[tjradcliffe]

Oh yeah. "The difference between practice and failure is simply a matter of attitude." Nothing is more true.

I recently pulled out some code from over 20 years ago, an experiment in mixing fuzzy logic and Conway's Life that... didn't exactly work out. But it had some intriguing results. Was it a "failure"? Not in the least: it produced results that were intriguing enough for me to remember two decades later, even though it never "came to anything" in the meantime.

That said, I do like the word "failure", and I'm happy to say, "My hard drive is full of failures!" It just sounds better than "practice" and it challenges anyone I say it to. What can they say in reply?

The world is full of little people desperately attempting to tear you down. When you say, "My hard drive is full of failures" they have nothing to come back with. They know you've actually done something, which is more than they have. So go forth and embrace your failures. They prove you're alive, and doing something interesting with your life.

My attitude is in part informed by this quote: "One word characterized the most strenuous of the efforts for the advancement of science that I have made perseveringly during fifty-five years; that word is FAILURE" -- Sir William Thomson. If Lord Kelvin can fail, so can I, damnit!

[akkartik]

One of my favorite quotes: "Success is the process of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." I like it because it highlights that failure is a point event, while success is a process, a trajectory. So comparing the two is fallacious. It is possible for both to coexist.