If one defines gorgeousness as ease of grok, then gorgeousness directly contributes to the wellbeing of users through maximizing the technology's ability to quickly and effectively adapt to their needs as they arise. Agreed that it's a secondary concern to fulfilling the featureset.
Could definitely be true! I personally have a hard time imagining how code could be pleasing to the eyeballs by any other metric than how easy it is to understand.
IMO a clever one-liner or a hyper optimal routine that takes minutes of staring to decode isn't gorgeous, but you're certainly right that many would disagree with that. IMHO this philosophy runs directly contradictory to the one in which leaders empower those around them.
The spine is the central structural pillar of the body not only mechanically, but electrically as well. Messages are passed between body parts using electrical signals through nerve fibers, which run from the brain down through the spine branching out to the rest of the body. When these things get messed with, even a little bit, it creates enormous effects.
The spine is surrounded by a system of muscles, all of which work in concert to support your body as you put it through various positions and movements. Depending on how these things work together, certain areas of your body may experience more stress and strain and break down. Muscles become tight and overworked, soft tissue cushioning degrades, and nerves become pinched, stretched, or otherwise compromised.
The way that this manifests in any individual's body depends a ton on that unique individual. There is a bell curve distribution to the way that people's bodies work, but just like taking general technical advice and applying it to a specific problem without understanding what makes the advice applicable to a specific set of circumstances can have disastrous results, so too can it here. Taking general purpose mobility, posture, and injury prevention advice without understanding the mechanics of my body is actually what led to my back injury.
The mental factor of the condition is certainly the biggest hurdle. What helped me deal with two major herniations at L4-L5 and L5-S1 was becoming educated on not how all back pain works, but on how my specific back pain works. It makes you feel as if you own the injury, not like it owns you.
I'm not so sure it's quite that simple. I've got a prescription to amphetamine salts as well as a marijuana habit. And an injury rehab situation that requires I strengthen muscles I couldn't even consciously access and breathing engaging my diaphragm in a way I haven't since literal babyhood.
Marijuana drastically amplifies the nervous system signal through to my muscles, but I find I have to focus, otherwise I sort of just melt. Amphetamine drastically amplifies the signal as well, but I find I can't let it go unless I focus on relaxing. It very much feels like the interaction that's happening is how my conscious cognition can access the nervous system wires running throughout the body. It feels very possible that some forms of meditation may not necessarily be about utter quiet, but rather such focus that noise cannot exist.
Anecdotal stuff aside, many meditative practices require active engagement of muscles. Yoga is a big one.
I also went through physical therapy too. I hope you're past any pain and are doing well. I know how painful things can get.
>It feels very possible that some forms of meditation may not necessarily be about utter quiet, but rather such focus that noise cannot exist.
You might already know this, but meditation is about identifying when you are and are not in the present moment, be it quiet or not.
So utter quiet isn't necessary. There are thoughts in the present moment. The present moment is when you're aware of your chosen anchor, eg the breath. There are noises sometimes. One of the first kinds of meditation I did I was told to listen to the birds outside. If my mind started taking me away from the birds, I went back to listening to the birds. The goal of meditation is to identify this transition from the present moment to away from the present moment, and back.
There are many kinds of meditation, but usually when someone says meditation they mean concentration building types like Mindfulness Meditation, which deals with learning how to identify the present moment. Absolute quiet is a misunderstanding, though it is nice when camping.
In ancient eastern practices (where meditation comes from) there is the concept of a middle ground, which isn't moderation. It's basically: do what works best in that set and setting. If amphetamines work for you right now, then that is your middle ground, but know they will not always work on everyone the same way.
Eventually if you exercise your mind, like exercising a muscle, you will need less and less of the drugs you're taking to be able do what you want to do. I have ADHD and was amphetamines too, but after I started meditating for a while, my concentration jumped up and I ended up having to take less and less meds until I stopped taking them all together. Of course, I can still take them, but it's nice that meditation lets you hack your brain and change your mental state to what you want.
I am the seed for your budding frontend engineering squad. I have held many positions helping startups either spin up frontend engineering from scratch or transition it into something distinct as you scale up your currently-less-structured engineering team.
I am passionate about building out processes, architectures, and cultures all in support of achieving the maximum amount of growth for both businesses and all the people that constitute them. As an engineer, I specialize in laying architectures that support debt-free evolution no matter what pivots need to be made. As a person, I specialize in candor and authenticity and I connect very well with young people on a personal level.
Location: Austin, TX
Remote: yes (1+ years experience)
Willing to relocate: for the right thing
Technologies: JavaScript, HTML, CSS, React, Vue, etc (also Data Science B.S., plenty of full stack experience, plenty of cross functional product and design experience, etc)
Résumé/CV: https://www.linkedin.com/in/a-zhu
Email: adam@adamz.hu
You can cure these issues. Unless you suffered some sort of acute injury, have some sort of highly extenuating genetic circumstance, or your biology has expired, humans do not decay to a point beyond where they can grow back. I am certain that your circumstances are uniquely difficult, and that you are doing the work necessary to deal with them. Good luck.
I'm sorry you're going through this. The difficulty of severe, chronic, and mysterious pain is a very all-encompassing one. Find a good physical therapist. It absolutely does get better.
The body is a complex biological structure, and while it does have distinct parts, it is the holistic interaction of all of your skeletal, muscular, nervous, neurological, etc systems alongside the exterior physical demands you place on your body that produces your overall experience of it and physical therapists are the ones best trained to contextualize injuries and bodily disorders in this global manner.
As with diagnosis of a software system, it is difficult to find any objective definition of "this is what is causing the pain". Where the rubber is meeting the road is almost certainly nerves being pinched and tissue being overloaded. Much like patching a software bug at the surface level does not mitigate others like it arising, fixing these issues locally through massage, dry needling, nerve blocks, drugs, etc may not address the root of why they've arisen. Much like removing blocks from the bottom of a jenga tower affects how blocks at the top must be stacked to keep it upright, so too does a given local function affect function in other locales within the body as well as overall global function. Tightness can be caused by structural weakness elsewhere, and structural weakness can also be caused by tightness.
Much like software opinions, all of the treatment techniques people are describing in this thread are valid for certain use cases. Much like software opinions, choosing one without understanding what makes it applicable to a situation can have disastrous results. You need a good PT to help you know what makes any given technique a good idea and to point you in the right directions and to the right specialists.
Everyone's goals with treatment will be different as well. Perhaps you're only interested in not experiencing pain, and perhaps you're interested in being able to dunk a 20 foot rim and swimming the Atlantic ocean. In any case, the road to lasting health will be arduous. As a young person, please do anything you can to stave off surgery or anything that alters the structure of your body with any lever other than its own growth. The body does not decay nor produce random pains when properly cared for. Once you begin down the path of surgery you truly cannot turn back and outcomes are not good.
A good physical therapist is one that has the educational background to help you learn about your body, decide what paths are best to take, and engineer a strategy for you to take yourself down those paths. It's also vital that they are able to help you manage your attitude through it as well because they can't get you to health, they can only guide your will to get yourself to health. Unfortunately these types tend not to be the ones that accept insurance, but that produces a much better incentivizing feedback loop for them to deeply invest in getting you to health. These are the ones who have opted out of the standard accept-insurance-and-do-crazy-volume in favor of more personalized and rewarding work.
Good luck. It gets better. At 27 years old I herniated a few discs out of my back causing debilitating nerve pain that resulted in ~6 months of me needing help to get dressed and go to the bathroom all while furiously spinning wheels searching for a solution. Two years later and I'm much more informed about my body, well over the hump, and stronger than ever. No matter what your goals are with your body, you can and will get there.
This applies most if you're a single-ish young-ish person without a highly established personal life outside of work. IMO this is a good message to put out since that's a lot of the crowd being recruited for these positions. When you're in that spot in life you're trying to "figure it out", and the message that you'd be free of any ties to a physical office is pushed very romantically and can be very confusing for establishing an overall life for yourself. It's helpful to know the other side of the coin so young prospective employees can make the choice that's best for both employee and employer.
