Andy Weir: Your indomitable human spirit has gotten you far. Now in the face of overwhelming odds, you will need to show resilience and science the shit out of your situation.
Linus Torvalds: you take a week-long swing at a problem you find annoying, fascinating, or both. The result enjoys staggering worldwide success in the ensuing decades, despite being clearly outclassed by some alternative from the GNU project that, pinky promise, is coming out any day now.
Grace Hopper: BEGIN a framework that powers critical government functions, AND has secretly saved America from mass destruction time and again, only to be dunked on by Reddit for trivial matters of syntax END.
John Carmack: Doom, but better-looking.
Brendan Eich: you take a week-long swing at a problem your employer finds commercially compelling. The result enjoys staggering worldwide success in the ensuing decades, despite being clearly outclassed by the prior art it was supposed to build on.
Jack Woodford, a decent pulp writer in the first half of the 20th century who also wrote several books on writing and on how the publishing industry works, including "Trial and Error" in 1933 which Robert Heinlein and Ray Bradbury both cited as a major influence in getting their writing careers started, had a nice description of how to plot:
> Boy meets girl; girl gets boy into pickle; boy gets pickle into girl
Stephen King: A character wonders if, given all the suffering recently endured over the last few hundred pages, life is nonetheless still worth living. This character is killed by an entity which, despite all appearance and reputation, is permanently and inexplicably murderous.
caseyy ·54 seconds ago
riwsky ·2 hours ago
Linus Torvalds: you take a week-long swing at a problem you find annoying, fascinating, or both. The result enjoys staggering worldwide success in the ensuing decades, despite being clearly outclassed by some alternative from the GNU project that, pinky promise, is coming out any day now.
Grace Hopper: BEGIN a framework that powers critical government functions, AND has secretly saved America from mass destruction time and again, only to be dunked on by Reddit for trivial matters of syntax END.
John Carmack: Doom, but better-looking.
Brendan Eich: you take a week-long swing at a problem your employer finds commercially compelling. The result enjoys staggering worldwide success in the ensuing decades, despite being clearly outclassed by the prior art it was supposed to build on.
Show replies
tzs ·1 hours ago
> Boy meets girl; girl gets boy into pickle; boy gets pickle into girl
sramsay ·14 minutes ago
jkaptur ·4 hours ago