> The whole world deserves to experience what it feels like to be in your present moment.
I'm glad the author found something that helped him through depression. Unfortunately this is not a silver bullet. It won't work for everyone, or even every time depression hits.
There are many different activities you can try to help battle depression, and they are definitely helpful, and creating things is one of them. But they'll all fail without a key ingredient: realizing that you have to just do whatever you have to do, simply because it's the right thing to do, regardless of your emotions, or how intense they are, or lack of them.
If you live by that philosophy, you'll find yourself doing all the right things, and for all the right reasons, and you may not ever get out of depression, but it won't be crippling anymore.
A major difficulty with carrying this out as a person in tech though is that we're inherently a little more existential and philosophical than others because of the nature of programming being very intertwined with philosophy, and we get paid more generally which means we usually have more time to think too. Combine these with modern philosophy, and you usually have programmers who see no real value in life other than to enjoy it and have a good time (which explains why we love alcohol and sugary drinks like Red Bull so much), and when that good feeling runs out, life feels pointless and empty for us, because we can't find any motivation.
That also explains why there's a steady stream of philosophical and motivational posts on HN's front page. Because usually that good feeling that programming gives you doesn't last forever, so we try to look for explanations, or we try to look for other motivators. It also explains why we keep coming back to exciting topics on here, like bitcoin and the newest programming languages or tutorials on Haskell monads (which nobody can ever understand even though we know we should, so the closer we think we get, the more excited we are).
I don't have numbers on how many programmers are turning to religion, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was growing too, because we're looking for some motivation to keep us moving forward after the excitement runs out (and it always does, and never lasts very long).
I totally relate to the above, the purpose, the drive, it's there until you finish the project or your stuck doing the last 20% which ends up being half the work. You stop and you think why am I doing this, am I just building tools to build them. Start to feel like your grasping for nothing. Then you burn out, go do something crazy for 1-2 weeks come back and like yeah lets start a new project! haha
> realizing that you have to just do whatever you have to do, simply because it's the right thing to do, regardless of your emotions, or how intense they are, or lack of them.
Right, but how do you figure out what the "right thing to do" is? Especially if you ignore emotional response as a guide?
Well that's the point of philosophy, isn't it? To figure out what we're supposed to do. For some people, just living life going through the motions is enough, and they never stop and ask this question. Other people keep bouncing from philosophy to philosophy, or religion to religion, looking for something that fits. Some of those people find something that works, and stick with it. And of course others just kill themselves because they never can figure out an answer that satisfies them, so life seems infinitely meaningless and they see no reason to keep going.
I'm glad the author found something that helped him through depression. Unfortunately this is not a silver bullet. It won't work for everyone, or even every time depression hits.
There are many different activities you can try to help battle depression, and they are definitely helpful, and creating things is one of them. But they'll all fail without a key ingredient: realizing that you have to just do whatever you have to do, simply because it's the right thing to do, regardless of your emotions, or how intense they are, or lack of them.
If you live by that philosophy, you'll find yourself doing all the right things, and for all the right reasons, and you may not ever get out of depression, but it won't be crippling anymore.
A major difficulty with carrying this out as a person in tech though is that we're inherently a little more existential and philosophical than others because of the nature of programming being very intertwined with philosophy, and we get paid more generally which means we usually have more time to think too. Combine these with modern philosophy, and you usually have programmers who see no real value in life other than to enjoy it and have a good time (which explains why we love alcohol and sugary drinks like Red Bull so much), and when that good feeling runs out, life feels pointless and empty for us, because we can't find any motivation.
That also explains why there's a steady stream of philosophical and motivational posts on HN's front page. Because usually that good feeling that programming gives you doesn't last forever, so we try to look for explanations, or we try to look for other motivators. It also explains why we keep coming back to exciting topics on here, like bitcoin and the newest programming languages or tutorials on Haskell monads (which nobody can ever understand even though we know we should, so the closer we think we get, the more excited we are).
I don't have numbers on how many programmers are turning to religion, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was growing too, because we're looking for some motivation to keep us moving forward after the excitement runs out (and it always does, and never lasts very long).