Re: What Comes Next?

At 12:20 AM 10/4/00 -0400, Michael Tulloch wrote:


>If this list scares you, it should. Most of the fun in web development
>evaporated about the time that a collective sense of achievement
>vanished. We can't say that we've mastered anything, because it's
>obsolete by that time -- everything runs on internet time, and the
>best you can hope to do is plug a hole or two in the dam....
>
>~Mike
>The web has become treadmill learning. All hail the web.

Ah, was this a reply to the first question asker?  Or to Ron?  Or a thread 
of it's own?

Anyway, I think it hit on a pet peeve of mine, and stuff that's been on my 
mind...  So, random reply, that only sort of addresses you.  (and I don't 
mean for it to be offensively addressed towards you, but yes, rather 
derogatorily towards the concept of cynicism and doom-saying.  Reading 
back, I'd like to mention that my use of the word you was meant in more of 
a general sense, it really did assume to much about you but it was 
completely directable towards some people I have run into lately on the web).

I am going to stand up right here and say that I LIKE what I do.  I do 
graphics and html for customers 50 hours a week, then I come home and do 
graphics and html and PHP and anything else I can think of just for the 
heck of it on project sites.

I realize that this non-jaded and naive lack of complaint or at least a 
little scorn for others or myself moves me out of the range of cooldom, 
but, ummmm... neener at that.

I also LIKE that I"ll never know it all.  This is a field, not a tutorial. 
You just plain don't know everything in a field, and I LIKE that if I'm 
going to feel like an idiot regularly, at least the pace is fast and the 
new gadgets nifty, so I can move on quickly.  I don't care that I have 
questions that people on this list will automatically delete when they see, 
because it's too basic for them.  I don't care that some on this list are 
so through with learning it they have time to just complain about it, and 
so immersed in the world of the web it is giving them ulcers instead of 
fulfillment.  I'm going to worry about myself.  Yeah, any webserver I set 
up would be linux/apache/php/mysql and I'll be getting the next build of 
Mozilla as soon as it comes out, but if my aunt just has to use a 5 year 
old Mac on aol, well, I"ll still help her configure her mail, same as I 
will for friends who have the latest of nifty Dell's which get all blue in 
the face if you try to get them to actually just load windows and not much 
else.  I keep my decisions about what'll "help" the web personal, and my 
advice restricted to advice, not scorn.

There is a collective sense of acheivement between me and just about anyone 
I speak to regularly about this sort of stuff.  Maybe that's why we 
regularly do it?  Acheivement on the idea of us creating something, us 
learning something, the world getting somethijng small from our work.  If 
you need that much more, you're either a) a great man or b) a really 
ineffectual and eventually going to be miserable man.

I'd be doing web design even if I worked in a totally different field.  I 
love it, and that's why I looked for a job in it when I needed a job.  I am 
not here to save the world for the inept netscape (*yawn*) users of the 
world.  Pick on my roommate cause he can't view a page properly, sure, then 
pick on him even more cause  his pages are so designed for netscape they 
don't work in IE.  I don't scorn him except in mocking, though... Isn't 
that shocking?

And even worse, I got my computer for christmas.  Oh no, I dared to touch 
the web and I haven't been her since 94!  lol, I was 14 in 94.  I help 
people just learning html... I have friends at www.thesitefights.com...  I 
put people's character biographies up for them at roleplaying type fantasy 
sites.  Oh, it's horridly unprofessional of me, I know.  But I'm 
unprofessional with a sense of acheivement and having fun, while 
professionals are burnt out and consider keeping up a chore.

Anyway, maybe you should take a vacation?  Perhaps not a physical one, but 
just one from certain mindsets, aka, the "people are gaining on me and I 
can't cope and get ahead to keep my place" bit...

April
I am so late for work right now....



>  On Tue, 3 Oct 2000, Ron Hall wrote:
>
> > >
> > > Here is basically an advice question.
> > > What should one endeavour in studying after HTML & basic JavaScript, to
> > > build themselves as a more marketable Web dev or des?
> >
> >       Learn use CSS
> >
> >       Learn something about CGI
> >
> >       Learn something (It really doesn't matter) on programming CGI
> >
> >       Learn something about DBs
> >
> >       Learn how to make your CGI talk to DB
> >
> >       Learn something about graphics
> >
> >       Learn something about HTTP protocols
> >
> >       Learn more about SQL
> >
> >
> >       Just my 3 centimes.
> >
> > Who:    Ron Hall   - + 1 514 398 3718  (thorn(at)tripod.net)
> > What:   iUnix-Guy, Web-slogger, wizard, casual hero & part-time bartender
> > When:   Some out-of-the-way corner of Time&Space where they serve coffee
> > Where:  Same as above only I'm more grounded
> > Why:    After all is said and done, why not?
> > Wote:   "We who are about to fry, saute you!"
> >
> >
>
>---Mike
>}-------------------------------------------------{
>} Dark Journey : Poetry of the Crestfallen        {
>} Poetry @ www.Fatbrain.com's E-matter            {
>}-------------------------------------------------{

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