his advice to be helpful.
Every now and then, I start to feel lazy or like I'm wanting to avoid some necessary but tedious task. Then I think to myself "programming, motherfucker" and get that shit done.
Hi, this is completly offtopic but i couldn't find another way to contact you: In another thread you complain about the "Unknown or Expired Link" error you sometimes get in HN; i want to tell you that i created a Google Chrome extention that fixs this problem (and also adds some other functionality). You can check it out here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bldhjkmbdomhijjjnm...
Mmm... if you are not a Chrome user... well... you should become one! :)
I've hired a number of people directly from IRC without a formal interview process. It's a fantastic place to find smart people.
But it's important to point out that by virtue of sharing knowledge and posting pastebin urls of your code over a period of time, you are already interviewing, in a sense.
I disagree. People become Zed Shaw or Jim Carey based on merit but if everyone is equally meritorious then nobody is. Being good at something is subjective but being better than most people is measurable.
I’d also say that going back to school is a good way to update your life
and change your profession. I’m a firm believer in getting government
student loans and using them to go to school. They’re cheap, low
interest, and the US government is usually very nice about letting you
pay them back. I’m not so sure about other places around the world
though.
Notice how he says government loans. That I agree with. The private loan system is another beast altogether, one I am dealing with personally. Fortunately with our profession it is not hard to pay off loans.
Yes, government loans. I wouldn't have been able to go to school if it weren't for the government loans I could get. I was poor, and school was damn expensive no matter where I went. Without the government handing me dirt cheap loans and letting me pay them off practically indefinitely I'd be much worse off.
Now, banks and private loan companies can go to hell.
One thing I think should be added is that to participate in the community. It can be working on projects—your own or other open source projects, being active on IRC and mailing lists, or going to local user groups. I like to believe I got my current job by starting a Python user group. It helped me network and find where the jobs in the area where.
Before I was famous I'd have to scrounge around for shitty jobs. Now they just come to me.
Truth is, I still interview, I still do the stupid coding quizzes, I still send my resume, not because I have to, but because I want to be taken seriously and treated fairly with the understanding that I got hired because I know what I'm doing. Not because of my "fame".
After that, the jobs are pretty uninspiring these days and while the work environment may be pleasant, I rarely find any place that's interested in taking a big risk with my ideas.