Wump

Maybe they'll finally remove "iPod Touch (7th generation)" as the default selected simulator in XCode :)

Leap | https://leap.so | SF Bay Area | Full-time | Founding Engineer

Leap is a social learning platform for a traditionally underserved market — people 55+. We're building a platform for small group, synchronous events where older adults come to learn, grow, and connect.

Joining as a Founding Engineer is a chance to have a ton of ownership, agency, and impact on an important mission — building more meaningful connections.

More here: https://www.notion.so/foundingteamleap/Founding-Engineer-1a2...

"Now I'm wondering if my idea is bad or if my distribution is awful."

This is a false dichotomy, I think. Trying to grow is an essential part of how you evolve the idea and discover what the "growable idea" really is. This is one of the core things I took away from this PG classic: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

Leap (https://leap.so) | Full Time | SF Bay Area ONSITE | Founding Team

Leap is the social learning community for people 55+. We are building a platform to power classes and conversations in small groups, over audio and video.

Our north star is helping foster more meaningful connections among a community that is traditionally underserved by tech.

Founders are myself (formerly co-founder/CTO of Screenhero) and Caroline Ingeborn (formerly CEO of Toca Boca, making awesome iPhone games for kids).

Come join the founding team! We're looking for:

* Founding Engineer: https://www.notion.so/foundingteamleap/Founding-Engineer-1a2...

* Founding Designer: https://www.notion.so/foundingteamleap/Founding-Designer-c0e...

Email me directly at vishal [at] leap.so

Leap (https://leap.so) | Full Time | Remote | Founding Team

Leap is the social learning community for people 55+. We are building a platform to power classes and conversations in small groups, over audio and video.

Founders are myself (formerly co-founder/CTO of Screenhero) and Caroline Ingeborn (formerly CEO of Toca Boca, making awesome iPhone games for kids).

Come join the founding team! We're looking for:

* Founding Engineer: https://www.notion.so/foundingteamleap/Founding-Engineer-1a2...

* Founding Designer: https://www.notion.so/foundingteamleap/Founding-Designer-c0e...

* Founding Growth Lead: https://www.notion.so/foundingteamleap/Founding-Growth-Lead-...

Email me directly at vishal [at] leap.so

Reminds me of the equation:

Pain x Resistance = Suffering

If you accept pain fully (Resistance = 0), then you won’t suffer. The more you resist, the more you suffer. And if Resistance is high, then even a little bit of Pain can cause a lot of suffering.

Absolutely agree. I've been reading a lot about this recently, recommend:

Lost Connections by Johann Hari The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg Better Together by Robert Putnam

For anyone who's interested, I put together a repos to bootstrap a react with typescript and tailwind project.

It's intentionally fairly barebones, but I've found it useful to get a wide variety of projects started quickly: https://github.com/figelwump/react-typescript-tailwind-boots...

I've come to love Tailwind, after a few failed attempts at using it. Recommend trying it!

Reading PG's essays and Hackers and Painters back in 2005 got me to believe that entrepreneurship could be something for me, too.

It changed the course of my life, both personally and professionally.

I program because I like to, and because I can.

Well said! There's a joy to be found in doing things for the sake of it.

spent his time on backups instead of solving millennium problems

The fundamental issue with this comment is that it assumes that solving millennium problems is obviously a high impact thing to do. It ignores the complexity and unpredictability of the world.

The TarSnap developer's story is a great example of this -- how "working on backups" led to impactful work that he probably didn't predict when he started it.

I often see people fall into the trap of moralizing about what "good" work is. Ironically, that prevents them from ultimately having the most impact that they could have.

A lot of times writing, to me, feels like sitting alone and talking to myself. I write stuff, I publish them, and nothing really happens. The lack of feedback – good or bad – makes me doubt the work I do.

This is one place where having a co-founder/collaborator/co-worker is valuable: built-in feedback mechanism.

Another way of framing "the price is too high" is "the value is too low -- here are the things XYZ that I would love for you to add to justify that price for me."

It seems the second flavor of feedback is more useful to the developers.

There seems to be a lot of griping about the $100/year price here. The folks behind Muse have made what seems to be a solid product and want to charge for it to build a sustainable business. I don't understand what the issue is.

On the one hand, people complain about having to pay for things (especially subscriptions). On the other, they complain about startups that try to grow fast, subsidize the cost of the product with venture money, and get acquired and shut down. I don't have a problem with either approach; I think they both have their place.

But how can software developers trying to build great products (and businesses) escape this lose-lose scenario?

You may not feel that this specific product is worth $100/year to you. That's fine; not everything is for everyone. But how do we, as a tech community, better support people and teams trying to create value in a sustainable way?

Over time I’ve realized that action precedes motivation

Interesting insight. Usually we think of it the other way around.

Chris Rock had a great sketch about minimum wage:

'I used to work at McDonald's making minimum wage. You know what that means when someone pays you minimum wage? You know what your boss was trying to say? It's like, "Hey if I could pay you less, I would, but it's against the law."'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_Fr1djc67U

This reminds me of something Alex Honnold said in the fantastic documentary Free Solo:

“She [his girlfriend] sees things in a different way. For Sanni, the point of life is happiness. To be with people that make you feel fulfilled and have a good time.

For me it’s all about performance. The thing is anybody can be happy and cozy. Nothing good happens in the world by being happy and cozy. Nobody achieves anything great because they’re happy and cozy.”

I found his perspective so fascinating and revealing about people who are among the best in the world at something.

The thesis is more that we don't actually know how to "do good" because the world is complex (nth order effects, unintended consequences, etc). So the intention to do good isn't enough. (Of course, that doesn't mean we should purposefully have bad intentions.)

Instead, let's look at impact as an indirect outcome of a ton of experimentation, evolutionary pressure and a complex system. Then the way to have impact is to experiment. So focus on doing that instead of getting stuck in figuring out how to "do good".

If you’re looking for someone to talk to about how you’ve been feeling and how better to cope, I highly recommend texting crisistextline.org

(I’m a volunteer counselor there.) The conversation is purely over text, with someone you listens non-judgementally and can offer coping strategies.

The people you choose to work with is a first-order decision. The ideas, money, technology, or impact of your work are deriviatives of that: https://vishalkapur.com/people-first-decision-making/

I think DDG is decent and getting better. The tough thing though is that for search the bar is high. Alternatives need to be as good as google, not 80 or 90 or 98% as good.

Most users, once they experience just a few instances of worse results will just switch back to google.

I did this during jury duty, it’s the only way I was able to take in all the information.

Flow is key. At the same time, I agree on not having to (or trying to) memorize everything.

I've been exploring building a tool which is sort of a "universal search bar" for programming questions: finding answers via google, searching local repos, finding code snippets you've saved, etc. Another way to think of it is like an extension of your memory.

The idea is to make the information super fast to retrieve so you break don't break flow while you're programming.

For anyone who's curious, I'm collecting interest here: https://forms.gle/8q9nPUc22t6WDFsG7

Ah ok, yeah I thought the parent post was referring to autoplay the next episode.

FWIW, you can turn off auto play in the settings.

I would love to read a book or longer-form content written by this author. His writing is just really funny, while also being sort of philosophical and semi-informative. Love it.

100% agree with this take. I mentioned it in another comment, but I've actually been working on a project which is essentially a better search engine for programming questions that's integrated in your IDE.

When possible, you try to pull out code snippets from SO/github/reference sites/etc that answer the query with high confidence. (Essentially like "instant answers" in google, but making it better by focusing on programming questions.)

The challenge is the level of noise and ambiguity that you get back in search results, and actually sorting through that to surface the right answers.

I gave it a try; love how fast and simple it is! You probably already know this, but the set of snippets are somewhat limited at the moment (though pretty good for a first launch). Also, it would probably be helpful to have more descriptions/metadata around each snippet, so that you can use some NLP goodness to make search better.

I've been working on a related idea, which is sort of a search engine for programming questions integrated into your IDE (starting with JS in VSCode). The idea is to give you fast, relevant answers (code snippets when possible), and reduce context switching to the browser to keep you in flow.

Similar in spirit though; would love to chat more! (my contact info in profile; I didn't see a way to contact you)

I am sorry that you went through this. I was worried about something like this happening too, and wasn't sure how I would handle it. It sounds like you're handling it the best you can.

If you'd like to talk more privately, please reach out (my email is in profile).

I volunteered for home hospice, and met with a 94-year old man for a year. As he would say, "my body is shot, but my mind is sharp" -- and was it ever.

What an amazing story he has -- decorated WW2 veteran (he had so many stories to tell about the war), worked in construction for 40+ years, now has an extended family (children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren) that is 100+ strong.

At some point, hospice said that he was doing better so they were cancelling their support. I still wanting to see him so I kept going. He wasn't expected that though, and the next week when I showed up he was so appreciative he was in tears.

You never know how your presence can affect someone.