parwam

Programming used to put me into FLOW state often. That’s a big part of why I fell in love with it. Late night missions building games, apps, whatever, it felt great. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has a great quote on this: “The best moments in our lives… occur when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult or worthwhile.” AI has kind of nuked the personal challenge part of that. I don’t fall into those same FLOW states nearly as often anymore. It’s a strange position to be in because I’m undeniably more productive, but some of the joy is gone. I still love building software, but now the enjoyment comes more from seeing products come to life and have real-world impact than from the actual process of writing the code. I’ll miss the deep flow states that came from fighting code for hours into the night, but I feel like I do need to find new areas that still offer that same sense of challenge.

It is not about practice. Or improvement. It is not about spirituality. Or self-development. It is about Freedom. From all of one's enslavements.

@ShalinShodhan Feels good to hear that. Yes, the goal is to go from consumption to creation.

@_parwam_ The kids scored really well. But they usually do :) What it helped with is engagement. As they grow older and are exposed to cooler things, the textbook is less and less of a draw for them.

My kids (6th grade) are scanning chapters from their ICSE textbooks into Notebook LM and making crazy learning content for themselves - mind maps, infographics, quizes (they always ask for ultra-hard version) The exams are in a week, so we'll know soon if this helped 😅

@Frxstify Hey, I'd love to be added :)

I am creating a brand new group chat for: - Content Creators - Graphic Designers - Video Editors If you want to join a community to meet new people, learn from others, share your work, and more this is for you! Reply to be added!

@markoilico I haven't received mine yet, Marko :/

Alright, if you still want hand-picked hero sections, footers, and other website sections for free - check the comments. 3,500+ people already got it. Still sending it out to everyone who commented on the previous post tho.

@markoilico Thank you in advance, Marko :) Please, send it.

If you're now designing or redesigning a website, this will help you a lot. I recently curated the best hero sections, footers, social proof and other website parts because I got tired of having 15+ tabs open (even with Mobbin). Giving it away 100% free. Comment on this post, and I'll send a Figma link to your inbox!

@G_S_Bhogal "By showing people who I really am, I get to see who they really are." - Gurwinder

Many despise my name because it’s alien to the Western tongue. I’m often advised to go by an Anglo pseudonym. But I use my real name precisely because it upsets the superficial, whom I can then filter out. By showing people who I really am, I get to see who they really are.

Every man who reads too many books before he has lived goes mad in a specific way. first he is gentle because books are gentle. then he is arrogant because books make him feel superior to the unlettered. then he is desperate because he knows everything and can do nothing. then he is finally dangerous because he takes his first real beating from life and realizes all his knowledge did not protect him and now he must rebuild everything from the ground

@danmall Happy 42, Dan! The universe has spoken - you are the answer :)

I turn 42 today. The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. I think that’s simply spending time in beautiful places with the people I enjoy. I hope you also get to spend time today in beautiful places with the people you enjoy.

To play For the audience is foolish. There is not a person on earth Who is worth impressing.

This 1000000%. I suspect this is why the Timothée Chalamet SAG award speech was so well received.

The main problem with modern-day universities are the lies. We have been lying so much that we cannot think clearly anymore. Here are a few lies. - « Professor X is an an expert in ZYX » where ZYX is some socially relevant topic. For example, professor X is an expert in « disinformation » or « entrepreneurship » or « software engineering ». We have so abused the term « expert » that we no longer even know what it means. An expert is someone who has a lot of experience at solving a specific kind of problems. Very few professors become at expert at anything but: teaching, writing papers, sitting on committees. You simply cannot be an expert at entrepreneurship if you have never been an entrepreneur. At best, you can a scholar of entrepreneurship, in the sense that you know a lot about what has been written on the topic of entrepreneurship... but that's not the same. - « If you stand in front of a class for 3 hours a week, talking to the class about topic X, you are transmitting your knowledge about topic X. » Learning is an action. It is something you do as you act. You learn to speak English by speaking English. You learn to code in Java by coding in Java. Want to become a philosopher? Then find someone who is eager to discuss deep issues and talk with them. Stop attending lectures, stop reading alone. You are not going to understand Socrates by reading Plato. You need to « work through the material ». Join a book club. Listening passively gives you the illusion of knowledge, but, when tested, you are found out. You can help students learn by giving them tasks, by providing examples that they can follow... but you cannot teach merely by talking to someone. I have spent hours, for years, « talking to » some graduate students, only to find out that they had understood none of what I said. The ones who did « get it » worked « with me » on projects. - « Students are blank slates that you can build up by having them take courses. » So you take John, you have John pass 20 courses in computer science or philosophy, and John *is* then an expert in computer science or philosophy. If someone tells you that they have a degree in X, it tells you almost nothing about what they can do. My two sons learned to program software on their own, without my help, years before they ever had programming courses. They are not great basketball players nor musicians, but they can code circles around most people... Even if Jack had three degrees in computer science, my sons would probably, on average, beat Jack at a programming competition. Life is not fair, people are not blank slate. - « Universities are independently-minded institutions. They cultivate critical thinking. » Modern universities are among the most conformists institutions you can find. They immediately bow to the dominant intellectual paradigms, whatever it is. The best way to succeed on campus is to immediately adopt the new dominant paradigms and to stay clear of new ideas that have not been vetted yet. Almost everything goes through some form of « peer review » which means that ideas must be accepted by your peers before they can be considered. So if you think differently, you are handicaped. That's by design. The final and wort lie is that universities are dedicated to the pursuit of truth. There is no such dedication to truth. Universities will lie, misreport, misrepresent if it serves their goals. But here is the cool thing about universities... there are bubbles, small groups, individuals here and there, that are dedicated to higher ideals. There is a long tradition going back to Thomas Aquinas, of crazy folks who insist on pursuing truth.

"Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again." — André Gide

@naval @KapilGuptaMD once wrote something related to this that changed how I view 'spirituality': When a thing is "spiritual," it is a luxury Thus it can wait. When a thing is Practical, it is a necessity Thus it cannot.

Rarefied knowledge Is for a Rarefied human. It has always been this way Throughout the natural world. The Universe Does not entrust its Secrets To hands that are unworthy Or impure.

I keep returning to this powerful insight by Hermann Hesse. Yearning for beauty means being homeless in this world.

@danmall I'd really like to hear your explanation here

You can't fathom how people charge more than $10K for a website. You think it’s about the quality of the website itself: the design, the code, the animation, the performance. It’s not.

@danmall Thank you very much, Dan :)

@_parwam_ Here you go: x.com/danmall/status…

The idea of not working for free has done more harm than good.