August 05, 2005
Pretend Work
"The other problem with pretend work is that it often looks better than real work. When I'm writing or hacking I spend as much time just thinking as I do actually typing. Half the time I'm sitting drinking a cup of tea, or walking around the neighborhood. This is a critical phase-- this is where ideas come from-- and yet I'd feel guilty doing this in most offices, with everyone else looking busy."
-- Paul Graham
In Matters involving the art of avoiding sloth, Technology and Software
Posted by Josh Staiger at 06:52 PM
Comments
Posted by: Jason Marr August 6, 2005 02:38 PM | Permanent link
this isn't pertaining to your blog entry, but i'm coming to visit you and ashish labor day weekend- so you'd better be in town =)
Posted by: Renee Sinha August 8, 2005 08:33 PM | Permanent link
Yet another fine article by Paul Graham. One bit of wording I'd change though is when he says "For example, open source software is more reliable precisely because it's open source; anyone can find mistakes." I would argue it's reliability is just as much because anyone can fix mistakes. Anyone can find bugs in proprietary software, but at best their recourse is to file a bug against the product. Whereas with open source, they could actually fix the bug themselves, or they could simply file the bug and anyone else who sees it could fix it.