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Posted by jxmorris12 3 days ago

Work with the garage door up (2024)(notes.andymatuschak.org)
111 points | 88 commentspage 2
BoostandEthanol 1 day ago|
Goes both ways. I had a phase of trying this and found I had to invest as much or more effort figuring out how to document stuff for the eyes of an outside observer as I did on the actual task. Guess maybe the answer in my case is to not make it accessible, but does that defeat the purpose?
orev 1 day ago||
Figuring out how to document stuff for others forces you to think things through at a deeper level yourself, and that’s the main point of the idea being presented here. Forcing yourself to organize your own thoughts is where the personal growth comes from.
stonogo 1 day ago||
I don't think it defeats the purpose. Your audience will find you. Once that happens, you will start getting feedback, and then you can decide how to handle that. Closing the door just means your audience can't find you in the first place.
triwats 4 hours ago||
THe interface - or the garage itself - is huge here.

I want multiple ways to publish. Sometimes I wanna share images, sometimes I just wanna pipe output from a command and add some context.

Pretty frustrated of going into apps like X that break my train of thought instantly.

fragmede 1 hour ago|
makes me want to make a blogging platform that gets your post by catting to binary at the of a pipe.

    vi new-post.md
    cat new-post.md | newblogservice


    cat my-open-garage-door.jpeg | newblogservice
etc.
alexpotato 5 hours ago||
I forget where I read this quote but have always loved it:

"When I was a teenager, I read about all of these Bay Area guys that launched startups from their garage.

I thought 'Man, those guys must be really tough!'. Why? Because I'm from Canada and working in garages in the winter is really cold."

Animats 4 hours ago||
I used to do that for physical projects in the TechShop days. It helped, a little.
emehrkay 5 hours ago||
I really like this website and how the articles stack when you click internal links
lioeters 3 hours ago|
I think the software is called TiddyWiki. https://github.com/TiddlyWiki/TiddlyWiki5
singpolyma3 1 day ago||
This is one of the core spirits of open source
booleandilemma 1 day ago||
I don't know if I trust this as much as I did in the past. There's lots of competition out there. Lots of AI companies that want to slurp up data. It's a nice warm and fuzzy thing to say but I don't think it helps you, it just helps competitors get the jump on you.
simonw 1 day ago|
Fear of AI companies "slurping up data" being used as a rationale for not sharing anything is one of the most underrated harms of the whole current AI mess.
dimes 1 day ago|||
It’s not a fear. It’s reality. It’s literally happening on HN right now.

Take this game, for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47698455

Within an hour, someone had cloned the game with addition mechanics that multiple people mentioned they like more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47729573

simonw 1 day ago|||
That's not an AI company "slurping up data", that's someone using AI tools to accelerate their own personal clone of a project.
booleandilemma 1 day ago||
I think you're missing the point. The game (no pun intended?) has changed. Working with the garage door up has become a liability.
simonw 1 day ago||
Doesn't feel particularly different to me, I've been publishing my side projects as open source code on GitHub for over a decade.

The effort required to adapt them has dropped, but I've always exposed them to being adapted.

dimes 1 day ago||
> Doesn't feel particularly different to me

> The effort required to adapt them has dropped

AI is an entirely different situation because the effort required to copy has dropped by multiple orders of magnitude. You used to be able to build in the open without worrying about copycats because the vast majority of people didn’t want to spend the effort. Now (with AI), even someone with the slightest, most fleeting whim can copy your work.

It’s great that you’re open to being adapted. There’s nothing wrong with that. But if you’re not open to having your ideas outright taken, then it’s not safe to build in the open any longer.

simonw 1 day ago||
If I cared about people copying my projects and ideas I wouldn't put them on GitHub with a liberal open source license.
fragmede 1 hour ago|||
Why is that a bad thing? Person 1 built a thing, and then someone came along and made it better? It's a game, so better is subjective, but should ideas only ever come from Person 1, while everyone else just gazes upon them with slack jawed awe, unable to contribute?
booleandilemma 1 day ago|||
I completely agree. Honestly I wish we could go back to before AI. I don't like where it's taking us at all. Changing how we write code is just the beginning. Next we'll be replacing humans altogether. I've already had an interview with a soulless "AI recruiter" bot. We can't go back now of course, but one can dream.
mannanj 5 hours ago||
I have resistance to sharing work in a way that also still protects my interest in monetizing and profiting from the work eventually. How do you all balance this? In a startup bootcamp they asked us to not worry about theft, though I feel its borderline gullible and naive to share some things.
throwpoaster 1 day ago||
I recommend running this by legal if you are funded, however, I am not a lawyer.
tristor 1 day ago|
I'm kind of disappointed that this is about social media presence and not the physical world. I am a big proponent of working with your garage door up, quite literally, and I make it a point to do projects in my garage or my driveway, visible to my neighbors. I also make it a point to interact with my neighbors if they're doing a project and offer a hand or company (if they're interested in either). This is part of how I've built community around me in the places I live. Doing things like helping someone replace a valve cover gasket and spark plugs at 11PM so they could get to work in the morning when they were already too deep in fixing their only car; baking bread and running my smoker in the driveway and then offering BBQ sandwiches to my neighbors; setting up my jobsite table saw and miter saw in the driveway when doing home improvement projects, only to find out a neighbor is a tiler and can help me finish out my shower after I do the framing; etc.

I have found a lot of value in being open to other people, when I'm actively engaged in something. It's not even about displaying competence or showing off (which is how I look at people doing the same on social media), it's about doing your own thing in a way which is inviting rather than offputting, so if somebody wants to ask questions, give a helping hand, or just feel comfortable doing their own thing in a way that's inviting, you help create that sense of community and ambience around you. This is a stark contrast to many places around, at least the US, where something as simple as working on your car in your driveway might be punished. Community is built, and we're all part of it, and working in the open is one of the best ways to help build community.

To that point, though, there /used/ to be a place to do this online in an honest way, which was niche forums. I wrote and posted many of the how-to guides for one of the popular cheap enthusiast car platforms I used to own on the niche webforum for that platform, in part because there wasn't much material out there so I knew I'd actively be helping others to document and photograph my work for sharing online. But now those forums are mostly gone, replaced by Facebook groups, and across the net the signal to noise ratio is completely skewed. Trying to work in the open online is screaming into the void, and if someone does notice it is actively offputting because it comes off as insincere and self-aggrandizing. It is absolutely not the same as literally working with your garage door open.

nemomarx 1 day ago||
This works pretty well for physical projects but I think coding in your garage with the door open would not invite a lot of conversation or connection?

Maybe it would be a nice wfh office in the summer, though.

fragmede 1 hour ago||
So... join the Facebook group?
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