Joke aside, it was not shoeing horses but also working on the carts, etc. Probably bikes too. So at least he reused some mechanical skills, and probably tools, he already had. Only the engine was really new.

And many people living in small villages back then had basic knowledge in many disciplines, including electricity. When you had a farm for instance, you needed to be able to repair yourself anything.

It's mostly a personal story. You can see it as a kind of tribute to a great-great-grandfather I never met, partly because I'd never heard a story like it before. It's banal but still a big adventure in the family. I find it fascinating that he grew up in a completely different world from mine and still felt some of the same doubts and anxieties I do today. And I'm really proud of him, because his "pivot" let my family stay in the village instead of maybe leaving to work in factories in the city. My father loved his job, and in a way that's thanks to him.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49908394

Points: 340

# Comments: 643

I was vp of engineering at a Series A startup when my kid was born. It was a challenging job, but one that felt increasingly devoid of any meaning for me (maybe also because I'd been there for 5 years). I was compensating by working on side-projects at night and on weekends. I even wrote a novel that took me 4 years to finish.

Then my son was born, and nights and weekends disappeared! Suddenly, all my non-father activity was dedicated to a job that was boring me more and more. So what did i do? I started a company, so I could decide what to work on during the day!. Basically, I took a side project and put it at the center of my working life. Now my days feel rewarding enough that when I disconnect, I can completely devote myself to my son and my wife and ignore everything else.

Of course, I don’t have side projects anymore. I barely even have hobbies: I completely stopped watching movies, which used to be the love of my life. I read books before bed and on the subway, and work out occasionally to stay sane. My life = my startup, my son, my wife. That’s pretty much it.

But I feel much more balanced than before, when I was always chasing something.

What I love:

- the speed, of course

- the high consistency between features, tabs, and panes, while Cursor looks like a crumbly assemblage of plugins. At first I was worried about the lack of plugins, but Zed made me realize you don't need many

- the visual elegance: the padding, the proportions... It reminds me of the best of JetBrains (though I haven't used their products in years). It feels closer to the IDEs I used in the past (for Java or C#), in the sense that it seems to encompass everything you need, without the heaviness.

- the numerous keyboard shortcuts, often displayed visibly, which makes them easier to remember

- the transparency of their roadmap and their velocity: now that we finally have the vertical git diff as promised, my doubts are gone!

Truly one of my favorite pieces of dev software in 15 years.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46697953

Points: 8

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41216399

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39053691

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36794115

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Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32898267

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Also, as a software engineer, I wasn't afraid of the development part of the game, but I was very skeptical of my capacities to draw characters or levels. Pico-8 helped me to achieve something without feeling ashamed. Because I knew that I was, by nature, limited in my sprites, it helped me releasing my inhibitions and drawing as if I was a 5 years-old boy proud of his drawings. Same thing for the music and sounds.

Another cool thing is that even when writing code, I didn't feel like I was doing the same thing as during the day. Just writing code, in a closed and stable environment, with a very modest API, and finally the ability to release and convert your game into a JS file in just one command is infinitely satisfying. After a day spent struggling with CloudFormation on AWS, it was a blessing!