What I Worked On

21 insights saved from this article by @business

@business· Startups
When work, family life, and attention align, the feeling of doing life right reveals how rarely that alignment happens.
@business· Startups
Steve Russell translated McCarthy’s self-interpreting Lisp into IBM 704 machine language, turning it into an ordinary programming language.
@business· Startups
Attention is zero-sum. Choosing an adequate project blocks your attention from reaching a better one.
@business· Startups
Customs keep constraining behavior long after the restrictions that created them have disappeared.
@business· Startups
A project that consumes your attention can become your life’s work by default. Leave if it is not the life’s work you want.
@business· Startups
Lisp’s core is a language defined by writing an interpreter in itself.
@business· Startups
Viaweb delayed break-even by hiring for investor expectations and bubble-era norms, leaving the company dependent on investors.
@business· Startups
Give talks to generate ideas. The prospect of wasting an audience’s time forces clearer thinking.
@business· Startups
When a writer runs a forum, silence lets public misinterpretations look like agreement, but replies invite further fights and misinterpretations.
@business· Startups
Becoming an artist first required confronting a strange question: could I make paintings at all?
@business· Startups
Art offered independence from bosses and research funding, though making a living as an artist was harder than writing software.
@business· Startups
Putting software on a server enables continuous updates without distributing new versions or maintaining separate ports and releases.
@business· Startups
On March 11, three needs converged to create YC: angel investing, reconnecting with former colleagues, and challenging conventional venture capital.
@business· Startups
Financial independence preserved old routines while opening doors that had never been available before.
@business· Startups
Fixed-hour workplaces feel unnatural to people whose working style is autonomous and irregular.
@business· Startups
Unprestigious work is not automatically good, but it sidesteps ambition’s common trap: chasing status.
@business· Startups
After selling a company, founders should take a month or two off before starting the next thing.
@business· Startups
Run software on a server and control it through browser links. No client software, ports, or version management required.
@business· Startups
A computer becomes useful through interaction: punch cards stalled without input, while microcomputers made programming responsive and exploratory.
@business· Startups
Work that initially lacks prestige is often the most promising when you feel drawn to it anyway.
@business· Startups
Writing essays became a permanent commitment, whatever else happened.

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