I find it sad when someone talks about "learning to making things" as if he had discovered the moon. Humans have been "making things" since the dawn of times out of necessity. Going through life without the need to "make things" is a relatively recent phenomenon.
This scares me about modern culture (at least that of middle class America). In grade school, I really enjoyed making things. Simple things, like creatures out of paper clips. To me that was more enjoyable than watching pre-made shows, or playing pre-made games.
When I discovered computers, it became even more fun to make things - websites, animations, scripts to make chemistry homework automatic, etc. My classmates would spend the same amount of time discussing who was the best at throwing pig-skin balls in an arena, or how funny that last South Park episode was.
Now that was before every kid had an portable entertainment system on hand for 24 hours a day, with interfaces tailored for consumption, and operating systems discouraging fiddling. I can only imagine the maker culture is dwindling, especially in younger generations. Is there a way to fix this?
Making little things, temporary things, things for your own use, is still pretty common. Making serious things, or making things seriously, is a skill that has to be learned.
It seems to me that the post is more about the former than the latter. It's not like he built an airplane from scratch by himself; he contributed to building tools for internal use at a small company.
"It's not like he built an airplane from scratch by himself"
How true. Amazing what passes off for high fives on HN. Anybody ever watch any documentaries on the real world showing what people with serious jobs build and maintain everyday? (I saw one last night about the complexity of the military supply chain ships near Somalia).
Many of these posts that I see here on HN seem like the equivalent of a kid in elementary school bringing home an art project to show their parents and grandparents who exclaim how wonderful an achievement and how promising they are.
These posts do serve a purpose though. They bring traffic and exposure to the poster's company website (in this example 37signals but there are many others) by highlighting some simple revelation or discovery.
I think this is a really cynical perspective. Nowhere is the author claiming he's making something superior, or matches up to the best of "makers" in our society.
Look around at most of the people you interact with every day. Many of them are stuck in a cycle of not making things, and this guy worked hard enough to break that cycle for himself. He found his calling in writing code. That is inspirational, and something to be proud of.
