That's how I feel about most projects I see on here. Toy languages are my personal pet peeve. So much talent being wasted on useless projects. I'm not really one to speak - none of my projects make a substantially positive impact on society, but they have their niches.
Do you really feel this way? It seems like a pretty strange world view to think that someone posting a thing they built on a site called hacker news implores you to judge their talent as being wasted, or their project as being useless.
Not only does it seem wrong to judge things people post here that way, anyone out there doing good work knows that the path to doing meaningful work begins with "useless projects."
The reality for the people who post on here is that most of us aren't doing anything truly substantial. I include myself in that group. You can believe your IOT AI messenger bot is going to revolutionize an industry, but the more likely situation is that it doesn't. That being said, such a project is not something I'd consider useless, but it's in the same range as the things I do consider useless. Take toy languages for example: could it revolutionize software development? Maybe. Will it? Almost certainly not. How many languages are commonly used in software engineering, and how much ability have you gained by doing it?
It's not for me to say where you apply your time and from what you get your enjoyment from, but I do believe there are objectively more important problems that could be solved. There are plenty of problems out there that need to be solved, and engineers here have the capability to solve them -- I think it's fair to say we're more well equipped than most to solve some of the largest problems humans face.
Here's a quick list of problems that are worth solving (in my opinion), vs. things that are figuratively useless:
- Rising global temperatures will disrupt agriculture and food supplies, how will we farm when desertification consumes the croplands?
- Thousands of people walk by homeless people on the street every day, if a small portion of those people stopped and engaged with the homeless, how many lives could be improved?
- Children in third world countries struggle to receive proper education, how can we reach them and improve their education?
- Governments around the world are failing to represent the needs and desires of their people, what can be done to help governments succeed?
- Growing levels of automation are replacing a staggering number of jobs, and if the growth continues, the great depression will be ahead of us, not behind us.
- Global financial markets are controlled by companies which you and I have no say in, yet they hold most of the worlds wealth.
In contrast:
- I want X programming language that does Y because Z doesn't do Y, in all likelihood, I will be the only one who ever uses this language, but it'll be a personal accomplishment.
- I don't want to leave the house or stop working for half an hour to make a meal, how can I improve/speed up the time it takes for me to get a meal from my favourite restaurant?
- Making X sucks, I want a robot to do it
- Bad AI for X
- IOT for X
- Framework for X
- Uber for X
How often do I see the latter vs. the former? Imagine if you saw FOSS projects attempting to solve problems on the first list as often as you saw projects attempting to solve problems on the second list. I truly believe the world would be a better place if that was the case.
I said earlier I'm guilty of this myself. I build consumer facing supporting software for entertainment media. I like what I do, but I don't think I'm contributing much to society, and that makes me uneasy.
> Take toy languages for example: could it revolutionize software development? Maybe. Will it? Almost certainly not. How many languages are commonly used in software engineering, and how much ability have you gained by doing it?
Maybe revolutionizing the world is not the point. Maybe the people who create toy languages gain a deeper understanding of some issue from pursuing the project. Maybe sharing it helps others discover that deeper issue or hidden complexities and elegant solutions. Or maybe they are just an inspiration and serve as a reminder that everything that exists is built by humans. Everything can be understood. There is no magic.
I don't think toy languages are the a waste of time, because the people who make them improve their own skills. With these skills they might contribute to say, LLVM and all our code gets 0.1% faster. But it's a deeper reason - I don't think it's an either-or between working toy languages and global warming. The choice that I personally face is between enhancing my skills and Netflix/twitch and I suspect that many other people do as well, ie, the choice between creation and consumption.
In my opinion, it's absolutely fine to create anything as a hobby if it makes you happy, whether that's woodworking, drone photography, or even reading or watching something that makes you think deeply. It's impossible for us to judge a priori which of these contributions will be useful to society in the long run. So if the people doing it are happy, why stop them?
I used to think like you, until I started a company to work on something because I felt like it was a "useful problem" and it crashed and burned quickly because I was not truly motivated: I was thinking with the head not the heart. Then I started working on a problem space I enjoy out of sheer technical fun (VR) and have been amazed to discover that it has massive potential for helping solve some of the more "useful" problems you mention.
The truth is, when you are working on a project you care about, nobody really knows where it will lead you. Big things start out small and usually with humble ambitions. Usually the things that end up impacting the world start out as being considered "useless" and "toys."
I say, work on interesting problems that you feel good about working on but most importantly enjoy working on. Feeling like the thing you are working on is an important problem to solve is a necessary but insufficient condition to ensuring you will get through the tough parts.
Richard Hamming once wrote that he asked his peers the question: "Are you working on the most important problems in your field? If not, why not?" And I think this is a valid question and not a leading one at all. But it also is fair to answer "No" to this question if you are able to clearly answer "why not?" to yourself in a way you can live with.
Your first list is full of things which would be difficult for a team of experts dedicated to tackling that problem to solve. Your second list is full of things which could feasibly be tackled by a single hobbyist.
Are you really that surprised that you see more of the latter than the former?
I started reading your comments and was initially supportive and thought you had a good thought but your examples are not equivalent and are quite biased towards your own values.
I think this is a case of different 'cultures' on HN clashing.
On the one hand I completely understand your point, and from the perspective of one 'culture' it feels like a waste of time and instead we should focus on 'getting things done' and 'making an impact' (in the shape of a successful business or whatnot).
But on the other hand, one of the main reasons I love HN is that there are still plenty of posts that are just about hacking/tinkering, without concern for 'usefulness' and 'purpose'. In fact, more effort put into something as silly as possible often makes the whole thing even more delightful.
Personally I try to focus on the latter as long as I can afford it. While I really appreciate the startup advice and 'useful' stuff, a few years ago I developed a burnout that, in hindsight, was caused in part by the fact that I stopped being able to just enjoy things for their own sake.
I noticed this same thing happen to friends of mine (without the burnout, usually): in our twenties we often wanted to do cool stuff together because it was cool, even though we really needed money! But then, in our late twenties, it all became about whether we could make money from an idea or whether the idea was 'useful' by some other metric, despite the fact that we actually had enough money finally to not be in survival mode anymore.
For me one of the best improvements to my life (and stress levels) has been to try and bring more of that 'silliness' in my life. And judging by the people I admire, that seems like a good approach to life in general. And already now I notice how my 'silly' explorations actually end up providing tons of benefit for my 'career'.
> But on the other hand, one of the main reasons I love HN is that there are still plenty of posts that are just about hacking/tinkering, without concern for 'usefulness' and 'purpose'. In fact, more effort put into something as silly as possible often makes the whole thing even more delightful.
Indeed, this is what makes most of us engineers. But if I separate myself from it and look at it from the outside, we "waste" a ton of time doing things that... well... don't matter. The exceptional few make advances most of us dream of, and they contribute a lot to the advancements of engineering. Many of us just tinker for the sake of it. I respect people want to do what makes them happy, but I find the lack of interest in solving problems bigger than what can fit inside a hard drive a bit... depressing. It feels like resignation.
> On the one hand I completely understand your point, and from the perspective of one 'culture' it feels like a waste of time and instead we should focus on 'getting things done' and 'making an impact' (in the shape of a successful business or whatnot).
I don't think it needs to be a business, just something that serves as a testament to a legacy that says "I left the planet in better shape than I found it."
The world could benefit a lot from more stoicism, and I think we'll need it in the future that's to come.
I can understand your point of view, but I think there are two assumptions there that many would not agree with.
The first assumption is that it is better to advance engineering, or somehow 'leave a mark' (fame?), or 'make the world a better place', than to simply live a happy life, all else being equal. While personally I do enjoy it to see others enjoying or being grateful for the fruits of my labor, I don't actually consider this a good incentive. I'm a huge fan of the 'wu-wei' concept in taoism though.
And while I'm still actively figuring out how to apply all this to my life, I generally find that some (and possibly most) of the most intensely happy moments in my life were rather... insular and independent of (rational) 'context'.
The second assumption is that the kinds of things we engineers do are a net benefit to the world. I've begun to doubt that, despite my love for all things engineering. If I were to do anything that has a large enough impact to 'matter', there's always a chance that this might end up having unintended consequences that also matter. I can think of many pursuits that seem more unambiguously 'good'.
All that said, it's possible that you are either 'wired' to want to make the world a better place, or that your life took a path where this is who you've becoming. By my own logic, I can't really disagree with you wanting to pursue that! Just offering a different point of view.
