I worked at a web hosting company in Atlanta back in 2002, called Interland. In 2003 we purchased a company called Trellix which let you build websites through a web interface. I remember our first meeting with Trellix when some guy walked through the door to the conference room; t-shirt covered by a flannel, ripped jeans, Converse, long hair and beard. I was like, “holy sh*t, it’s Dan Bricklin!” He was great to work with. One of those rare times you meet someone who can be listed as a big contributor to your field of work.
I have a friend that is the drummer in a band that had a couple big hits in the 90’s, not going to drop names, but their contemporaries are bands like Collective Soul, Gin Blossoms, that kind of stuff. They have a few gold records. To this day they still tour every year and make enough money off touring and royalties to make a good living. I grew up on punk and thrash metal, so had never heard of his band, so it surprised me how close to 30 years later they still get booked at Disney and on rock cruises, but happy he still gets to keep doing that.
Once you get into a heart of a teen, you remain there for the rest of his life. Many bands well past their peak have a revival of private bookings now, as people who were teens back then become rich people who can book a band for a party.
Interestingly, when I was in school, we were taught that "he" could be used both for male or for gender-neutral usages.
The shift to treating he/him/his as exclusively male seems to be a fairly recent phenomenon (last few decades) as American social progressives sought to change language to be explicitly-inclusive instead of implicitly-inclusive and to avoid confusion due to the context-dependent dual meaning of such words.
1970s - "he" means everyone
1990s - "he/she" means everyone
2020s - "they" means everyone
this is also occurring in a tonne of european languages: german, french, spanish, italian, etc. it's progressives and people who care for others, not just americans.
as is well studies, we know very concretely how language and word usage influences thought (because it is thought, expressed)
As a musician myself, who has also brushed elbows in coming up amongst friends within the industry, one of the most vital skills a musician can learn is that avoiding overexposure is the key to long-term survival, just as much as making great music that endures... I know many artists that were very prominent years ago, but now can barely climb that hill again because of overexposure and huge re-marketing costs, coupled with an ageing fan base.
People who follow trends, and try to sound like others is definitely an indication that their career is short lived, but in this day and age, with the way social media promotion works, too many artists compete to constantly be on trending lists, and that easily burns out audiences on them and their names... It's relatively easy to "look popular" if you dump tons of money into music promotion, and labels love it when an artists dominates online, but that also makes them flood out everyone else, and even more important trending topics than music at times.
There can be a huge backlash for bought popularity, and for promoting yourself as more important than other vital topics people care about in their daily lives, as on social media, there is only one timeline and trending list for everything.
Absence can potentially make the heart grow fonder for listeners towards a music artist when well timed, especially if every time the artist re-emerges they put out consistently great music projects... Modern musicians need to learn how to share the microphone, and social media needs to create a more even playing field for multiple artists to coexist in over time, rather than pushing just 3-7 celebrity artists all of the time... That's the key to longer careers in music in my opinion.
Yeah, one of the things I didn't like about this analysis is that it really didn't do a very good job of differentiating between a band that really is a "one hit wonder" and a band that may only be in the top 40 for a short time but still has a dedicated following and is able to make a good, long career of it.
Take his "prototypical example" of Of Monsters and Men. I am glad that he did mention that the band "has enjoyed continued success since their 2012 breakout", but as a big fan of this band, I'd say they have a really dedicated following. I think in their case they were more of the "quirky band shoots has an immensely mainstream popular single, then goes back to being a quirky band, just with a much bigger following".
Rather than just look at placement in the top 40, which is only going to be songs that have wide applicability and are usually heavily promoted, I think it's more applicable to see how long these folks can have a career in music. As another example, think of someone like Andre 3000. Sure, he may never surpass his fame from Outkast's "Hey Ya" in 2003, but he's been working prominently for 30 years.
There's an entire industry supporting former short-run chart names touring - and often selling out - small/medium venues and playing smaller festivals, nostalgia cruises, and so on.
There's also an entire industry of cover bands and impersonators.
for me this hits hard. I've literally made most of my whole career off one famous song called "Do you like Pina Coladas" (but actually it's called "Escape"). A good number of people know the tune but few could tell you who made it :(
George Thorogood and the Destroyers and others like it are bands that put a lot of hard work into small venue touring but keep on performing into old age. Their big break came when they did their 50/50 in support of the Rolling Stones.
I may have put them in a rung higher than they are, since I didn’t listen to them back when they were big and touring, so I only know them more by who they tour with now, but his band is Sister Hazel.
I'm glad you said who they were. I think the example of Sister Hazel perfectly fits the example I gave in another comment: it wasn't the case with them that they were a one hit wonder that flamed out quickly, but rather that they were a good band that made a lot of music that a lot of people liked, and one of their songs just happened to be a big radio hit.
AFAIK they really only had one song that "everybody" knows, "All for You", that got a ton of airplay. But they still put out a lot of records, they had a good devoted fan base of high school/college kids in the late 90s, and AFAIK are well respected for their music in the industry. Glad to hear they're still performing.
Belatedly coming back to this, but thank you for sharing! I'd not heard that name in a loooonnnngggg time and am currently enjoying the trip down memory lane.
Are they Better Than some of these other bands? Any connection to Ezra Miller?
Why do I think they're Better Than Ezra? Or possibly Candlebox? That feels about right. Probably more Better Than Ezra because Candlebox feels a little out of the Mouse's wheelhouse.
I think if you look at some companies that have been around for a long time you’ll find quite a few older people that are still doing development. I just celebrated my 20th year being at the media company I work for. There are still a few developers here from back when I started.
I’m 52, been a professional developer close to 30 years. Quite a few developers I started off with back in the day are still doing development, but quite a few ended up going the management path. My old department head had me try out the managing architect role for a bit, but I hated it, so I went back to the technical side.
I’m in Atlanta, and can think of companies like Georgia Pacific, Synovous, Home Depot, Delta, Chic-fil-a, Coca Cola, UPS, and quite a few others having developers older than me or near my age still working there.
I’ve seen a lot of these lists lately, but this is the first one I can say I really agree with a lot of the points. I’ve been a professional developer close to 30 years, and have picked up a lot of these same lessons. I like lesson number 1, as I think sometime developers feel they need to come up with some clever way to stand out or show off and you learn over time that every line of code you write is a line of code that needs to be supported. Straight forward code may not show off your skills, but other team members and future developers will like it.
I was born in 1971, my first exposure to a computer was an Apple II running Logo in one of my gifted classes. I was hooked at that moment. My main hobby today at 52 is still coding. At work I am an analytics architect. Pretty much means I help design everything, but I also do a lot of the coding. I hate web development, especially the Angular/Typescript stuff we do, but I make up for it by doing my own thing (assembler and C) on my own stuff. I don’t think I’ll ever stop enjoying it.
As a quick follow up. When I started development professionally in 1996, it definitely wasn’t for money. My roommate who was a waitress in a nice restaurant here in Atlanta made twice what I brought home. I just loved that I went into work each day and got paid to solve problems. I see so many developers these days that are just in it for the money, and they’re really not enjoyable to work with.
I love Web Development and have been doing it for the past 20 years. Your post makes me wonder if in 20 more years I might still love web development but hate the new thing that will take over like web development did.
I wasn’t affected by the dot com bubble luckily. I worked for a consulting firm in Atlanta during that time, and we had an office in an incubator called TechNest. My boss lent us out to various people there. I worked with a guy that ran a company called Dot Com Graveyard. Basically helped him with the backend for his site that let people buy all the stuff like Herman Miller chairs and other dot com stuff he got from the failed companies. Also helped a few guys that got the remains of real estate.com get hooked up with Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac using Biz Talk Server as that is what they got with the deal of salvaging realestate.com. It was a decent time for consultants to help clean up the pieces from what I remember.
My grandfather was a medic and was part of the storm of Normandy beach on D-Day. He never really spoke of it and had a stroke and passed away before Saving Private Ryan came out. We wondered what he would have thought of the beginning of that movie, as someone who was there and was running around helping people the whole time.
My take is that Saving Private Ryan is "pro-war" movie like most Hollywood productions on the topic and not about 2WW really.
The give away is how the save Ryan squad seem to have agency and do like cool self-govern manouvers, like the storming of the 80mm AA gun hill, etc. More like a teenage boy fantasy. Band of Brothers is another good example of cool agency.
The opening assualt on the beach is some sort of low point for things to get better and under the protagonists' control.
A true to history version would be soldiers getting shrapnel wounds from indirect fire and being shot at by soldiers they can't see. Then they redo it somewhere else becouse someone said so.
Dad did not land at Normandy, but he was wounded during the Battle of the Bulge. He was hit by a ricochet in the neck. A relatively minor wound that if the bullet had hit him a little further to the left, would have killed him. He never saw his attacker. But as a radio operator he was specifically targeted by enemy soldiers.
> Then they redo it somewhere else becouse someone said so.
Yes. You follow orders when in the military. Freedom of movement is one of the things you give up when you join. Or are drafted.
> The give away is how the save Ryan squad seem to have agency
They had orders direct from General Marshall (Army Chief of Staff at the time) to go get Ryan. That gave them a ton of agency.
> A true to history version would be soldiers getting shrapnel wounds from indirect fire and being shot at by soldiers they can't see. Then they redo it somewhere else becouse someone said so.
No offense intended, but did you really watch Saving Private Ryan? Both of those things you mention occurred within the first 60 seconds of the start of the beach scene.
This take is baffling... in SPR the protagonists lose man after man over the course of the movie, right up until the end. A central theme is the irony and tragedy of how the mission to rescue a single man costs so many lives.
BoB was somewhat like that too. They lost "brothers" along the way. While there are heroic deeds along the way, it shows the sad realities of war as well.
> The point I am trying to make is that the opening is the 'low point' and then it becomes an action movie with the heroes in control.
To be quite candid, I did not appreciate the brutality of WW2 until I spent a few months a decade ago researching the progression of events from 1939 to 1945. I say this as someone who had a fairly decent exposure to WW2 (Gramps was a B29 bomber pilot). Even now, every time I do a little digging or reading about a certain WW2 event/battle/massacre, I am still left shocked by the absolute brutality that occurred on a large scale. Conflicts since WW2 have not approached the same level of killing intensity, thank god. Perhaps nuclear weapons are indeed proving to be the ultimate moderator of human conquest ambition.
Sorry for rambling a bit: Back to your quote about it being a hero action movie - in my opinion WW2 kinda was an action movie with many stories of heros who sacrificed themselves or risked their lives directly to save their buddies - on all sides. The reason we hear so many of these stories from that time period is due to the massive number of engagements and opportunities presented near daily for men to attempt extraordinary maneuvers (e.g. flank attacking an overwhelming force who has their squad pinned down).
Some of the stories you hear from WW2 are absolutely over the top insane (risky). You will never hear nearly as many "hero" stories these days in my opinion due to all professional militaries employing similar risk-mitigation strategies to avoid unnecessary losses. Times were different back then.
Just playing around with it with the remote they don’t have to be older than maybe in elementary school like my neighbors kid. If you mean assembly and doing some programming I would think middle school with an adults help for a few steps in assembly. Some of the toughest assembly is getting the wiring to go through to where everything can close properly, otherwise not too bad.
I have the authors Programming Atari 2600 Games and really enjoyed it. I started my professional programming career programming in Assembler on an OS/360 mainframe back in the mid 90s and it really helped me starting out at such a low level. It was enjoyable revisiting Assembler while going through his book.
