throwaway000021

>> "How to Live a Successful Life"

This advice need not come from a rich person.

The answer is to be surrounded with deep and valuable human relationships.

I'm not successful, but my strategy for getting there is specific....

-- never put yourself in the position to go bankrupt

-- stay in the game - keep your overheads down to the minimum practical for you

-- learn to program so you can implement your own ideas without need for a cofounder or need to pay for anything more than hosting and a domain

-- just keep banging out your ideas into products until one catches on.

-- try to bootstrap and if possible avoid raising capital - it's too distracting and costly and dilutes your time massively

-- do your very best to avoid employing anyone until you really can't avoid it

-- don't get a cofounder if you can possibly avoid it - it can lead to arguments and business failure... if you really need help, bootstrap till you can employ someone

-- repeat until success or giving up, not because you're forced to stop

To learn to listen to other people, instead of just waiting to talk - that's an ongoing problem.

To understand what "controlling behaviour" means.

To empathise, and see oneself from the eyes of others.

This is a good intro to pen testing: https://www.sgsgroup.com.hk/en/news/2014/02/general-requirem...

Nevertheless, if you find the right one who is a fit to you, they can be an enormous help.

My primary advice would be that therapists/counsellors are NOT all the same. You need to find one who works for you, and it is a very individual thing. Actively plan to try 4 of them, and do 2 paid sessions with each before deciding to continue with one.

Also be aware that IMO some counsellors/therapists are actually bad at their job.... if you get the feeling that something really does not make sense to you, then stop going to them and find someone else.

I've tried many and found a few really good ones and definitely some really bad ones.

It's also true that some were good for a long while but then at some point things changed and they no longer were effective for me, so things can change over time.

>>> Several thousand armed people acting in concert without detection?

You haven't heard of tourists?

No invasion would be needed.

All thats needed is to get several thousand armed people to take control of Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne parliament and hold all the politicians under lock and key. And whilst Australia is too stunned to work out what has just happened, land ships and troops in Sydney then Melbourne.

There you have it - control of Australia.

After a lifetime of being anti nuke, I do now believe Australia has to "nuke up".

I also believe now that we need at least 2 very large U.S. bases on our soil, and if the U.S. aren't interested then maybe the U.K. or the Europeans.

Expansionist countries could easily see Australia right now as a virtually undefended, resource rich sweet piece of fruit to be plucked, and given that Australia's traditional allies seem to be internally engaged, there's plenty of room for such expansionists to start laying the foundations that will allow them to exert such control in the future.

Australia couldn't be more eager to spend tens of billions on this white elephant.

But of course anything the U.S. says is good for Australia just has to be, right?

We'd have been better off spending billions buying anti ship missiles.

I'm no longer interested in trying argue that experience results in higher productivity - if you have to say that then you're already in a situation where they believe young is better.

That's the point, and that's why I'm actively working to make money in other ways and not be a programmer because I'm not employable. Well perhaps employable now, but at 60?

I didn't say anything about wanting to work for a company that does good or valuable things.

I just don't believe in the mission.

I wouldn't work in certain industries like gambling or tobacco but apart from that I really need the work to be interesting (this is critical), but I just don't feel inspired by the founders goal/mission of "changing the world through being the X of Y".

I want to be, and deserve to be, very well paid. Do not mistake my lack of belief in the company mission for a lack of interest in capitalism or personal financial gain.

The real problem is that as an "older" programmer (50) I am probably the best I have been, but I no longer believe in the missions of pretty much any company, I'm not interested in the silly ways the companies try to build their culture with toys and trinkets and blankets and rituals and sparkles and phony constructs designed to create workplace as a funpark. I am diplomatic, so I would of course keep all this a secret - I know how to be a good employee.

I'm very happy to do a great job, and easy to get along with and productive and a team player, but I'd be happy to program in a grey box on a plain chair and table.

The employment deal for me is this:

I program, do a great and professional job

You give me money and/or equity

I do appropriate hours and give me this time I need to leave early for example to pick up the kids

I get you a great result

I set in a chair and table at an office or ideally I work from home (travel is dead time)

But that's not the deal on offer.

For me, the primary satisfaction comes from working hard and getting a result that advances the goals of the business.

And BTW I am very much on the cutting edge technically, but I probably wouldn't get through any recruiting process for god know what reason why.

I agree.... the API should hopefully be consistent, and this is more important still for APIs consumed by third parties, but for your internal projects - just get the damn thing to work.

Perfect REST API's are a total waste of time when building stuff for internal consumption.

My latest project doesn't use REST.

It just talks directly to AWS Lambda functions.

What a relief.... so quick to get things done, no pointless definition and specification and no longer any need to built yet another layer of abstraction into my application.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for REST and HTTP APIs but I'm just glad that for this project I have been able to avoid all that entirely. HUGE productivity boost.

My theory on software development is that any technology that can be replaced by something more simple will eventually disappear in favor of that alternative. REST falls into that category. The future looks more like GraphQL.