I actually thought this was going to make the point that just because you are poor, doesn't mean that you have the skills to fix things on your own. It's great that the author is able to work on their own cars (but doesn't have the money). I think probably more common is that you don't have the money AND you don't have the skills.
And I don't think that's the fault of the individual. The world is more complicated than ever. Even cars that may have been possible to work on yourself 20 years ago, it's becoming less easy to do this.
What a bizarre article… performance ended up being worse, how can that be considered a resounding success? Doesn’t seem like it’s a slam dunk case for using neon
easy to slam others but I don't see what's bizarre about the article. It highlights a successful customer story where Neon (https://neon.tech) played a significant role in improving their db management with its db branching feature. Yes, caching and pooling helped, but Neon made their testing and development much faster and efficient and it's not easy to write such detailed articles. why not any constructive feedback which can help them?
what was bizarre in this article. I found it's a simple customer success story about Neon but I see the improvement came from caching and connection pooling but Neon looks promising because of its database branching feature, which made testing and development faster looks like
Neon(https://github.com/neondatabase/neon) seems to have helped them with testing and development. Being able to iterate and validate changes is a great benefit.
Takes us back a ways away, huh? Different world, but don't get too comfy in this one, things have a cyclic tendency IME. ;-)
I'll tell you this: I can see why they went there, Maxwell and Rhine and so many others. All of my research into such topics¹ shows that the mind-body connection and its manifestations (consciousness, "soul", etc) have always been such "hard problems" that they've always been met with supra- or para-normal solutions — whether in myths, in philosophies ancient and recent, in the generally benevolent groups (spiritual, friendly, etc). And it's still very much an open question, thus lending itself to beliefs.
I think there are also metaphors, images that were so good and are now so old that they became their own thing, and lost almost all connection to the things they described. "Magic" is a good example of that — the power of the word, and behind that knowledge. Magic as a concept is "old speak" (pre-recorded history) for power, very human and very real power.
I find it actually fascinating that we hold such beliefs about possible superpowers, I can't help but think this ability to image (imagine) more is what actually drives civilization at the lowest level.
[1]: I mean self-development/help/growth, philosophy in the pre-20th century common meaning of a "practice", "recipes for good living", not the "science" or study thereof we made it out later and to this day.
No, I selected that title as one of the most common and popular self-improvement resources available for software professionals. The implication is that reading it would do more to improve your thinking than a week-long meditation retreat.
I just got this on my kindle since it seems to have pretty good reviews. Your comment doesn't really outright say that the book helped you become more focused and disciplined - would you say that it did or didn't?
I'm intentionally taking 4 days to reply to your comment because I didn't feel like I allowed enough time to say. In fact, I still don't think I've waited long enough, but I do at least feel good to say that it is working.
There's a few things going on, and they're specific to me.
Primarily, I'm a judgmental person. And mostly to myself. I judge myself really hard for not doing enough or going fast enough. This book is teaching me to stop doing that, even though it may sound "heroic" to always push myself. I think I get that impression from elite athletes, and I think "well I should be doing that to myself so I can be the best at whatever I'm doing." At some point along the way, I forgot that most of what I learned wasn't the result of that type of thinking. I learned everything from speaking to programming simply by doing, and not by judging myself in the process.
I would also say I'm impatient, but I think that's the same thing as saying I'm judgmental.
This book is like written Adderall in that it causes the same calming effect. It teaches you that it's okay to slow down and just do, and not worry about anything else in the present moment. I know that sounds kind of cheesy and "Zen" like, but I definitely have (self diagnosed) ADHD and I operate on two modes: one where I'm being productive and doing, and one where I'm learning. It's really hard to context switch between the two. So it helps to know that when I'm learning, or doing certain types of activities that I'm not used to doing, it's okay to go slower and not stress out about my perceived lack of progress. The net result: my work IMO actually ends up being better, and interestingly I learn faster because I'm not trying to do that so much.
Hope this helps. Your experience may be different.
I wonder if we really are the first generation to have this type of problem, though. It seems reasonable to me that people would be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of books published over the decades preceding the widespread adoption of the internet. There's just tons of material out there. Even in the academic world, the amount of papers published every year - even before the internet - would probably overwhelm anyone if they tried to keep on top of it.
I'd love to see some pre-internet articles complaining about the pace of publishing and strategies for coping with the onslaught of information at that time. It seems reasonable that it would exist, and I'm sure we'd all find it rather quaint :)
And I don't think that's the fault of the individual. The world is more complicated than ever. Even cars that may have been possible to work on yourself 20 years ago, it's becoming less easy to do this.