Interesting Links for 05-05-2014

[andrewducker]

• The illusion of life: Disney's principles of animation
  (tags: animation disney design )
• This pretty much sums up what I love about being a programmer
  (tags: programming computers )
• "My benefits were cut by 40% when I got cancer"
  (tags: welfare health uk vianwhyte )
• What kind of jobs do the software engineers who earn $500k per year do?
  (tags:

Comments

[inamac]

That's 'Best Written English Language TV series broadcast in the US'.

And even then leaves out Babylon 5, all the 70s western series, and 'Bewitched' and it's fellow comedies.

[andrewducker]

I'm going to assume that the Writers Guild of America aren't fans of JMS.

[abigail_n]

There are things to be said in favor of Babylon 5, but "best-written" is not one of them. That show had some of the most achingly terrible dialogue I've ever heard, and many of its plot twists were maudlin and unsubtle.

[cartesiandaemon]

What counts as writing? I agree with all of the things that were bad about B5. But the overall plot and the characters were great, do they count as writing?

[supergee]

I think I learned all the Occult Seekrits of the Neuroscientists from reading Robert Anton Wilson.

[del_c]

I think modern bridges are an unfair metaphor, as a comparison to programs. The modern bridge is such a stripped-down essence of form-as-function that almost any layman can see if a modern bridge is grossly bad at its function. But I suspect that less-obvious bodges really do get built into bridges, which most people don't notice as long as they work. A famous example would be the patch they "issued" for the Millennium Bridge's wobble.

[pozorvlak]

Yeah, I expect that other sorts of buildings are a better analogy.

[chess]

The $500k software engineer thing is a clear example of the Standard Method To Get Rich - get lucky. (If you have the resources to choose your circumstances you can put yourself in more situations in which it is possible to get lucky, but there is no way of guaranteeing you actually do so...)

[andrewducker]

Not _just_ lucky, you also have to have a certain level of smartness and willingness to take risks. But yeah, large chunks of luck, and the resources to survive while taking them.

[skington]

I suspect the "be smart and the world is your oyster" answer got up-voted by people who want it to be true, rather than people who know it to be true.

The other answers - "they know something and they're being paid golden handcuffs as a non-compete" - ring truer to me, but I can see why they got fewer votes.