Thanks for the summary of various models of how to figure out what to work on. While reading it, I couldn’t help but focus on my frustration about the “getting paid for it” part. Personally, I want to create a new programming language. I think we are still in the dark age of computer programming and that programming languages suck. I can’t make a perfect language, but I can take a solid step in the right direction. The world could sure use a better programming language if you ask me. I’m passionate about this project. I’m a skilled software developer with a longer career than all the young guns I see. I think I’ve proved with my work so far that I am a top-tier language designer capable of writing a compiler and standard library. But...… this is almost the definition of something you can’t and won’t be paid for. At least not until you’ve already published a successful language. That fact greatly contributes to why we can’t have better programming languages. No one can afford to let them incubate as long as needed. Because of limited resources, everyone has to push to release it as fast as possible. Unlike other software, languages have very strict backward compatibility requirements, so improving them is a challenge and inevitably leads to real issues as the language grows over time. However, they can never fix previous mistakes or address design changes needed to support new features.
Yeah, for someone with good skills, “getting paid” is the most difficult part. The fact that it does not exist yet probably suggests that it’s not so easy to figure out how to get paid for that—otherwise someone else probably would be already doing it.
(That is, “getting paid” is difficult if you condition on the work being meaningful. If you have skills, you can always get paid for designing one more way how to give people more ads they don’t need, or something similarly meaningless.)
Sometimes, Patreon or Kickstarter works, but then you need to be good at marketing. You would probably also need a blog or youtube channel where you would talk about your previous work and your new ideas.
This seems like an example of something you can in fact get paid for if you are as good as you claim. In the past 15 years Flutter/Dart, Rust, Kotlin were created and if you can build a language that is as good as that you will be able to get income via consulting, working at companies, and donations. Most start ups/new projects will not get you paid immediately but you need to have a plan for how you will get paid (and the tolerance to work long enough to see that outcome).
Thanks for the summary of various models of how to figure out what to work on. While reading it, I couldn’t help but focus on my frustration about the “getting paid for it” part. Personally, I want to create a new programming language. I think we are still in the dark age of computer programming and that programming languages suck. I can’t make a perfect language, but I can take a solid step in the right direction. The world could sure use a better programming language if you ask me. I’m passionate about this project. I’m a skilled software developer with a longer career than all the young guns I see. I think I’ve proved with my work so far that I am a top-tier language designer capable of writing a compiler and standard library. But...… this is almost the definition of something you can’t and won’t be paid for. At least not until you’ve already published a successful language. That fact greatly contributes to why we can’t have better programming languages. No one can afford to let them incubate as long as needed. Because of limited resources, everyone has to push to release it as fast as possible. Unlike other software, languages have very strict backward compatibility requirements, so improving them is a challenge and inevitably leads to real issues as the language grows over time. However, they can never fix previous mistakes or address design changes needed to support new features.
Yeah, for someone with good skills, “getting paid” is the most difficult part. The fact that it does not exist yet probably suggests that it’s not so easy to figure out how to get paid for that—otherwise someone else probably would be already doing it.
(That is, “getting paid” is difficult if you condition on the work being meaningful. If you have skills, you can always get paid for designing one more way how to give people more ads they don’t need, or something similarly meaningless.)
Sometimes, Patreon or Kickstarter works, but then you need to be good at marketing. You would probably also need a blog or youtube channel where you would talk about your previous work and your new ideas.
This seems like an example of something you can in fact get paid for if you are as good as you claim. In the past 15 years Flutter/Dart, Rust, Kotlin were created and if you can build a language that is as good as that you will be able to get income via consulting, working at companies, and donations. Most start ups/new projects will not get you paid immediately but you need to have a plan for how you will get paid (and the tolerance to work long enough to see that outcome).