9 ms·

Neofetch developer archives all his repositories: "Have taken up farming"

389 points by Y444 2y ago

karaterobot 2y ago
As we argue over which of the software engineers in this thread knows more about farming, are we totally sure that statement isn't, at least in some sense, a joke?
- burnte 2y ago
  My immediate first assumption was "he's retired from doing this and this statement is a reference to doing something very much not IT related, like goat herding or farming." I haven't moved from that assumption yet. :D
- SolarNet 2y ago
  I mean yea, I read this as an idiom for "went to do something wholly unrelated to programming". Not as "I literally am going to begin farming". Like I would read anything from "restaurant owner" and "artist" to "flight trainer" and "corporate DJ" as all fitting under that.
- inputError 2y ago
  [dead]
- mclightning 2y ago
  everything is literal in programming communities, lmao.
bhaney 2y ago
Happy for him
- Unfrozen0688 2y ago
  [dead]
ajdude 2y ago
Looks like it happened in April https://github.com/dylanaraps/dylanaraps/commit/811599cc564418e242f23a11082299323e7f62f8 https://github.com/dylanaraps/dylanaraps/commit/811599cc5644...
geenat 2y ago
Living the dream
- resource_waste 2y ago
  Take your 500k of investments, move to the mid-west, retire for a few years and figure out 'it was not the dream'. I did something like this, it was life changing. For the first time ever, I wasnt counting the days until retirement or a long 7+ day vacation. (Edit for clarity: I ended up taking a job. Talented coworkers were more interesting than my hobbies + I contributed to the world which was cool. Made it so I didn't really want to retire, I actually enjoyed work.)
  - skosch 2y ago
    > For the first time ever, I wasnt counting the days until retirement or a long 7+ day vacation. That sounds rather positive. Still 'it was not the dream'?
qwertox 2y ago
I went from "not again" to "yay!" in a fraction of a second.
- fernandotakai 2y ago
  same. happy this is not another _why situation.
janice1999 2y ago
Similar story: https://github.com/docker/cli/issues/267#issuecomment-695149477 https://github.com/docker/cli/issues/267#issuecomment-695149... Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24541964&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24541964&p=2
tetris11 2y ago
Twice in my life now I've thought about the effort I've been putting in to my various projects and the lack of satisfaction I've subsequently received, and generally thought about giving it all up and going back to my dad's goat farm (Note that a single goat can go for about €1000). Then I let loose for a week, touch grass, allow my mind to wander/wonder and - boom - a new coding project consumes me and I rekindle that initial passion I had once again. Rinse and repeat, for the rest of my life, and I don't see issue with that.
- sira04 2y ago
  I hope one day it'll be easy to make a living doing several different things, and not just one thing for 8 hours a day.
- draw_down 2y ago
  [dead]
- nottorp 2y ago
  You need ... surprise! ... breaks! Unthinkable in the Silicon Valley hustle culture, but true.
- boffinAudio 2y ago
  One has to wonder if this sort of thing would be less frequent if the West had a decent attitude regarding time off and vacations. Its inconceivable to me that folks in that part of the world don't get more than 2 or 3 weeks off every year, most often, unpaid. (Dylan is an Australian - they only have a moderately slightly better attitude about vacation than the USA, alas. 4 weeks instead of 2-3, on average. /laughs in Austrian ..)
  - camtarn 2y ago
    "The West" usually includes Europe. Since you're in Austria I'm guessing you're using it solely to mean "the US", but that is not the usual usage.
- perihelions 2y ago
Vitamin_Sushi 2y ago
Good for him
thefz 2y ago
I know him more for the pure bash bible; anyway godspeed and enjoy your new occupation, Dylan.
letmeinhere 2y ago
Maybe not the point, but https://github.com/fastfetch-cli/fastfetch https://github.com/fastfetch-cli/fastfetch is a good alternative to the first of these.
KaiserPro 2y ago
I do hope they enjoy it. I grew up in a farming community, and whist it can be rewarding, if you are trying to make money, or be self sufficient, its fucking hard work. Is it harder than programming? thats a subjective call. Objectively its physically harder work, mentally its way more varied. You need to be a welder, plumber, vet, horticulturist, builder, metrologist, and if you're doing properly, crooked accountant as well. Would I take up farming? probably not. Would rather become a water mill owner? hell yeah.
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  > You need to be a welder, plumber, vet, horticulturist, builder, metrologist I love this about farmers. They are the polymaths of our age and folks dont get it. Farming YouTube is a trip because there's more tech in a tractor than in some startups. > and if you're doing properly, crooked accountant as well. Yea, most people dont get what a "future" is, and why corn and lumber have them (but not onions... thats a lesson too)... The farm has the support of a lot of high finance and hedging exists not just as an instrument but has a purpose. Ask a farmer about a grain/pork "Marketing Plan" and who they are hiring as advisors and where that person got their degree... It's a complicated world and there are some interesting intersections out there.
  - barbs 2y ago
    Does the Farming Simulator series of games aim to replicate this complicated variety of skills?
    - jon-wood 2y ago
      Farming Simulator, whilst good for listening to podcasts, seems about as accurate a simulator of farming as Goat Simulator is for being a goat.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      Press A to stick weld your plow in the middle of the field.
  - 2y ago
fool1471 2y ago
Good for them!
jmclnx 2y ago
I knew a few developers who went that route, and they were glad the did, so hope he enjoys his life. If first few were in the late 80s, back then it the trend where I lived was Pizza Shops in areas that were growing fast. The ones I knew that jumped were happy they did. edit: fixed typo to happy
- INTPenis 2y ago
  I remember back on box.sk network knowing a young guy who was extremely bright. He could pick up anything from programming to genetics. But I also remember him feeling burnt out in his early teens and taking a break from all things computer. Really made you think about those brilliant minds out there and how they work.
cjk2 2y ago
I wake up every morning, stare at YAML, and think this. Good luck to them.
- Unfrozen0688 2y ago
  [dead]
azhenley 2y ago
Just yesterday there was a discussion on taking lower pay work for happiness… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40720121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40720121
- miah_ 2y ago
  This is accurate. My current job, is much lower than I was making int he SFBay area, but I actually have work life balance. I don't have to worry about my phone ringing at 2am, and I don't have to worry about yearly re-orgs or project managers who are "Agile Certified" but implement Waterfall.
- odyssey7 2y ago
  However, taking less pay for “meaningful” work is frequently an exploitative arrangement.
hennell 2y ago
To me the most interesting thing about this is that his github history shows he really gave up in 2021, with almost no commits since then. I don't know enough of the context of these repos, their significance or ongoing use, but it feels weird to return just to archive en masse. I think it might actually be the least worst option - leaving it open as if you might return gives a false sense of the project, and passing to a successor is a lot of work. We really put a lot on the heads of solitary people with the open source model.
- pdimitar 2y ago
  > I think it might actually be the least worst option - leaving it open as if you might return gives a false sense of the project, and passing to a successor is a lot of work. IMO that's exactly it, the guy wanted to give a strong signal and not string people along. That I respect a lot. > We really put a lot on the heads of solitary people with the open source model. I don't know who is "we" in your sentence but "we the working programmers" are busy as hell and most of us are not as privileged to basically wonder what do we do with our time. Whoever has the time and energy and if they can muster the motivation, please help -- the OSS world desperately needs much more people, and has always needed them. The rest of us who have to prioritize well-being and family are excused for wanting to spend a few leisure hours a day.
  - shrimp_emoji 2y ago
    > the OSS world desperately needs much more people, and has always needed them. Nah. Even after reading the Roads and Bridges Report, I disagree with this. People are naive and too nice, and that's the problem that needs fixing, not reality. The reality is that you shouldn't do open source work unless you just want to help Microsoft's AI. Just kidding. The reality is that you should do open source work without expecting compensation, and anyone that wants you to "maintain" things should be told that's not how it works. How it works is they should fork it and maintain it themselves. Tough, right? Well, it's free code. That's the price THEY pay for it. Making the person who gave it to you for free pay for it is asinine. It's also asinine to imagine a world where humanity works differently. Roads and Bridges recommended some kind of invasive tracking to be able to figure out how much money an open source project is hypothetically worth to be able to report that to corporations to beg for money to monetize open source more easily (and, of course, help "diversify" it by seeing how many unicorns are doing development and keep that in a PR spreadsheet somewhere), but you can sense that all of this is false dharma. You're doing it wrong. It needs no help or money or diversity; look at all it's given us without any of that. It just needs to be used correctly. The free software movement started by programmers, for programmers. The expectation is that the user can read the code, fork the thing, and do what they want with it. But in our eagerness to have our cake and eat it too, we imagine non-technical users have some right to demand that the developer fix the code they offered us or change it to implement some feature. And, misconditioned as they are, the devs play along and feel the onus is on them to appease that rabble, and then they get burned out.
jnmandal 2y ago
Good work Dylan. Many of us may want to follow suit if we hope to survive climate change
teddyX 2y ago
Farming for fun is probably ok but farming for income sounds like a horrific idea
- resource_waste 2y ago
  Yeah, the ROI is way lower than tech. You need capital for land (and if you are going to have this capital as a tech person, go invest it and get passive returns, or start your own tech company doing service work) + labor. Your labor is worth less, and close to third world wages. The economic value comes from improving the land with labor and tech. Your competition is paying the same wages. I know 2 people doing this, both are on medicaid.
  - polairscience 2y ago
    They're both on medicaid because we have decided collectively, as a society, that "ROI" is something we should chase. The mentality that it's the wrong choice because he's not trying to write a money printing piece of software is precisely why we live in the world we do. I admire someone who wants to go out and create something in the physical world. Even if, for insane reasons, America no longer seems to value that.
    - oopsallmagic 2y ago
      Concur. I cannot believe we've gotten to the point where the tech elite poopoo one of the last remaining jobs that actually keeps people alive because it doesn't make the stock price go brrrrr. Maybe... maybe some things are worth doing not simply because there's a dollar sign in the result. Let's ponder that this Juneteenth.
      - ttyprintk 2y ago
        This has nothing to do with tech weenies. The enemies of the American farmer are: - declining reliability of seeds - increasing variation in climate - Ron DeSantis, according to Donald Trump
thih9 2y ago
This is the creator of Kiss Linux, a meta-distribution for x86_64 focusing on simplicity. Also, the tagline of that distro is "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."[1] - I call foreshadowing. [1]: https://kisslinux.github.io https://kisslinux.github.io
- southwesterly 2y ago
  This looks excellent. Is it worth it?
  - cryptonector 2y ago
    Try it and let us know!
driverdan 2y ago
Every time this topic comes up I say the same thing. If you've never worked on a farm and have some kind of romantic idea about it then you shouldn't do this. Farming is hard work. Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have. If you're thinking of doing this and do not have experience go work on a farm for a year before you buy in.
- whalesalad 2y ago
  You are thinking of big ag doing stuff like corn and beans with a combine. Farming can be as big or small as you want it to be. You can be a farmer on 1 acre of land. This is not a good take.
- jfengel 2y ago
  There's also the old joke about the farmer who wins the lottery. "I'm going to keep farming. And when the money runs out I'll find another way to keep farming."
  - dreamcompiler 2y ago
    Q: What's the best way to become a millionaire? A: Be a billionaire and then start farming.
  - riffraff 2y ago
    I almost experienced this for real, when I was a kid I was working picking grapes in a vineyard and it was a terribly maintained one, you had to bend over and kneel etc. At the time the highest jackpot in history came up in my country, something like €50M At some point the owner told us "I'm sorry guys, we'll fix this field. If I win the lottery, I'm gonna fix all of this, and I'm gonna hire a bunch of hot brazilian dancers to entertain us while we work". It didn't even occur to him that he could stop doing it.
    - ethbr1 2y ago
      One lesson from farming and waterwork that I've tried to inculcate in myself is continual incremental improvement because nothing stays perfect. In farming, something is always broken or less than it should be. But there is literally not enough time in the day (or money) to fix and maintain everything perfectly. So you do the best you can. Similarly, in waterwork, the ocean beats the hell out of everything. Docks, boats, houses, machinery, etc. And so why fix that solid but beat-up dock, if there's a chance this year brings the hurricane that rips it away? Functionality is more important than form.
jpm_sd 2y ago
"I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine
- Y_Y 2y ago
  > I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden
a-s-k-af 2y ago
I mean, at one point this goat did like almost 7000 commits a year. That's around 20 a day.
hkt 2y ago
I wonder if he needs a field hand. I'd trade in the fanciest, shiniest laptop on earth for a shovel and a pile of dung right now.
Waterluvian 2y ago
Given just how much variety there is to farming as a profession, I imagine it's the perfect job for certain kinds of people who end up not even experiencing it as "work."
deleted 2y ago
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haunter 2y ago
Alternatives https://github.com/beucismis/awesome-fetch https://github.com/beucismis/awesome-fetch
francisofascii 2y ago
"But farming... Really? Man of your talents?"
deater 2y ago
I guess we'll all have to go back to using "linux_logo" for our sysinfo ansi-art needs, though that author seems to spend most of their time on the demoscene/video-game demakes these days.
MrPowers 2y ago
IMO, it would have been better to donate the repos to a shared org and motivate the community to continue maintaining them. But pretty awesome this individual is retiring from programming / taking a sabbatical. There is nothing wrong with taking some time off and pursuing other interests when you lose your passion.
deleted 2y ago
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FreeFull 2y ago
In case anyone is looking for alternatives, there's a well-maintained fork of neofetch called hyfetch. There's also a neofetch clone written in C called fastfetch.
bitwize 2y ago
Every time I hear a programmer has taken up farming I think of this moment from "MongoDB Is Web Scale": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs&t=2m35s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs&t=2m35s Not a bad idea, actually.
rurban 2y ago
I do a lot of farming. Lots of S3 and zmq and vision and sensors. Pretty demanding job.
throwaway984393 2y ago
[dead]
sneak 2y ago
Counterpoint: I have been programming for 27 years and I am constantly trying to find more ways to spend time indoors, or to make the indoors time more indoorsy: blackout windows, sub-basements, HVAC upgrades (currently lusting after a central whole-house humidifier). Not everyone thinks “touch grass” is the answer. I want to live in the second subbasement 24/7, or in space.
- fullstop 2y ago
  > lusting after a central whole-house humidifier These are not terribly expensive, although installation can be tricky if you're not handy. The humidifier, for me, is a godsend in the winter months. I had a cabinet style one before and I'd have to refill the water tanks daily, which was a pain. It put ~5 gallons of water into the air each day.
woile 2y ago
"the market garden" is a book that has inspired younger generations to go back to farming. I know some small scale farms making 100k a year in Portugal. Quite a nice book.
je_bailey 2y ago
It seems everyone is taking them literally. Is that something confirmed or is it more of an allegory?
- yoyohello13 2y ago
  Yeah, maybe he means he’s just going to play stardew valley all day.
patwolf 2y ago
I have some farm land that I lease out to a farmer for hay. Part of me imagines retiring early and living on the land. However, I checked up on it recently while the farmer was out there baling hay. It was 95 degrees and dusty. He told me he was pretty bummed because it was too hot and dry to fertilize earlier this year and his yield wasn't going to be as good as he wanted. Then in the short time I was there, the wheel bearing started acting up on his tractor and he got a flat tire on his rake after the valve stem fell out. It would take a better person than me to make a living at it.
softwaredoug 2y ago
What are the upsides/outcomes for open source project creators? Because it doesn't seem great... It can help you market yourself (if you have that disposition) for jobs/gigs. But will you keep up interest? You can try (and probably not succeed) at starting a company around open source. Then all the baggage that comes with maybe needing to switch to a non-open license to monetize it. You can really put effort to building a large maintainer base / community and get it into a foundation (ie Apache, PSF, etc). You can ignore it, but if its successful, be nagged and harassed incessantly to merge PRs Generally these paths are all hard / different... and it seems the stress of dealing with the passive consumers is either a massive headache, or something you need to try to monetize. I wish we as an industry did a better job supporting creators here.
linsomniac 2y ago
One buddy of mine "retired" and bought a small farm a couple years ago. I think he's most famous for the talk "Stop Writing Classes". Another has had a farm for a long time, while also developing WingIDE. We joked that he should be careful when operating his homemade thresher with his remaining arm. A play on the safety sign "do not look into laser with remaining eye". As time progresses, I get more and more envious of them both.
semireg 2y ago
20 years ago I read a few Wendell Berry essays on agriculture and it changed my life. I immediately believed two things: 1) if it wasn’t for computers I’d be an agrarian and 2) I finally had a better idea of conservatism in the sense that nature selects for conservative agrarians. These ideas challenged my ideas of “turning it off and on again” and overall system design. I needed to prove to myself that I was more than a brain, and I was more than the “kid that was good with computers.” What was my body for? I quit my virtualization/sysadmin job and moved to a farm in central Wisconsin, helping a small family with 4 acres of veggies for market, milked 20 goats and 2 cows, turkey, sheep … the whole works. Farming didn’t work out long term for me but it taught excellent lessons and gave me a better foundation for understanding my satisfaction of being human, e.g. is the grass greener on the other side of the fence?
- squarepizza 2y ago
  > is the grass greener on the other side of the fence? Was it?
  - leetrout 2y ago
    Not OP but: The grass is greener where you water it.
    - mlfreeman 2y ago
      Also it's greener over the septic tank.
      - EasyMark 2y ago
        tulips grow well there too
  - semireg 2y ago
    For about 6 months out of the year!
Nezghul 2y ago
It's like all my dogs (according to what my family told me).
ohwowdramang 2y ago
[flagged]
ohwowdramang 2y ago
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deleted 2y ago
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liversage 2y ago
Brian Harry did something similar in 2018 when he was a corporate vice president at Microsoft: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brharry https://www.linkedin.com/in/brharry
plasticchris 2y ago
I am descended from farmers on both sides. When I was young dad made me raise some livestock to really impress on me how bad a job it was. I got up before sunrise to feed them before school and so on. When I went to sell them dad sat me down at a spreadsheet and had me enter all the expenses and the net profit was something like 10 dollars for months of work. Most farmers I know have a second job just to stay afloat, or do it only because they know the quality they can get is so much better than store bought stuff.
EasyMark 2y ago
I think the moral of the story is to do something you love (if you have the means to) and you'll be happier and healthier. It's not that farming is way better than being a programmer. Fastfetch is a pretty good replacement for neofetch, >ln -s /usr/bin/fastfetch /home/$USER/.local/bin/neofetch
Ayesh 2y ago
I'm don't think the author didn't literally went farming. But I have a story to share... Many moons ago, I also romanticized the idea of doing something completely unrelated to computers, and started my own bakery. We hired a chef and someone to manage the operations. Started exclusively for deliveries, and we shortly opened it to dine-in orders too. My contribution was mostly money, ideas, some logistics, and... marketing. I still had a knack for programming, so I spent hours setting up order delivery software (we deliver cakes to parties, etc), automatic Uber Eats orders to KOTs, and of course social media, Facebook ads, etc. Apart from social media and ads, the rest felt fun. It was tedious work and we simply had competitors that had years of experience, good connections, and great suppliers. We were nearly breaking even, and I think I was more stressed than I was ever at programming related work. My two cents if that if you feel like being a carpenter or farmer or to live in a small village running a cozy homestay, they all come with significant challenges. Starting from zero isn't that easy.
Loxicon 2y ago
I can assure you... farming is not the same as Harvest Moon. Stick to programming ya'll.

389 points by Y444 2y ago

As we argue over which of the software engineers in this thread knows more about farming, are we totally sure that statement isn't, at least in some sense, a joke?

burnte 2y ago
My immediate first assumption was "he's retired from doing this and this statement is a reference to doing something very much not IT related, like goat herding or farming." I haven't moved from that assumption yet. :D
SolarNet 2y ago
I mean yea, I read this as an idiom for "went to do something wholly unrelated to programming". Not as "I literally am going to begin farming". Like I would read anything from "restaurant owner" and "artist" to "flight trainer" and "corporate DJ" as all fitting under that.
inputError 2y ago
[dead]
mclightning 2y ago
everything is literal in programming communities, lmao.

bhaney 2y ago

Happy for him

Unfrozen0688 2y ago
[dead]

ajdude 2y ago

Looks like it happened in April https://github.com/dylanaraps/dylanaraps/commit/811599cc564418e242f23a11082299323e7f62f8 https://github.com/dylanaraps/dylanaraps/commit/811599cc5644...

geenat 2y ago

Living the dream

resource_waste 2y ago
Take your 500k of investments, move to the mid-west, retire for a few years and figure out 'it was not the dream'. I did something like this, it was life changing. For the first time ever, I wasnt counting the days until retirement or a long 7+ day vacation. (Edit for clarity: I ended up taking a job. Talented coworkers were more interesting than my hobbies + I contributed to the world which was cool. Made it so I didn't really want to retire, I actually enjoyed work.)
- skosch 2y ago
  > For the first time ever, I wasnt counting the days until retirement or a long 7+ day vacation. That sounds rather positive. Still 'it was not the dream'?

qwertox 2y ago

I went from "not again" to "yay!" in a fraction of a second.

fernandotakai 2y ago
same. happy this is not another _why situation.

janice1999 2y ago

Similar story: https://github.com/docker/cli/issues/267#issuecomment-695149477 https://github.com/docker/cli/issues/267#issuecomment-695149... Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24541964&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24541964&p=2

tetris11 2y ago

Twice in my life now I've thought about the effort I've been putting in to my various projects and the lack of satisfaction I've subsequently received, and generally thought about giving it all up and going back to my dad's goat farm (Note that a single goat can go for about €1000). Then I let loose for a week, touch grass, allow my mind to wander/wonder and - boom - a new coding project consumes me and I rekindle that initial passion I had once again. Rinse and repeat, for the rest of my life, and I don't see issue with that.

sira04 2y ago
I hope one day it'll be easy to make a living doing several different things, and not just one thing for 8 hours a day.
draw_down 2y ago
[dead]
nottorp 2y ago
You need ... surprise! ... breaks! Unthinkable in the Silicon Valley hustle culture, but true.
boffinAudio 2y ago
One has to wonder if this sort of thing would be less frequent if the West had a decent attitude regarding time off and vacations. Its inconceivable to me that folks in that part of the world don't get more than 2 or 3 weeks off every year, most often, unpaid. (Dylan is an Australian - they only have a moderately slightly better attitude about vacation than the USA, alas. 4 weeks instead of 2-3, on average. /laughs in Austrian ..)
- camtarn 2y ago
  "The West" usually includes Europe. Since you're in Austria I'm guessing you're using it solely to mean "the US", but that is not the usual usage.
perihelions 2y ago

Vitamin_Sushi 2y ago

Good for him

thefz 2y ago

I know him more for the pure bash bible; anyway godspeed and enjoy your new occupation, Dylan.

letmeinhere 2y ago

Maybe not the point, but https://github.com/fastfetch-cli/fastfetch https://github.com/fastfetch-cli/fastfetch is a good alternative to the first of these.

KaiserPro 2y ago

I do hope they enjoy it. I grew up in a farming community, and whist it can be rewarding, if you are trying to make money, or be self sufficient, its fucking hard work. Is it harder than programming? thats a subjective call. Objectively its physically harder work, mentally its way more varied. You need to be a welder, plumber, vet, horticulturist, builder, metrologist, and if you're doing properly, crooked accountant as well. Would I take up farming? probably not. Would rather become a water mill owner? hell yeah.

zer00eyz 2y ago
> You need to be a welder, plumber, vet, horticulturist, builder, metrologist I love this about farmers. They are the polymaths of our age and folks dont get it. Farming YouTube is a trip because there's more tech in a tractor than in some startups. > and if you're doing properly, crooked accountant as well. Yea, most people dont get what a "future" is, and why corn and lumber have them (but not onions... thats a lesson too)... The farm has the support of a lot of high finance and hedging exists not just as an instrument but has a purpose. Ask a farmer about a grain/pork "Marketing Plan" and who they are hiring as advisors and where that person got their degree... It's a complicated world and there are some interesting intersections out there.
- barbs 2y ago
  Does the Farming Simulator series of games aim to replicate this complicated variety of skills?
  - jon-wood 2y ago
    Farming Simulator, whilst good for listening to podcasts, seems about as accurate a simulator of farming as Goat Simulator is for being a goat.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    Press A to stick weld your plow in the middle of the field.
- 2y ago

fool1471 2y ago

Good for them!

jmclnx 2y ago

I knew a few developers who went that route, and they were glad the did, so hope he enjoys his life. If first few were in the late 80s, back then it the trend where I lived was Pizza Shops in areas that were growing fast. The ones I knew that jumped were happy they did. edit: fixed typo to happy

INTPenis 2y ago
I remember back on box.sk network knowing a young guy who was extremely bright. He could pick up anything from programming to genetics. But I also remember him feeling burnt out in his early teens and taking a break from all things computer. Really made you think about those brilliant minds out there and how they work.

cjk2 2y ago

I wake up every morning, stare at YAML, and think this. Good luck to them.

Unfrozen0688 2y ago
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azhenley 2y ago

Just yesterday there was a discussion on taking lower pay work for happiness… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40720121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40720121

miah_ 2y ago
This is accurate. My current job, is much lower than I was making int he SFBay area, but I actually have work life balance. I don't have to worry about my phone ringing at 2am, and I don't have to worry about yearly re-orgs or project managers who are "Agile Certified" but implement Waterfall.
odyssey7 2y ago
However, taking less pay for “meaningful” work is frequently an exploitative arrangement.

hennell 2y ago

To me the most interesting thing about this is that his github history shows he really gave up in 2021, with almost no commits since then. I don't know enough of the context of these repos, their significance or ongoing use, but it feels weird to return just to archive en masse. I think it might actually be the least worst option - leaving it open as if you might return gives a false sense of the project, and passing to a successor is a lot of work. We really put a lot on the heads of solitary people with the open source model.

pdimitar 2y ago
> I think it might actually be the least worst option - leaving it open as if you might return gives a false sense of the project, and passing to a successor is a lot of work. IMO that's exactly it, the guy wanted to give a strong signal and not string people along. That I respect a lot. > We really put a lot on the heads of solitary people with the open source model. I don't know who is "we" in your sentence but "we the working programmers" are busy as hell and most of us are not as privileged to basically wonder what do we do with our time. Whoever has the time and energy and if they can muster the motivation, please help -- the OSS world desperately needs much more people, and has always needed them. The rest of us who have to prioritize well-being and family are excused for wanting to spend a few leisure hours a day.
- shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  > the OSS world desperately needs much more people, and has always needed them. Nah. Even after reading the Roads and Bridges Report, I disagree with this. People are naive and too nice, and that's the problem that needs fixing, not reality. The reality is that you shouldn't do open source work unless you just want to help Microsoft's AI. Just kidding. The reality is that you should do open source work without expecting compensation, and anyone that wants you to "maintain" things should be told that's not how it works. How it works is they should fork it and maintain it themselves. Tough, right? Well, it's free code. That's the price THEY pay for it. Making the person who gave it to you for free pay for it is asinine. It's also asinine to imagine a world where humanity works differently. Roads and Bridges recommended some kind of invasive tracking to be able to figure out how much money an open source project is hypothetically worth to be able to report that to corporations to beg for money to monetize open source more easily (and, of course, help "diversify" it by seeing how many unicorns are doing development and keep that in a PR spreadsheet somewhere), but you can sense that all of this is false dharma. You're doing it wrong. It needs no help or money or diversity; look at all it's given us without any of that. It just needs to be used correctly. The free software movement started by programmers, for programmers. The expectation is that the user can read the code, fork the thing, and do what they want with it. But in our eagerness to have our cake and eat it too, we imagine non-technical users have some right to demand that the developer fix the code they offered us or change it to implement some feature. And, misconditioned as they are, the devs play along and feel the onus is on them to appease that rabble, and then they get burned out.

jnmandal 2y ago

Good work Dylan. Many of us may want to follow suit if we hope to survive climate change

teddyX 2y ago

Farming for fun is probably ok but farming for income sounds like a horrific idea

resource_waste 2y ago
Yeah, the ROI is way lower than tech. You need capital for land (and if you are going to have this capital as a tech person, go invest it and get passive returns, or start your own tech company doing service work) + labor. Your labor is worth less, and close to third world wages. The economic value comes from improving the land with labor and tech. Your competition is paying the same wages. I know 2 people doing this, both are on medicaid.
- polairscience 2y ago
  They're both on medicaid because we have decided collectively, as a society, that "ROI" is something we should chase. The mentality that it's the wrong choice because he's not trying to write a money printing piece of software is precisely why we live in the world we do. I admire someone who wants to go out and create something in the physical world. Even if, for insane reasons, America no longer seems to value that.
  - oopsallmagic 2y ago
    Concur. I cannot believe we've gotten to the point where the tech elite poopoo one of the last remaining jobs that actually keeps people alive because it doesn't make the stock price go brrrrr. Maybe... maybe some things are worth doing not simply because there's a dollar sign in the result. Let's ponder that this Juneteenth.
    - ttyprintk 2y ago
      This has nothing to do with tech weenies. The enemies of the American farmer are: - declining reliability of seeds - increasing variation in climate - Ron DeSantis, according to Donald Trump

thih9 2y ago

This is the creator of Kiss Linux, a meta-distribution for x86_64 focusing on simplicity. Also, the tagline of that distro is "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."[1] - I call foreshadowing. [1]: https://kisslinux.github.io https://kisslinux.github.io

southwesterly 2y ago
This looks excellent. Is it worth it?
- cryptonector 2y ago
  Try it and let us know!

driverdan 2y ago

Every time this topic comes up I say the same thing. If you've never worked on a farm and have some kind of romantic idea about it then you shouldn't do this. Farming is hard work. Modern farmers have college degrees, millions in equipment, and a vast amount of knowledge and experience you do not have. If you're thinking of doing this and do not have experience go work on a farm for a year before you buy in.

whalesalad 2y ago
You are thinking of big ag doing stuff like corn and beans with a combine. Farming can be as big or small as you want it to be. You can be a farmer on 1 acre of land. This is not a good take.
jfengel 2y ago
There's also the old joke about the farmer who wins the lottery. "I'm going to keep farming. And when the money runs out I'll find another way to keep farming."
- dreamcompiler 2y ago
  Q: What's the best way to become a millionaire? A: Be a billionaire and then start farming.
- riffraff 2y ago
  I almost experienced this for real, when I was a kid I was working picking grapes in a vineyard and it was a terribly maintained one, you had to bend over and kneel etc. At the time the highest jackpot in history came up in my country, something like €50M At some point the owner told us "I'm sorry guys, we'll fix this field. If I win the lottery, I'm gonna fix all of this, and I'm gonna hire a bunch of hot brazilian dancers to entertain us while we work". It didn't even occur to him that he could stop doing it.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    One lesson from farming and waterwork that I've tried to inculcate in myself is continual incremental improvement because nothing stays perfect. In farming, something is always broken or less than it should be. But there is literally not enough time in the day (or money) to fix and maintain everything perfectly. So you do the best you can. Similarly, in waterwork, the ocean beats the hell out of everything. Docks, boats, houses, machinery, etc. And so why fix that solid but beat-up dock, if there's a chance this year brings the hurricane that rips it away? Functionality is more important than form.

jpm_sd 2y ago

"I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine

Y_Y 2y ago
> I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden

a-s-k-af 2y ago

I mean, at one point this goat did like almost 7000 commits a year. That's around 20 a day.

hkt 2y ago

I wonder if he needs a field hand. I'd trade in the fanciest, shiniest laptop on earth for a shovel and a pile of dung right now.

Waterluvian 2y ago

Given just how much variety there is to farming as a profession, I imagine it's the perfect job for certain kinds of people who end up not even experiencing it as "work."

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haunter 2y ago

Alternatives https://github.com/beucismis/awesome-fetch https://github.com/beucismis/awesome-fetch

francisofascii 2y ago

"But farming... Really? Man of your talents?"

deater 2y ago

I guess we'll all have to go back to using "linux_logo" for our sysinfo ansi-art needs, though that author seems to spend most of their time on the demoscene/video-game demakes these days.

MrPowers 2y ago

IMO, it would have been better to donate the repos to a shared org and motivate the community to continue maintaining them. But pretty awesome this individual is retiring from programming / taking a sabbatical. There is nothing wrong with taking some time off and pursuing other interests when you lose your passion.

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FreeFull 2y ago

In case anyone is looking for alternatives, there's a well-maintained fork of neofetch called hyfetch. There's also a neofetch clone written in C called fastfetch.

bitwize 2y ago

Every time I hear a programmer has taken up farming I think of this moment from "MongoDB Is Web Scale": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs&t=2m35s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs&t=2m35s Not a bad idea, actually.

rurban 2y ago

I do a lot of farming. Lots of S3 and zmq and vision and sensors. Pretty demanding job.

throwaway984393 2y ago

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sneak 2y ago

Counterpoint: I have been programming for 27 years and I am constantly trying to find more ways to spend time indoors, or to make the indoors time more indoorsy: blackout windows, sub-basements, HVAC upgrades (currently lusting after a central whole-house humidifier). Not everyone thinks “touch grass” is the answer. I want to live in the second subbasement 24/7, or in space.

fullstop 2y ago
> lusting after a central whole-house humidifier These are not terribly expensive, although installation can be tricky if you're not handy. The humidifier, for me, is a godsend in the winter months. I had a cabinet style one before and I'd have to refill the water tanks daily, which was a pain. It put ~5 gallons of water into the air each day.

woile 2y ago

"the market garden" is a book that has inspired younger generations to go back to farming. I know some small scale farms making 100k a year in Portugal. Quite a nice book.

je_bailey 2y ago

It seems everyone is taking them literally. Is that something confirmed or is it more of an allegory?

yoyohello13 2y ago
Yeah, maybe he means he’s just going to play stardew valley all day.

patwolf 2y ago

I have some farm land that I lease out to a farmer for hay. Part of me imagines retiring early and living on the land. However, I checked up on it recently while the farmer was out there baling hay. It was 95 degrees and dusty. He told me he was pretty bummed because it was too hot and dry to fertilize earlier this year and his yield wasn't going to be as good as he wanted. Then in the short time I was there, the wheel bearing started acting up on his tractor and he got a flat tire on his rake after the valve stem fell out. It would take a better person than me to make a living at it.

softwaredoug 2y ago

What are the upsides/outcomes for open source project creators? Because it doesn't seem great... It can help you market yourself (if you have that disposition) for jobs/gigs. But will you keep up interest? You can try (and probably not succeed) at starting a company around open source. Then all the baggage that comes with maybe needing to switch to a non-open license to monetize it. You can really put effort to building a large maintainer base / community and get it into a foundation (ie Apache, PSF, etc). You can ignore it, but if its successful, be nagged and harassed incessantly to merge PRs Generally these paths are all hard / different... and it seems the stress of dealing with the passive consumers is either a massive headache, or something you need to try to monetize. I wish we as an industry did a better job supporting creators here.

linsomniac 2y ago

One buddy of mine "retired" and bought a small farm a couple years ago. I think he's most famous for the talk "Stop Writing Classes". Another has had a farm for a long time, while also developing WingIDE. We joked that he should be careful when operating his homemade thresher with his remaining arm. A play on the safety sign "do not look into laser with remaining eye". As time progresses, I get more and more envious of them both.

semireg 2y ago

20 years ago I read a few Wendell Berry essays on agriculture and it changed my life. I immediately believed two things: 1) if it wasn’t for computers I’d be an agrarian and 2) I finally had a better idea of conservatism in the sense that nature selects for conservative agrarians. These ideas challenged my ideas of “turning it off and on again” and overall system design. I needed to prove to myself that I was more than a brain, and I was more than the “kid that was good with computers.” What was my body for? I quit my virtualization/sysadmin job and moved to a farm in central Wisconsin, helping a small family with 4 acres of veggies for market, milked 20 goats and 2 cows, turkey, sheep … the whole works. Farming didn’t work out long term for me but it taught excellent lessons and gave me a better foundation for understanding my satisfaction of being human, e.g. is the grass greener on the other side of the fence?

squarepizza 2y ago
> is the grass greener on the other side of the fence? Was it?
- leetrout 2y ago
  Not OP but: The grass is greener where you water it.
  - mlfreeman 2y ago
    Also it's greener over the septic tank.
    - EasyMark 2y ago
      tulips grow well there too
- semireg 2y ago
  For about 6 months out of the year!

Nezghul 2y ago

It's like all my dogs (according to what my family told me).

ohwowdramang 2y ago

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ohwowdramang 2y ago

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liversage 2y ago

Brian Harry did something similar in 2018 when he was a corporate vice president at Microsoft: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brharry https://www.linkedin.com/in/brharry

plasticchris 2y ago

I am descended from farmers on both sides. When I was young dad made me raise some livestock to really impress on me how bad a job it was. I got up before sunrise to feed them before school and so on. When I went to sell them dad sat me down at a spreadsheet and had me enter all the expenses and the net profit was something like 10 dollars for months of work. Most farmers I know have a second job just to stay afloat, or do it only because they know the quality they can get is so much better than store bought stuff.

EasyMark 2y ago

I think the moral of the story is to do something you love (if you have the means to) and you'll be happier and healthier. It's not that farming is way better than being a programmer. Fastfetch is a pretty good replacement for neofetch, >ln -s /usr/bin/fastfetch /home/$USER/.local/bin/neofetch

Ayesh 2y ago

I'm don't think the author didn't literally went farming. But I have a story to share... Many moons ago, I also romanticized the idea of doing something completely unrelated to computers, and started my own bakery. We hired a chef and someone to manage the operations. Started exclusively for deliveries, and we shortly opened it to dine-in orders too. My contribution was mostly money, ideas, some logistics, and... marketing. I still had a knack for programming, so I spent hours setting up order delivery software (we deliver cakes to parties, etc), automatic Uber Eats orders to KOTs, and of course social media, Facebook ads, etc. Apart from social media and ads, the rest felt fun. It was tedious work and we simply had competitors that had years of experience, good connections, and great suppliers. We were nearly breaking even, and I think I was more stressed than I was ever at programming related work. My two cents if that if you feel like being a carpenter or farmer or to live in a small village running a cozy homestay, they all come with significant challenges. Starting from zero isn't that easy.

Loxicon 2y ago

I can assure you... farming is not the same as Harvest Moon. Stick to programming ya'll.