Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Random, witty (hopefully), and funny (undeniably) anonymous opinions on... stuff.
Welcome to IMO. So what is it with hacks and is it a generational thing? What do I mean with hacks? I don't mean hacking as in like computer software or cracking passwords or getting into the FBI or stuff like that. Although that's fun. What I'm really talking about is the generational gap between those who really put in a lot of effort, perhaps hyper analytical, would study all the material before they attempted something new. And those who want to skip ahead, they want to do something without really knowing how to do it. And these quick wins and these satisfactions they get or the bragging rights is probably what encourages them into hacking. So I grew up in a generation that initially started without the internet. And learning through the internet was never a thing that I got into. It was more exploring through the internet. It wasn't like, you know, 101, how to become from zero to hero in five minutes. And all of these videos today, I think the majority of YouTube educational content is aimed towards those who are new to the subject. Rarely do I find very advanced topics. And the topics that I do find advanced and are hyper analytical are hard to get into, which is why I realized they don't have as much viewership. The problem really there is that YouTube is trying to force its content creators to do better by getting more views. Which is not necessarily the same thing as doing something for the quality of the content. Imagine if a teacher went to school and only evaluated how well their course was done, like being perceived based on how many students wanted to attend that class. It's kind of like the other way around, right? Most kids don't want to attend that specific class. But it's for their own benefit that we're trying to find curriculum that would help them later in life. Either which way, I'm talking about the difference between learning something and learning something that they want to learn, or learning how to hack something. And hacking is a great tool. In fact, you can get through life by hacking everything. And I don't disagree with learning how to hack. In fact, anytime I start a business or a concept, I try to hack it because I want that quick growth and I want to do it without, you know, investing funds. But the idea of hacking through everything, and I'll explain a small story, the difference between my learning into software development and the person I know. And this person I know has a significant age gap with me, more than 10 years. And I learned by reading reference material. In fact, my dad came home one day and he found these two books that were run over by a truck. Yeah, odd story. I think I was either seven or eight. And the one was like MS-DOS 1.0. And the other one was BASIC, the programming language. And I fell in love with these two books. And don't get me wrong, these were reference guides. They weren't by any means written by... humans, right? They were written in a way that would explain. It's kind of like reading the dictionary back to front, right? There's nothing exhilarating or fun to it. But learning of a whole world was the most fun for me. And we had an old computer that was used at a supermarket. It must have been an Amstrad. You had to bootstrap it. There was no permanent storage. So you had to power it on, put a disk in to load something like an operating system, then take that out and put a floppy disk to load, let's say, the language that you wanted to use or the tool, the word processor. And everything you wanted to store, you had to write onto another disk. And we didn't have the writable disks. So I would take a pencil and paper and write down. So the next time we boot it up, I can continue where I was. Either which way, I learned that way. And I don't want to say I learned the hard way, because I don't necessarily think it's about difficulty. It might be about time. But learning the reference guide, learning the things that things are built upon today, helped me understand something at a rudimentary level. And I don't rely on memory. I've got a pretty bad memory. But I do remember quadratic equations from high school. I remember the volume of a sphere. I don't necessarily remember the day that I learned it or who taught it to me or how I practiced. So I don't recall those memories. What I do have is something that is now knowledge. So a memory of mine became an experience, and then got stored as knowledge. And even if I lost the experience, I lost the memory, I have this inert ability to know how to calculate the volume of a sphere. And yes, it has been useful and not just for bragging. Thank you. But either which way, the point I'm trying to make is someone who's learning purely from hacks, needs to learn and remember the hack, because the hack doesn't provide the level of understanding on how something works. I'm not saying you can't understand something, but I'm not saying you can't understand something. Through hacks, maybe they are a quick way for you to understand, oh, because of this, it's this, but definitely is a different kind of pace of learning. And when I was trying to teach someone how to program, I went through the approach that I've always done academically, when I was teaching for myself. And that was a linear approach, like today, you're going to learn this and next thing you're going to learn this. And they're going to build upon your knowledge. And none of this will seem useful up until you're called to create your first program, right? Well, as hacks are the other way around, they're how to do this, how to make your own website or own game. And it starts in five minutes, and you've already developed something, you've got this amazing appreciation, and satisfaction. And it's this goal driven development that gets you past that. The problem is, though, it's really hard to make a skill of that, right? You get the satisfaction. And I love that for introducing someone to a concept. But I would always advise you to do that. And I would always advise you to do that. And I would always advise you to do that. And I would always advise you to do that. And I would always advise you to switch to a different pace and a different guide, so that you can get that breadth knowledge that will introduce you to the full depth that you need. Because if you rely only on hacks, how far are you going to get? But that's the thing. This person I was trying to teach would never excel and would always feel demotivated. And that person admired me and honored me. And in that sense, when they were disappointed with themselves, they would see that I would potentially be disappointed in them, or lose confidence in them. And that's the thing. They would lose courage that they could be any good or that they could ever be as good as I was. And that was demotivating. And maybe, you know, you shouldn't be teaching someone who's a loved one. Maybe the relationship has to be more strict, like a professor-student relationship. But even there, there might be that transference, or there might be that resonance with, you know, you want to do that person proud. However, throughout all that, there was struggle for this person to learn at that rate, at that pace, at that learning style. And many years later, I mean, this person is now a successful software developer. That person managed to learn through hacks. And the hacks got him far enough to get that immediate satisfaction, that appreciation that, hey, come and look what I've done. And I'll be absolutely blown away. I was like, how the hell did you do this? And maybe part of me is ignoring the fact that this was part ready-made or part of this. I tried to ignore that and just appreciate the work at hand that I was seeing. And slowly, slowly, that led that person into direct industry experience. And I guess, I mean, in the world of software development, it might be a bit of an exception, because the best way to learn really is just to be paid to do something well or professionally. And that industry experience, you can't replace it for anything. And you have to ask questions, you have to Google stuff. You evidently go through so much material that it's almost like you have to read everything. But it's getting you there to that point. And hacking might be something that we have in a later generation. And I think that's something that we have in a later generation. Maybe I'll start using these terms like Gen Z or Gen A or whatever comes in between. But my generation, the more millennial, the more Gen X kind of way of thinking is I'm going to learn everything. We get a book and scan it start to finish. And I'll do that before I attempt anything. And I'll make notes. And I'll try to learn it and understand it and be hyper-analytical and be thorough and take my time and appreciate that effort comes through hard work and time. And then the younger the generation, you know, the gap between millennial and Gen Z, the internet gap there, I'm going to Google something and find the answer. I'm not going to waste my brain power or my time. I'm going to figure it out by learning it by seeing someone who already figured it out and learned it and just going to transmit this information to me. It's that whole 1999, I'm going to jack into the matrix and get all this information injected into me. But the lack of appreciation of the beauty that comes when you know everything, the beauty that comes when you don't have to Google something that you can actually write your own code. I don't know if that generation will feel that. It's the same as I see that everyone wants to be on this quick and fast. And you know, it reminds me of my generation, we had script kids, right? This is the idea of poorly written code that would do stuff. Let's say it's, let's say it's a virus, right? A 17 year old wrote a virus that is devastating the world. And it's funny, we're talking about Christ strike just the other day, but it's, it's that kind of code that is, it's just not good. It wouldn't stand the tolerance of, you know, production environment. But yet, this is a generation of kind of people that we have now coding all day long. And there's a massive gap in between that. But once a person has the knack, they'll get into the industry, and then they'll learn that upwards. But what am I really saying, babbling about, I'm really saying that there's a different approach to life. And there's learning how to hack is important. Hacking all the time is significant, but I don't think is is the ultimate solution to everything. When presented with life, you need to be able to hack, you can't always put your head down and try something and stick to that one thing, you need to learn to play with your time and resources, you're studying a business, and you'll see someone is age, you know, 63. And they've had a business for, let's say, 35 years, and they do the same thing. And they do the same thing. And they do the same thing. And they do the same thing. And they do the same thing. And they do the same thing. And they do the same thing. And they do the same thing. And they do the same thing. And they do the same thing. And they do the same thing. And they. routine every day they've never earned more money one day over another always steady pace but the security and stability in that right they're able to feed their family and build a home for their grandkids and that beautiful stability is something that is is worthwhile and it's difficult and it's hardship but then you see a young entrepreneur who's building 100 businesses a year and drops 99 of them because they're all hacks and most of them require low effort and at some point they're going to make it because the one in 100 has a high chance of succeeding versus you know putting all eggs in one basket and that learning how to hack that being adept and agile enough to be able to balance the act between what is needed and what resources you have at hand which is mostly you know your own time that is a really good skill to learn and I actually envy those who have grown into a generation where they only learn how to hack first and then they're kind of forced into the deep end by inevitably learning the depth and breadth of that knowledge, rather than the other way around of getting into that mono focus of it's the academic analytical way, which kind of narrows down the vision and the scope because they evidently might not see that there was an opportunity right next door. Either which way, this has been wonderful. This is perhaps my first episode. I'm going to be talking about random things. I hope they'll be funnier in the future because I think I'm funny. I think that you don't have to. This is IMO. Thanks for your time.