[systemvoltage]

I’m just generally fed up of antiwork culture here. We are teaching youngsters to never persevere and push themselves to the limit, ensuring they’ll never realize their full potential and spiraling downwards in a low quality life of lethargy and resentment towards those who succeed.

I thought this is “Hacker News”. The tone here has slid significantly in last 5 years. Folks like Martin apologizing indirectly.

[WarChortle]

> We are teaching youngsters to never persevere and push themselves to the limit, ensuring they’ll never realize their full potential and spiraling downwards in a low quality life of lethargy and resentment towards those who succeed.

I think you vastly misunderstand the entire point of antiwork. Its not saying go sit on a couch all day. Its to recognize you have a life outside of work and its okay if work isn't your driving factor in life.

You can learn to persevere and push yourself many many ways. Work is not the only way. Not excelling at your job does not mean you are lethargic and resentful.

Success is measured many different ways, by many different people. You seem to measure it by how hard you work, that's great. Doesn't mean everyone has too.

[systemvoltage]

No, it’s just a toxic destructive culture that’s destroying lives. I’m not convinced, I tried to see the best in what you’re saying.

[WarChortle]

How? If I do what is asked of me and no more, then go spend my free time with my family, or go hiking, or do a million other fun, fulling things I could enjoy. How is that destructive?

[systemvoltage]

I meant what you’re saying is normal and great; but that’s not the antiwork culture and does not describe it accurately. I have an extremely cynical view of it and I’m convinced that’s people don’t have the best intentions. Not a single comment on HN in last few years encourage hard work and mentally exhausting yourself. Your brain is far more capable than the current zeitgeist tells you. We are raising a generation that will revel in lethargy and smoking weed all day.

[WarChortle]

> I meant what you’re saying is normal and great;

> Not a single comment on HN in last few years encourage hard work and mentally exhausting yourself.

I am astounded that not pushing yourself to mental exhaustion is what you consider anti-work. If I'm not willing to abuse my own body for the good of a company I'm destined to be lethargic and smoke weed all day? What the hell kind of scale is that?

Pushing yourself to mental exhaustion, is stupid and pointless. It's been thoroughly studied, by the time you've hit mental exhaustion you are not doing anywhere near your best work. Hell I've seen it myself. I noticed my code quality and code output fell drastically the more exhausted I became. I can not stress enough how much better you are not doing that.

Looking through your own post history I see clear signs of trying to work while exhuasted.

> it takes me forever to make anything with code. Like hours to do something simple.

This was literally me until I learned to not push myself so hard. I had the exact same problem and it turns out for me at least trying to learn programming while exhausted did me no favors. I worked all day came home and tried to learn and struggled the exact same way you are. It wasn't until I was able to learn more during the day while not exhausted that it really started to click with me.

You more then anyone need to really reconsider what I posted earlier. Please for you own health.

[lanstin]

I have been programming for decades, and I have never had a time of outstanding productivity without times of times of much less activity. Creative activity, for many people, is non-linear and not a recipe based activity. Sure, writing the fourth app in a framework, you can crank it out, but coming up with a great framework for the type of applications rhat your business and technical environment requires something else, a metaphorical walk around the park, while the various possible pieces od solitions kind of simulate themselves in your muttering only half conscious imagination. The sort of solutions that achieve the agile manifesto imperative to maximize work not done. You find interfaces that simplify the problem space so much that so much possible code becomes unneeded.

I find too many people mistaking velocity for progress to be an almost insolvable organization problem. if you want to end up with mega lines of code that are all part of a useless of incomprehensible solution that is certainly a job, but might fail as a life's contribution.

I am no longer an eager youth, but when i was, the thing that hooked me to push on past limits, was my excitement and joy about solving real problems, at scale, with software, with a simple yet powerful idea. It was not any history of frequent commits or risong to rhe 95th %ile or the barren useless of a streak. It was having an idea born out of real needs and made simple enough to need almost no comlexity to implement. Having that novel simplicity go into production and be used was motivation for a lifetime of work.

I certainly have periods of stillness and more restful learning than prodigious output, but they are, for me at least, completely necessary. they may be fairly lethargic as well.