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mongodb 2.2.0 released
| my experience with mongodb hasn't been the most pleasant in a write-heavy environment. until they fix the write lock properly, mongodb is pretty much useless for many high throughput applications in my opinion...the new db level locking introduced in this release is a joke. there's not much difference between that and the old global write lock unless you split your database in dozens of smaller ones. what a pain. i wish they'd just stop pretending and addressed the issue properly once and for all.i really want to like and use mongodb because the way data is represented and how it can be queried is awesome. | awesome release,notes summary:• aggregation framework to fix some map-reduce woes.• ttl collections• db level locking (a step in the right direction)• better yielding on page faults• tag aware sharding (hell yes)• better read prefs• indexes now handled by mongodump/mongorestore• mongooplog replay is awesome for getting point in time backups• shell now has full unicode, multiline command history, $editor support (all from change to linenoise.c |
mongodb 2.2.0 released
| awesome release,notes summary:• aggregation framework to fix some map-reduce woes.• ttl collections• db level locking (a step in the right direction)• better yielding on page faults• tag aware sharding (hell yes)• better read prefs• indexes now handled by mongodump/mongorestore• mongooplog replay is awesome for getting point in time backups• shell now has full unicode, multiline command history, $editor support (all from change to linenoise.c | i've been playing around with the aggregation framework lately (using the release candidate). the performance seems to be pretty reasonable, especially when compared to similar tasks with the old mr framework. a quick and dirty benchmark number in case anyone is interested:* obligatory unscientific, probably not meaningful, etc. disclaimer.mongo version: 2.2.0-rc1hardware: mbp, snow leapord, 2.2 ghz intel core i7, 8 gb memdata: single collection with 500k records (machine generated time-series event data)query pipeline: [
{
$match: { ts: { $gte: 1293858000000, $lt: 1296536400000 } }
},
{
$group: {
_id: 'aggregations',
sum: { $sum: '$foo' },
num: { $sum: 1 },
avg: { $avg: '$bar' }
}
}
]
results: the time range matched against above matches 42,466 documents within the collection. the average response time over 50 runs is 419ms. not exactly "big data olap" stuff just yet, but plenty fast enough for most use cases involving reasonably small sets of data. great job to the mongodb team! |
mongodb 2.2.0 released
| i've been playing around with the aggregation framework lately (using the release candidate). the performance seems to be pretty reasonable, especially when compared to similar tasks with the old mr framework. a quick and dirty benchmark number in case anyone is interested:* obligatory unscientific, probably not meaningful, etc. disclaimer.mongo version: 2.2.0-rc1hardware: mbp, snow leapord, 2.2 ghz intel core i7, 8 gb memdata: single collection with 500k records (machine generated time-series event data)query pipeline: [
{
$match: { ts: { $gte: 1293858000000, $lt: 1296536400000 } }
},
{
$group: {
_id: 'aggregations',
sum: { $sum: '$foo' },
num: { $sum: 1 },
avg: { $avg: '$bar' }
}
}
]
results: the time range matched against above matches 42,466 documents within the collection. the average response time over 50 runs is 419ms. not exactly "big data olap" stuff just yet, but plenty fast enough for most use cases involving reasonably small sets of data. great job to the mongodb team! | release notes: <link> |
mongodb 2.2.0 released
| release notes: <link> | for startup projects i love mongo because we can get a product up and running very quickly. however i always feared in the back of my head we would have to move off of it if our service got too big. maybe it is all the complaints from a small portion of heavy users. regardless, big updates like this are going a long way to help make me feel content on continuing to use it as we grow. |
steve jobs' not-so-minimalist home office
| i don't know who this jobs character is, but he obviously doesn't know many of the 24 principles of maximum productivity or the 37 ways to unleash creative potential. he should probably spend more time reading articles about how to zen-up his workspace for maximum focus if he wants to get anything done. it doesn't even look like he owns a moleskine! how does he do mind-maps!? i mean seriously, steve, how do you expect to get twitter followers with that cluttered desk? | i'd like to see <link> (note: link doesn't work).anyone know how to get the setup (usesthis) an interview with steve jobs?the about page evens says: "despite appearances, the site is not actually sponsored by apple - people just seem to like using their tools. we're a fan, too." |
steve jobs' not-so-minimalist home office
| i'd like to see <link> (note: link doesn't work).anyone know how to get the setup (usesthis) an interview with steve jobs?the about page evens says: "despite appearances, the site is not actually sponsored by apple - people just seem to like using their tools. we're a fan, too." | that office is pretty minimalist!it only looks busy because of the clutter which is not part of the office design so much as just some stuff he hasn't found time to clean up.the clutter is all temporary stuff for work, not permanent features of the office. |
steve jobs' not-so-minimalist home office
| that office is pretty minimalist!it only looks busy because of the clutter which is not part of the office design so much as just some stuff he hasn't found time to clean up.the clutter is all temporary stuff for work, not permanent features of the office. | link to the actual picture collection:<link> |
steve jobs' not-so-minimalist home office
| link to the actual picture collection:<link> | actually his house, as presented on allaboutstevejobs.com, is very rustic and far away from apple's clean industrial design. i'm actually surprised to find that kind of home in palo alto: i'd expect this in normandy, not around here :)from that website too: the last picture of this set <link> shows that his home office hasn't changed much in many many years based on the huge laptop he's using. |
not eating lunch with your team every day? you're missing out.
| i enjoy eating alone - because i can listen to podcasts, catch up on life todos, or squeeze in some exercise.i also don't like to be subjected to forced meal decisions. some days i want a light salad type meal. some winter days i may be a little down and treat myself to a burger and fries.i'm glad i work at a place that doesn't judge me for disappearing at lunch time. | not vacationing with your team every holiday? you're missing out.not living with your coworkers? you're missing out.and so on. the atmosphere described in this article seems stifling, almost like a religious service. that doesn't sound like a good way to foster spontaneous interactions. as others have commented, provide an optional lunch that is not mandated, isn't expected, and where people who don't participate are not ostracized. then get out of the way.the only exception i can see is for smaller teams where, for planning purposes, indicating that you'll participate would help with ordering the right amount/type of food. |
not eating lunch with your team every day? you're missing out.
| not vacationing with your team every holiday? you're missing out.not living with your coworkers? you're missing out.and so on. the atmosphere described in this article seems stifling, almost like a religious service. that doesn't sound like a good way to foster spontaneous interactions. as others have commented, provide an optional lunch that is not mandated, isn't expected, and where people who don't participate are not ostracized. then get out of the way.the only exception i can see is for smaller teams where, for planning purposes, indicating that you'll participate would help with ordering the right amount/type of food. | i think that making it possible, and encouraging it, is great.just don't make people feel bad if they decide to spend their lunch time dealing with groceries, paying bills, or going for a walk in the sun. |
not eating lunch with your team every day? you're missing out.
| i think that making it possible, and encouraging it, is great.just don't make people feel bad if they decide to spend their lunch time dealing with groceries, paying bills, or going for a walk in the sun. | i go home for lunch every day. i like having an hour to do whatever or take care of errands in the middle of the day, and i like breaking up the work day into chunks. |
not eating lunch with your team every day? you're missing out.
| i go home for lunch every day. i like having an hour to do whatever or take care of errands in the middle of the day, and i like breaking up the work day into chunks. | the thing you have to be careful about is artificially creating this kind of bonding. if a company gives you opportunity to bond with your colleagues, that's a great thing. however, some people feel as though a team just isn't a team unless they're eating lunch every day together and everybody loves everyone's company enough to do so. |
markdown: the spec - it's coming and it's full of personalities
| as gruber said:2 if you liked the original, which i created dictatorially, what makes you think you’d like a sequel from by a committee?what dictator ever accepted that a group of people could do a better job?the best thing for this new effort is to now embrace the new name (tentatively rockdown), create the test suite and move on.markdown becomes one of the influencers in the footnotes, and hopefully we all get a highly consistent and implementable syntax and set of parsers that we can use.my hope is that the "committee" isn't open to anyone joining it, or open to too much external influence. dgreensp (from meteor) seemed to hope that too, and was reaching out to just the right people who could make a difference and whose views were valuable.it's a shame jeff felt the need to create such a spectacle when this could've just been presented fait accompli without having such a distracting spectacle.dgreensp had it right though, but just didn't account for jeff's character (although he clearly did account for gruber's by not cc'ing him originally). here's hoping that he now ignores both of them and pushes forward anyway.consistent tests that lead to consistent and implementable parsers... these are good goals.if markdown has to have a 5% change in it's dna to make this work, then this is also a good thing.i hope dgreensp isn't feeling too disheartened by the clash of personalities of gruber and jeff. | sorry, creator and maintainer of marked here ( <link> ). is a repo for this spec up on github yet? i have a few obscure cases across multiple markdown engines that i've documented over the past year or so. are only the top dogs (reddit, stack, github, etc) invited to join the development? a spec for markdown should be more than just what features are included (gfm tables, code fences, etc).i hope development of this spec will be perpetual, similar to the whatwg's html(5), if it happens at all. i've been dealing with markdown edge cases for more than a year now and i'm always finding new things i missed. it's really amazing how markdown is just a giant string of special cases and exceptions (this is probably due to the way it was initially written). the post by jeff atwood lead me to believe it's supposed to be geared more toward features as opposed to exact specifications. (i could be wrong about this).although i agree gruber seemed kind of impolite and dismissive here, i think we should take things slow, and not rush into making a "spec" right away. the closest thing there has ever been to a markdown spec was gruber's original test suite (on top of the markdown docs). it is actually kind of hard to track down since you can't find it on his website (i don't think i saw it mentioned in these articles either). my test suite is based on a fork of it ( <link> ). that test suite covers no where near enough to demonstrate everything. i have a feeling this spec would take a long time to complete, especially if it's including more compex features like gfm tables and whatnot. there will also probably be a ton of arguing over which features should be included. |
markdown: the spec - it's coming and it's full of personalities
| sorry, creator and maintainer of marked here ( <link> ). is a repo for this spec up on github yet? i have a few obscure cases across multiple markdown engines that i've documented over the past year or so. are only the top dogs (reddit, stack, github, etc) invited to join the development? a spec for markdown should be more than just what features are included (gfm tables, code fences, etc).i hope development of this spec will be perpetual, similar to the whatwg's html(5), if it happens at all. i've been dealing with markdown edge cases for more than a year now and i'm always finding new things i missed. it's really amazing how markdown is just a giant string of special cases and exceptions (this is probably due to the way it was initially written). the post by jeff atwood lead me to believe it's supposed to be geared more toward features as opposed to exact specifications. (i could be wrong about this).although i agree gruber seemed kind of impolite and dismissive here, i think we should take things slow, and not rush into making a "spec" right away. the closest thing there has ever been to a markdown spec was gruber's original test suite (on top of the markdown docs). it is actually kind of hard to track down since you can't find it on his website (i don't think i saw it mentioned in these articles either). my test suite is based on a fork of it ( <link> ). that test suite covers no where near enough to demonstrate everything. i have a feeling this spec would take a long time to complete, especially if it's including more compex features like gfm tables and whatnot. there will also probably be a ton of arguing over which features should be included. | wow. i think that atwood’s proposal was an honest and good move, and a needed one. if gruber feels like someone is twisting his hands by asking publicly, why not say so in a decent, grown-up manner? “ok, this makes sense, but i would have preferred you to write in private and not force me by writing an open letter.”it’s a shame that so many technologies get shaped by egos instead of rational thinking. good engineers should know better than that. if someone thinks the proposal for a spec plus a test suite is somehow technically flawed, say so and state the reasons. if not, let’s put the egos aside, take an extra dose of tolerance and work towards a common goal. |
markdown: the spec - it's coming and it's full of personalities
| wow. i think that atwood’s proposal was an honest and good move, and a needed one. if gruber feels like someone is twisting his hands by asking publicly, why not say so in a decent, grown-up manner? “ok, this makes sense, but i would have preferred you to write in private and not force me by writing an open letter.”it’s a shame that so many technologies get shaped by egos instead of rational thinking. good engineers should know better than that. if someone thinks the proposal for a spec plus a test suite is somehow technically flawed, say so and state the reasons. if not, let’s put the egos aside, take an extra dose of tolerance and work towards a common goal. | the spec. the spectacle. this fall, only on twitter!i see the assertion that:2mmd has a very clear specification. it also has an openly available test suite.but the specification link goes to the help page [1] which as far as i can tell has no spec, just links to descriptions (gruber's canonical blog post) and examples. is there an actual spec for mmd, or are they claiming examples are specs?[1]: <link> |
markdown: the spec - it's coming and it's full of personalities
| the spec. the spectacle. this fall, only on twitter!i see the assertion that:2mmd has a very clear specification. it also has an openly available test suite.but the specification link goes to the help page [1] which as far as i can tell has no spec, just links to descriptions (gruber's canonical blog post) and examples. is there an actual spec for mmd, or are they claiming examples are specs?[1]: <link> | 2 on macdrifter gabe weatherhead said:
2
2 2 nowhere does he mention mmd and it seems very unlikely that he does not know about it. [<link>]wow. just because there’s a stack overflow tag for it doesn’t mean that jeff knows about it. it’s a community-driven site. |
sequoia capital's redesigned website: a search bar
| this is possibly the most unusable website i have ever seen. i can't even get to an "about" page. it keeps sending me to a chinese version of the site. | search is a very crowded space. and someone should ask sequoia what would prevent google from doing this?i don't think this is a defensible model. i think i'm going to pass. |
sequoia capital's redesigned website: a search bar
| search is a very crowded space. and someone should ask sequoia what would prevent google from doing this?i don't think this is a defensible model. i think i'm going to pass. | they have obviously reached the point where their reputation exceeds their accessibility.i had to design a website for a law firm that deals exclusively with high net worth clients. they need to be accessible but they do not wish to be approached by 99% of the population. it's a difficult balancing act. |
sequoia capital's redesigned website: a search bar
| they have obviously reached the point where their reputation exceeds their accessibility.i had to design a website for a law firm that deals exclusively with high net worth clients. they need to be accessible but they do not wish to be approached by 99% of the population. it's a difficult balancing act. | i guess their target audience is simply anyone who manages to find what they need to find and do what they need to do on the site, but still...pretty weird. i'd love to know why they did it? how does making their website into a search engine look-alike help them or their brand? |
sequoia capital's redesigned website: a search bar
| i guess their target audience is simply anyone who manages to find what they need to find and do what they need to do on the site, but still...pretty weird. i'd love to know why they did it? how does making their website into a search engine look-alike help them or their brand? | sequoia's new an experiment to dissuade the technically challenged.i suspect that they will change their website back to something more useable in a week or so. |
why vertical farms are a crock.
| farmland isn't just a place to put some plants while they grow. a farm is a giant solar power facility, one that converts solar energy, carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrate. monbiot doesn't stress the point enough - it's all about light.when we say that we have a shortage of farmland, what we mean in practical terms is that we have a shortage of flat areas with good drainage to function as solar collectors. going vertical doesn't increase the amount of light you can gather, so it doesn't increase the amount of food you can produce.vertical farming is only remotely feasible if we see the cost of energy fall ten-thousand fold. that's only likely if we crack nuclear fusion. of course, such an abundance of energy would render any worries about food production moot.unfortunately, we appear to live in a world where supposedly educated adults are unfamiliar with such advanced scientific concepts as photosynthesis. | as important as the specific theme (vertical farms are a crock) was this line, "magical thinking is a universal affliction. we see what we want to see, deny what we don’t. confronted by uncomfortable facts, we burrow back into the darkness of our cherished beliefs. we will do almost anything – cheat, lie, stand for high office, go to war – to shut out challenges to the way we see the world."so many of the inane approaches to solving some of our economic and environmental challenges make absolutely no sense, have almost completely consensus that they violate laws of physics, and quite often result in net-negative results. "local growing", except as a hobby, is one of those insane ideas that seems to be underlying the silly "vertical farms" concept. (<link>, if there is government funding, the fact that an idea makes no economic sense doesn't mean it won't be pursued. there may be peripheral advantages or developments in technology that take place, while we tilt at these windmills.so - i say let's build a couple of these vertical farms, see what we discover, do the math and realize it will never make sense, and maybe discover something else that we never even considered! |
why vertical farms are a crock.
| as important as the specific theme (vertical farms are a crock) was this line, "magical thinking is a universal affliction. we see what we want to see, deny what we don’t. confronted by uncomfortable facts, we burrow back into the darkness of our cherished beliefs. we will do almost anything – cheat, lie, stand for high office, go to war – to shut out challenges to the way we see the world."so many of the inane approaches to solving some of our economic and environmental challenges make absolutely no sense, have almost completely consensus that they violate laws of physics, and quite often result in net-negative results. "local growing", except as a hobby, is one of those insane ideas that seems to be underlying the silly "vertical farms" concept. (<link>, if there is government funding, the fact that an idea makes no economic sense doesn't mean it won't be pursued. there may be peripheral advantages or developments in technology that take place, while we tilt at these windmills.so - i say let's build a couple of these vertical farms, see what we discover, do the math and realize it will never make sense, and maybe discover something else that we never even considered! | vertical farms are a crock because transport of crops is easy. moving people is much harder. this is why economic centers are densely populated, but can still eat food shipped from 1000 miles away. there is no reason to spend millions to build vertically when you can buy cheap land and transport the products to the most profitable markets on demand. |
why vertical farms are a crock.
| vertical farms are a crock because transport of crops is easy. moving people is much harder. this is why economic centers are densely populated, but can still eat food shipped from 1000 miles away. there is no reason to spend millions to build vertically when you can buy cheap land and transport the products to the most profitable markets on demand. | i have to admit to being astonished that there was a need in the first place to explain that vertical farms are a crock[1].the long list of articles from prominent news sources was actually rather sad.[1] the question how do you propose to grow over a thousand bucks worth of wheat each month in your tiny apartment? comes to mind. |
why vertical farms are a crock.
| i have to admit to being astonished that there was a need in the first place to explain that vertical farms are a crock[1].the long list of articles from prominent news sources was actually rather sad.[1] the question how do you propose to grow over a thousand bucks worth of wheat each month in your tiny apartment? comes to mind. | while george monbiot is often wrong about a lot of things, it's nice to see him being right in comparison to someone even wronger than he is.a quick calculation: the total floor area of the empire state building is 63 acres. you can do your own calculations for the cost of building the empire state building vs the cost of buying 63 acres of land (which, incidentally, gets light) in upstate new york, but i'm pretty sure that one is much, much, much larger than the other. |
show hn: 1 weekend, 1 developer – validating an idea and taking a break
| i know it's common to start projects and never finish. i’ve started tons of them: mobile apps, games, web apps, etc. every once in awhile, for some unexplained reason i’ll finish what i started. the success is small but incremental. i don’t exactly know what it is that makes someone finish what he or she started, but i guess if we did then things would be different.i’ve been working on a mobile app for months now. it’s one of those apps that i know i’ll finish, but i wanted to take a break and try something different. so last weekend, i set a goal. i’ll give myself the weekend, from friday to sunday night, to make a micro game. a small game is something i can complete, and i did complete it. i also had a lot of fun in the process. i knew i was rushed, but i had a goal, and i could see the end.the game is out, it’s up, and it’s free on the app store. it’s not doing great as far as downloads go, but that’s ok. i’m totally feeling rewarded for my efforts. i’ve gotten some feedback from friends, and i really enjoy seeing their reactions when they play the game.now, i’m more charged and ready to finish my big app. i remember what it feels like again to put something out there, and i like it.just wanted to share,jon | in my opinion this hits all the right notes to become an painfully addictive game - punishing hit detection, no recovery from a slight mis-step, death (and "next screen") animations that are just long enough to be frustrating after you die without doing any terrible psychological damage :) these are all compliments btw, you've made a spiritual successor to flappy birds and i'm sort of hooked. |
show hn: 1 weekend, 1 developer – validating an idea and taking a break
| in my opinion this hits all the right notes to become an painfully addictive game - punishing hit detection, no recovery from a slight mis-step, death (and "next screen") animations that are just long enough to be frustrating after you die without doing any terrible psychological damage :) these are all compliments btw, you've made a spiritual successor to flappy birds and i'm sort of hooked. | does anyone else think that this flappy type craze is going to help non-gamers come more and more into challenging games?like i've seen people playing more and more games in the last five years. i wonder if the tides are changing. |
show hn: 1 weekend, 1 developer – validating an idea and taking a break
| does anyone else think that this flappy type craze is going to help non-gamers come more and more into challenging games?like i've seen people playing more and more games in the last five years. i wonder if the tides are changing. | good work. bit too fast for my old brain though.one small piece of constructive criticism - the "leaderboard" link is right where i was tapping to restart and that got very annoying very quickly. perhaps move it to a corner? |
show hn: 1 weekend, 1 developer – validating an idea and taking a break
| good work. bit too fast for my old brain though.one small piece of constructive criticism - the "leaderboard" link is right where i was tapping to restart and that got very annoying very quickly. perhaps move it to a corner? | i can't figure out how to play. i just smash into the first thing immediately. i gave it 10 tries.generally i'm pretty bad at games. i never got past the 2nd pipe in flappy bird. |
from cincinnati to silicon valley, dotloop ceo explains his move
| i'm never going to speak negatively about any employer, but, as much as people are crying foul about the editing of the video, what you see in the video is very analogous to the type of person that austin is in real life. austin appears to be very appearance driven -- both in terms of dotloop's public perception as well as in his persona -- and this video is a great extension of his character. i've been watching the comments on gigom, and most of them are really spot on based on my experiences with the company.matt (who is a co-founder and cto) is a brilliant technologist. i have some severe issues with brian (imagine that?!), but, the team in cincinnati is driven (they were on a death march since mid janurary for their new product, and pulled it out even with the mental burnout involved) and i have all the confidence and faith that they will continue to thrive even though they are now maintaining two different code bases with their new release.dotloop has always had a problem finding talent in cincinnati (they hired me through a recruiter). there was an issue with culture when i was there, but the location of the office, environment, and management play into it. i don't expect that to change -- and if this video was around when i was looking for a new job, it would have striken dotloop off of my list rather quickly -- and as much as i'd like to think that this will change with offices in silicon valley and austin (based on their jobs page), unless they make some rather major management changes, (move away from a mba/management driven structure to an engineering driven structure), i don't see dotloop attracting the type of talent that they're looking for.the product is excellent for the market -- it's simple to use, and well suited for their client base, and i wish them the best. | we're not sf. we'll never be sf and that's just fine. we have a vibrant and enthusiastic tech community here in cincinnati. we have a great city that's doing all the right things to attract and retain talent, too.if there's one thing we're doing poorly, it's making those points known. after queen city merge, we started working on made in cincy to create a unified presence of tech startups, agencies and individuals. we're out here, doing good work every day. |
from cincinnati to silicon valley, dotloop ceo explains his move
| we're not sf. we'll never be sf and that's just fine. we have a vibrant and enthusiastic tech community here in cincinnati. we have a great city that's doing all the right things to attract and retain talent, too.if there's one thing we're doing poorly, it's making those points known. after queen city merge, we started working on made in cincy to create a unified presence of tech startups, agencies and individuals. we're out here, doing good work every day. | i get shit all the time from my friends for not living in sf. i stopped worrying so much when i realized most of the companies i look up to aren't even there (balsamiq, 37signals, mailchimp, to name a few). to be clear, i love sf, but i just don't feel like moving. on the flipside, i really cringe when people get defensive about their location. really, we are all connected, through the power of the internet. |
from cincinnati to silicon valley, dotloop ceo explains his move
| i get shit all the time from my friends for not living in sf. i stopped worrying so much when i realized most of the companies i look up to aren't even there (balsamiq, 37signals, mailchimp, to name a few). to be clear, i love sf, but i just don't feel like moving. on the flipside, i really cringe when people get defensive about their location. really, we are all connected, through the power of the internet. | i grew up in cincinnati (20 years) before moving to the valley. what he says is generally true.obviously success doesn't hinge on location but if i had it to do all over again i'd have moved out here for my first startup in the early 2000s. i'm here for my second startup and the serendipitous opportunities are frequent and priceless.i know people get defensive and he does sort of take a few jabs at cincinnati (probably a dumb move on his part) but in the end much of it is true.edit: added more content. |
from cincinnati to silicon valley, dotloop ceo explains his move
| i grew up in cincinnati (20 years) before moving to the valley. what he says is generally true.obviously success doesn't hinge on location but if i had it to do all over again i'd have moved out here for my first startup in the early 2000s. i'm here for my second startup and the serendipitous opportunities are frequent and priceless.i know people get defensive and he does sort of take a few jabs at cincinnati (probably a dumb move on his part) but in the end much of it is true.edit: added more content. | what a jerk! cincinnati is a great place to have a startup. |
a ladycoders attendee: learning to code isn't enough to get the job
| "learning to code" feels like a very amorphous and vague notion. does it mean knowing iterators and for-loops? integrating 2 web apis? building a compiler?speaking for myself : i know how to code, in the sense that i know how to write computer programs. however, it's certainly not enough to get hired as a computer programmer. the problem isn't my lack of presentation, it's a lack of knowledge. this may be the case for others as well. | the reason i posted this was to show that the people who want and need to come to our seminars are people who already know how to code, but don't know how to get jobs in tech.you can learn about our seminars here: <link> can register for seminars here: <link> can also see some of the nice and nasty things people have said about us here:huffington post: <link> radio: <link> here: <link> |
a ladycoders attendee: learning to code isn't enough to get the job
| the reason i posted this was to show that the people who want and need to come to our seminars are people who already know how to code, but don't know how to get jobs in tech.you can learn about our seminars here: <link> can register for seminars here: <link> can also see some of the nice and nasty things people have said about us here:huffington post: <link> radio: <link> here: <link> | this is a great story by one of our attendees talking about how learning to code wasn't enough to help her actually get jobs. she still had to learn to speak confidently about her skills. |
a ladycoders attendee: learning to code isn't enough to get the job
| this is a great story by one of our attendees talking about how learning to code wasn't enough to help her actually get jobs. she still had to learn to speak confidently about her skills. | great to see ladycoders getting more attention here on hn. from my time working with awesome women in startups and in a big tech shop it seemed like this was always a challenge given social norms. that's why i backed ladycoders on kickstarter and i can't wait to see how they keep growing. |
a ladycoders attendee: learning to code isn't enough to get the job
| great to see ladycoders getting more attention here on hn. from my time working with awesome women in startups and in a big tech shop it seemed like this was always a challenge given social norms. that's why i backed ladycoders on kickstarter and i can't wait to see how they keep growing. | i wish this article mentioned more information about ladycoders. i feel like it lead up to the point "go to a ladycoders seminar" without explaining much about what ladycoders is. guess i'll just have to do my own research. |
microsoft opens its own social network
| this is a research project out of msr, not a product out of microsoft proper. i'm still not exactly sure what it is that they're researching ("social search"? ¯\(°_o)/¯), but it does make a lot more sense as an off-the-wall experiment than a finished corporate product.<link> socl is a research project from microsoft research fuse labs... | why do one thing well, when you can do many things with tepid mediocrity?look what's happening to microsoft's core business:<link> you won me over cooldeal. (robotic voice) clippy is better than google now. i will start using bing. |
microsoft opens its own social network
| why do one thing well, when you can do many things with tepid mediocrity?look what's happening to microsoft's core business:<link> you won me over cooldeal. (robotic voice) clippy is better than google now. i will start using bing. | don't they already have a social network with xbox live, etc... seems like building off of that more would be the right move. |
microsoft opens its own social network
| don't they already have a social network with xbox live, etc... seems like building off of that more would be the right move. | hn conversation when they released the beta: <link> |
microsoft opens its own social network
| hn conversation when they released the beta: <link> | another "me-too" product from a once innovative tech titan (yes they still do innovate - just not on this). |
there's no such thing as a free launch
| "once we have a healthy flow of traffic we intend to lay down a few ground rules to help increase the overall standard of jobs that appear on the site."that statement does seem a little worrying to me. i know it's a chicken-and-egg problem, but how will you keep building traffic unless the quality really is very good?and if anything, it will be easier to enforce that now than later. the site does seem to have a good number of jobs for being so young already, but it's still at a nice level where you can manually screen every application.maybe one way to separate jobs from ownership stakes would be another tab in the "browse" section for "equity"? in the same way that a job can be both freelance 8 remote friendly, this could be a good way to keep certain jobs separate?enforcing quality is the best way to stand out i think; there are hundreds of job boards out there.one thing i like about yours already is that quite a few specify the salary range. that's the sort of information that makes it higher quality to me. | jon, steve's co-founder here and the development side of things.always interested in hearing any feedback, good or bad, so have at it! |
there's no such thing as a free launch
| jon, steve's co-founder here and the development side of things.always interested in hearing any feedback, good or bad, so have at it! | imagine a web plugin called "ban hammer" where you can go around banning other people's content! the hn community would go nuts. woo hoo! |
there's no such thing as a free launch
| imagine a web plugin called "ban hammer" where you can go around banning other people's content! the hn community would go nuts. woo hoo! | you've done a good job with the design component of the site. it's simple and uncluttered and your choice of using just a couple of colors leads the eye quickly to the important bits of information and the action buttons. as the features grow, keep to that standard as much as possible. it'd be a shame to see that spartan effectiveness replaced by lots of filter fields and buttons and options that just become confusing overkill. |
there's no such thing as a free launch
| you've done a good job with the design component of the site. it's simple and uncluttered and your choice of using just a couple of colors leads the eye quickly to the important bits of information and the action buttons. as the features grow, keep to that standard as much as possible. it'd be a shame to see that spartan effectiveness replaced by lots of filter fields and buttons and options that just become confusing overkill. | looks good.
it will probably never happen, but i would love to see a job board that had the employer rate the quality of candidate they are looking for and (using the same scale) the salary. something like this:applicant quality: top 50% 25% 10% 5% 1% 0.5%salary for this pos: top 50% 25% 10% 5% 1% 0.5%in short, it would be great to call out those companies that want employees in the top 1% but are only willing to pay in the top 50% |
freelancer.com is destroying my life
| in the future, you should stop using freelancer sites, because the customers on them are substantially worse than you'd get otherwise. you will also want to note that not getting paid on time is actually quite common in freelancing. this is one of the reasons why, in the future, you will charge a lot more than you currently do, because you need to essentially self-insure against nonpayment in a way that w-2 employees mostly do not.more immediately useful to you: you currently have a receivable against freelancer. that receivable has value and can be sold or borrowed against. the terms you get for it would typically not be that great, because they have to factor in both risk of non-collection and the costs of doing business in comparatively small dollar amounts. still, that's likely the easiest option to make cash appear on monday, unless you have consumer credit you didn't mention. (get it if you don't, after passing the immediate issue. cash flow issues happen frequently and consumer credit is often the cheapest remedy for solo freelancers.)the magic word for selling receivables is "factoring." | i feel for the guy, and freelancer.com seem to have terrible, appalling customer service. but this brings up another point, which is that freelancing often isn't a good way to get money quickly. you can't live paycheck to paycheck freelancing.your clients will pay you late. they'll pay you the wrong amount. your freelancing agency will delay the payment. you'll get a check, but it'll bounce. it would not be unusual when freelancing to start receiving your money for a gig two months after you started it (30 days for your client to pay your agency, 30 days for your agency to pay you).freelancing and needing money fast are, in my experience, mutually exclusive. one of the (many) reasons a freelancer charges a comparatively higher day rate than his or her salaried counterpart is there's risk involved with freelancing. if a company fails to pay their full-time, salaried employees at the end of the month it's a big deal. if a company fails to pay their freelancers on time...that's not out of the ordinary. |
freelancer.com is destroying my life
| i feel for the guy, and freelancer.com seem to have terrible, appalling customer service. but this brings up another point, which is that freelancing often isn't a good way to get money quickly. you can't live paycheck to paycheck freelancing.your clients will pay you late. they'll pay you the wrong amount. your freelancing agency will delay the payment. you'll get a check, but it'll bounce. it would not be unusual when freelancing to start receiving your money for a gig two months after you started it (30 days for your client to pay your agency, 30 days for your agency to pay you).freelancing and needing money fast are, in my experience, mutually exclusive. one of the (many) reasons a freelancer charges a comparatively higher day rate than his or her salaried counterpart is there's risk involved with freelancing. if a company fails to pay their full-time, salaried employees at the end of the month it's a big deal. if a company fails to pay their freelancers on time...that's not out of the ordinary. | helloi am the chief executive officer of freelancer.com and i have personally investigated this situation.while i sympathise with dustin's situation, he has failed to complete our know your customer (kyc) process, which involves the provision of bona fide photo identification. we take the security of our marketplace and the protection of our users very seriously and have robust checks and balances in our anti-fraud procedures.i have looked at all the details for this case, and our support team have done exactly the right thing in this instance.we have decided to refund all funds associated with the project back to the employer's credit card (who is also located nearby in new york) as well as all fees associated with this. the employer has been called and informed that he will need to pay dustin directly.we will also be investigating the nature of this project further.thank you also to those of you that took the time to email me to bring this personally to my attention. my email address is [email protected] and i am happy to receive emails about any issue, even if it is to just drop me a note saying hello.regards
mattedit: let me add that we accept driver's licenses as identification: <link> |
freelancer.com is destroying my life
| helloi am the chief executive officer of freelancer.com and i have personally investigated this situation.while i sympathise with dustin's situation, he has failed to complete our know your customer (kyc) process, which involves the provision of bona fide photo identification. we take the security of our marketplace and the protection of our users very seriously and have robust checks and balances in our anti-fraud procedures.i have looked at all the details for this case, and our support team have done exactly the right thing in this instance.we have decided to refund all funds associated with the project back to the employer's credit card (who is also located nearby in new york) as well as all fees associated with this. the employer has been called and informed that he will need to pay dustin directly.we will also be investigating the nature of this project further.thank you also to those of you that took the time to email me to bring this personally to my attention. my email address is [email protected] and i am happy to receive emails about any issue, even if it is to just drop me a note saying hello.regards
mattedit: let me add that we accept driver's licenses as identification: <link> | contact freelancer's ceo. it won't hurt to try, i guess...ceo, matt barrie email: [email protected] low twitter.com/@alaisterlow
director of customer experience @freelancer.com:
[email protected] dp forum post says they received an email from the ceo after many unsuccessful tickets from customer service: <link> |
freelancer.com is destroying my life
| contact freelancer's ceo. it won't hurt to try, i guess...ceo, matt barrie email: [email protected] low twitter.com/@alaisterlow
director of customer experience @freelancer.com:
[email protected] dp forum post says they received an email from the ceo after many unsuccessful tickets from customer service: <link> | two thoughts on this:1. any time you're in business for yourself and you don't have a buffer, you're basically out of business. (i keep re-learning this one.)2. using a site like this turns you into a commodity. it's structured to be a race to the bottom. there is no substitute for finding your own clients and building relationships with them. that's hard to do and takes time and energy. see #1. |
ask hn: will dropbox sue me?
i'm looking to create a music streaming service to be used with dropbox. basically a lightweight music library manager. if i create such a service and called it dropbox tunes, or droptunes for example, would and could they sue the pants off me for copyright infringment? or would this be seen as okay as it's not really competing with them, it's just to compliment their product.<p>any thoughts?<p>thanks. | i don't want to sound glib or anything, but here's a thought... why not call them up and ask them? companies aren't just nameless, faceless entities sitting out there waiting to sue the pants off of people. they have people, people you can call and talk to and negotiate with, etc. find a contact there, and see if you can get somebody to introduce you to them. failing that, cold call them and explain what you're doing and see where they stand.who knows, best case maybe they say "sure, you can call it dropbox tunes, but you'll have to license our trademark from us. since your thing is complementary, we'll license it to you for $1.00 / year" or something. worst case, they say "hell no, if you do anything like that we're suing your ass into the ground". well, at least now you know, right? | take a look at the branding guidelines for developers."your app's name shouldn't include the word dropbox or be similar to dropbox in either sound or spelling. do not prefix your app name with "drop.""<link> and branding guidelines, if you wanted to use the dropbox logo.<link> |
ask hn: will dropbox sue me?
i'm looking to create a music streaming service to be used with dropbox. basically a lightweight music library manager. if i create such a service and called it dropbox tunes, or droptunes for example, would and could they sue the pants off me for copyright infringment? or would this be seen as okay as it's not really competing with them, it's just to compliment their product.<p>any thoughts?<p>thanks. | take a look at the branding guidelines for developers."your app's name shouldn't include the word dropbox or be similar to dropbox in either sound or spelling. do not prefix your app name with "drop.""<link> and branding guidelines, if you wanted to use the dropbox logo.<link> | briefly: dropbox will screw you if they think there's even the slightest chance that your project will offend big media. google what they did to boxopus. my letter to them on the topic is here: <link> |
ask hn: will dropbox sue me?
i'm looking to create a music streaming service to be used with dropbox. basically a lightweight music library manager. if i create such a service and called it dropbox tunes, or droptunes for example, would and could they sue the pants off me for copyright infringment? or would this be seen as okay as it's not really competing with them, it's just to compliment their product.<p>any thoughts?<p>thanks. | briefly: dropbox will screw you if they think there's even the slightest chance that your project will offend big media. google what they did to boxopus. my letter to them on the topic is here: <link> | referring to a drop box and the dropbox are different things. anyway, cloud is an accepted term and lets you do live mesh, mozy and others. |
ask hn: will dropbox sue me?
i'm looking to create a music streaming service to be used with dropbox. basically a lightweight music library manager. if i create such a service and called it dropbox tunes, or droptunes for example, would and could they sue the pants off me for copyright infringment? or would this be seen as okay as it's not really competing with them, it's just to compliment their product.<p>any thoughts?<p>thanks. | referring to a drop box and the dropbox are different things. anyway, cloud is an accepted term and lets you do live mesh, mozy and others. | does dropbox even own the trademark to 'dropbox' or 'drop box'? i remember osx had 'drop box' in the ~/public folder since osx jaguar |
happy programmer day
its 256th of the year :-) | it's official:moscow, september 12 (itar-tass) -- russian president dmitry medvedev has signed a decree instituting programmer day that will be marked on september 13 (the 256th day of a year) and september 12 in a leap year, the kremlin press service said on saturday.<link> | so what are we going to do to celebrate "programmer day"? clearly, i'll have to celebrate by digging out some old coding projects and reminiscing. ;) |
happy programmer day
its 256th of the year :-) | so what are we going to do to celebrate "programmer day"? clearly, i'll have to celebrate by digging out some old coding projects and reminiscing. ;) | i'm having such a great time telling all my friends about this :) (who are also coders) |
happy programmer day
its 256th of the year :-) | i'm having such a great time telling all my friends about this :) (who are also coders) | by that logic...the 2nd,4th,8th,16th,32nd,64th,128th daysare all days of the programmer.i guess we're just cool enough to get "sum(x +=x while x 0 256)" days each year |
happy programmer day
its 256th of the year :-) | by that logic...the 2nd,4th,8th,16th,32nd,64th,128th daysare all days of the programmer.i guess we're just cool enough to get "sum(x +=x while x 0 256)" days each year | that's so 8-bit! |
ask hn: why do big companies tend to only build with java?
i want to understand one thing at major companies: why java?<p>is this a company investment thing, they're in bed with ibm?
is it a mentallity thing?
is it a compiled language thing?
is it a security thing?<p>it's certainly not a speed thing. every team i have had experience with working with on a java platform has taken ages to deliver anything. cmss that i could build rapidly with the likes of php/mysql take months/years to get off the ground. change is slow.<p>believe me, i have zero experience of working with java, but i need to understand why they do it. have you experienced rapid development teams using java? | there are a plethora of reasons that the enterprise uses java and many of them are really good reasons but the main reason now is inertia, so many enterprises and vendors are invested in java that to divest of java just does not have a good value proposition, given the fact that their has not been a major revolution in languages or run-times, no one has had the stomach to try to move off in a serious attempt.to understand it we have to look at the history of when java came about and what java brought to the table. most people think it was a more modern language that was what won but the reality is that was just icing. the real winner for java taking over was the vm, at the time unix was dominating the server space (in particular solaris) but microsoft has a through monopoly on the desktop. so here you had all of development on one os and all of the runtimes on another, the promise of java was that your developers could continue to develop on desktops while delivering to server architecture, it was not always totally smooth but it did work and their in lies the revolution that java brought. a common development platform across architectures. it seems so common today but at the time it was huge, it had the potential to save companies millions if not billions.fast forward to today and a big issue with the enterprise is labor, and lets face it trying to take the road less traveled can introduce unnecessary risk into the enterprise. if a company is not in the vally the quest to find a ruby or python or node.js developer can result in not finding a single candidate, this is far more risky than another month of development time to stay with java. they are totally different concerns, a small scrappy start up, can afford to kick the bushes of local groups to find a guy playing around with node.js, an enterprise has no systematic way of figuring out if the kid at the local users group is an expert at node.js or has just been playing with it for 2 weeks. to me this is the biggest one, talent is available locally and even if it is not, the big vendors and even the recruiters can dig someone up fast. this alone mitigates a lot of risk from the organization.second most enterprise software is built with java and has java api's, sap, oracle, ibm and many of the other offerings these guys use are in java. i like to poke a lot of fun at some of those systems but the reality is implemented correctly they can save a lot of money and time and unlike in a start-up where every penny counts in the enterprise vendor supported systems are considered a good thing. they allow the company to focus on their core business while leaving system development to a vendor.which brings me to my last point, there is a new revolution underway, and i do believe that in the near future the cost benefit analysis is going to be so great that the enterprise will not be able to ignore it, and that revolution is saas. for the same reason i just highlighted, (focusing on core competency), saas will be huge, now not only will the enterprise not have to concern itself with maintenance of custom systems, but they will be able to offload support as well as infrastructure. getting out of the infrastructure game for the enterprise will be huge and may herald the end or java's dominance. | you can do rapid development with java--it's less a condemnation of the technology and more the process that happens in big companies.i've worked on contract in large and small companies, and the amount of paperwork to go through in large companies is astounding. for example, we once had to get a test account created in the test domain (not even production). it took 23 emails, 4 it requests, and 6 hours to complete--and that was the "accelerated" path.but bureaucracy is only part of it. the real reason it takes a company to build something so freaking long is testing. not just test-driven development (that's crazy talk, by the way), we're talking testers. lots of them. now, i'm all for testing (yay testing), but companies go to the extreme. i've had more than one of my projects take three to four times as long to test as they took to develop. sometimes you luck out and get really good testers, though, so then life is peachy.but to answer your question about why companies use java, it's because it's widely taught, and programmers are thought of as interchangeable pieces. they can bring over a ton of people from out of the country for cheap labor, or just hire a bunch of d+ cs students and put them in cubes and give them detailed specs and just let them go at it. there's no thought to it--they're cogs in a machine.also, sometimes technology choices are just at the whim of people higher up--they have a favorite technology and push that as "the way," even in situations where it doesn't quite fit. such is life.to sum up, companies are slow to develop because of overhead and bureaucracy, and they use things like java because they want cheap programmers, not good ones.edit: i should clarify something that came off as really presumptuous and pompous. java isn't a bad technology, per se, and there are plenty of great programmers who use it. my point was that java developers are easy to find cheap, so that puts a vote in the win column for larger enterprises.that being said, there are a lot of really good reasons to use java, and if you know java really well, you can put together a cms as fast (if not faster) than somebody slinging php or python or whatever their language of choice is.my main goal was to address why enterprise development is often considered slow by startup standards, and what causes that. i know a few really great java programmers in big enterprises, and i know they often get frustrated by the glacial pace of enterprise development. |
ask hn: why do big companies tend to only build with java?
i want to understand one thing at major companies: why java?<p>is this a company investment thing, they're in bed with ibm?
is it a mentallity thing?
is it a compiled language thing?
is it a security thing?<p>it's certainly not a speed thing. every team i have had experience with working with on a java platform has taken ages to deliver anything. cmss that i could build rapidly with the likes of php/mysql take months/years to get off the ground. change is slow.<p>believe me, i have zero experience of working with java, but i need to understand why they do it. have you experienced rapid development teams using java? | you can do rapid development with java--it's less a condemnation of the technology and more the process that happens in big companies.i've worked on contract in large and small companies, and the amount of paperwork to go through in large companies is astounding. for example, we once had to get a test account created in the test domain (not even production). it took 23 emails, 4 it requests, and 6 hours to complete--and that was the "accelerated" path.but bureaucracy is only part of it. the real reason it takes a company to build something so freaking long is testing. not just test-driven development (that's crazy talk, by the way), we're talking testers. lots of them. now, i'm all for testing (yay testing), but companies go to the extreme. i've had more than one of my projects take three to four times as long to test as they took to develop. sometimes you luck out and get really good testers, though, so then life is peachy.but to answer your question about why companies use java, it's because it's widely taught, and programmers are thought of as interchangeable pieces. they can bring over a ton of people from out of the country for cheap labor, or just hire a bunch of d+ cs students and put them in cubes and give them detailed specs and just let them go at it. there's no thought to it--they're cogs in a machine.also, sometimes technology choices are just at the whim of people higher up--they have a favorite technology and push that as "the way," even in situations where it doesn't quite fit. such is life.to sum up, companies are slow to develop because of overhead and bureaucracy, and they use things like java because they want cheap programmers, not good ones.edit: i should clarify something that came off as really presumptuous and pompous. java isn't a bad technology, per se, and there are plenty of great programmers who use it. my point was that java developers are easy to find cheap, so that puts a vote in the win column for larger enterprises.that being said, there are a lot of really good reasons to use java, and if you know java really well, you can put together a cms as fast (if not faster) than somebody slinging php or python or whatever their language of choice is.my main goal was to address why enterprise development is often considered slow by startup standards, and what causes that. i know a few really great java programmers in big enterprises, and i know they often get frustrated by the glacial pace of enterprise development. | good threading support (no global interpreter lock or anything like that).very fast.unicode strings.some measure of type checking (probably appeals more to large, enterprisey projects). this also makes ide autocomplete easier.lots of libraries.cross platform.and yes, a large pool of developers.not too many languages can check off all those boxes, making java a sweet spot for a lot of enterprise development. probably not a good fit if you just want to throw together a cms, though. |
ask hn: why do big companies tend to only build with java?
i want to understand one thing at major companies: why java?<p>is this a company investment thing, they're in bed with ibm?
is it a mentallity thing?
is it a compiled language thing?
is it a security thing?<p>it's certainly not a speed thing. every team i have had experience with working with on a java platform has taken ages to deliver anything. cmss that i could build rapidly with the likes of php/mysql take months/years to get off the ground. change is slow.<p>believe me, i have zero experience of working with java, but i need to understand why they do it. have you experienced rapid development teams using java? | good threading support (no global interpreter lock or anything like that).very fast.unicode strings.some measure of type checking (probably appeals more to large, enterprisey projects). this also makes ide autocomplete easier.lots of libraries.cross platform.and yes, a large pool of developers.not too many languages can check off all those boxes, making java a sweet spot for a lot of enterprise development. probably not a good fit if you just want to throw together a cms, though. | most of these answers don't seem to be written by anyone actually involved in "enterprise" development.here are our simple reasons:* the jvm is fast.* the jvm can take proper advantage of multiple cores directly (no gil).* the jvm is efficient compared to other runtimes.* java is type-safe.* there's a library for everything, and libraries are generally well-documented, unit-tested, and provide stable releases with binary/source-stable apis.* there are a number of alternative languages to choose from that can interoperate on the jvm (scala, clojure, jruby, ...)i've worked with plenty of jvm/java-based projects that shipped quickly. there genuinely isn't anything else i would use server-side. |
ask hn: why do big companies tend to only build with java?
i want to understand one thing at major companies: why java?<p>is this a company investment thing, they're in bed with ibm?
is it a mentallity thing?
is it a compiled language thing?
is it a security thing?<p>it's certainly not a speed thing. every team i have had experience with working with on a java platform has taken ages to deliver anything. cmss that i could build rapidly with the likes of php/mysql take months/years to get off the ground. change is slow.<p>believe me, i have zero experience of working with java, but i need to understand why they do it. have you experienced rapid development teams using java? | most of these answers don't seem to be written by anyone actually involved in "enterprise" development.here are our simple reasons:* the jvm is fast.* the jvm can take proper advantage of multiple cores directly (no gil).* the jvm is efficient compared to other runtimes.* java is type-safe.* there's a library for everything, and libraries are generally well-documented, unit-tested, and provide stable releases with binary/source-stable apis.* there are a number of alternative languages to choose from that can interoperate on the jvm (scala, clojure, jruby, ...)i've worked with plenty of jvm/java-based projects that shipped quickly. there genuinely isn't anything else i would use server-side. | statically typed languages are favoured when you're working on a team with 40 other developers and you want the idiotic changes being made 5 desks over to break before they check in, not after you've pulled their changes.autocomplete also makes life staggeringly easier, as do strong refactoring tools.not having to deal with memory management is also a big plus.when you put those requirements together you end up with c#/java. which is why a fair number of places whack together uis in c# and server side code in java. |
ask hn: how do you find time for pet projects?
i have a zillion pet projects i really would like to work on, but how can i find the time for it? i mean, i have a full time job, a wife that i need to keep entertained, and i need some time for sports/relaxing/whatever, no?<p>so really, how to make time for pet projects?<p>the real reason it's so important is that i would really like to start my own startup one day based on one of these projects... | married, two children. i find myself wishing the days lasted 36 hours instead of 24. :pi have a full time job as well and do not have the time for pet projects. after work i get home and have some family time until it's bed time. then my wife watches some tv while i work for about 1 hour tops.as you know, 1 hour is nothing when developing. i take at least 45 minutes to get into a groove and ultimately i do nothing of substance.i envy single people in that regard, they can work until their eyes drop out of their head. don't waste your time! you hear me single people! don't waste your time! | as others have said, if you have a zillion projects, you don't get time to focus on your projects. first, finish the one..but, when you say a zillion projects, you automatically reminded me of how i use to be. my mind is like a buzzing bee, always having ideas. so i've got some more advice for you:look at what you have to launch for pet project #1. the smaller details and functionalities can be added later on in v2 or whatever. i always had issues not being able to complete projects, because i was keep on coming up with "cool new additions that i insisted i needed to add". don't, it will only delay you more and more, and you'll never launch.focus.relax.build v1.write down your ideas if you spontaneously come up with a new one for later, and brainstorm before you start working on v2 again. then, repeat above steps. or, start a v1 of another project. but working on multiple things at the same time isn't productive.different people like different approaches, but this one worked for me after getting very frustrated with myself. |
ask hn: how do you find time for pet projects?
i have a zillion pet projects i really would like to work on, but how can i find the time for it? i mean, i have a full time job, a wife that i need to keep entertained, and i need some time for sports/relaxing/whatever, no?<p>so really, how to make time for pet projects?<p>the real reason it's so important is that i would really like to start my own startup one day based on one of these projects... | as others have said, if you have a zillion projects, you don't get time to focus on your projects. first, finish the one..but, when you say a zillion projects, you automatically reminded me of how i use to be. my mind is like a buzzing bee, always having ideas. so i've got some more advice for you:look at what you have to launch for pet project #1. the smaller details and functionalities can be added later on in v2 or whatever. i always had issues not being able to complete projects, because i was keep on coming up with "cool new additions that i insisted i needed to add". don't, it will only delay you more and more, and you'll never launch.focus.relax.build v1.write down your ideas if you spontaneously come up with a new one for later, and brainstorm before you start working on v2 again. then, repeat above steps. or, start a v1 of another project. but working on multiple things at the same time isn't productive.different people like different approaches, but this one worked for me after getting very frustrated with myself. | you need to keep the technical architecture of the pet projects as simple as possible.from what i can see (myself included), there's more tendency to make pet projects more technically complicated than needed (usually because they're thought of as an opportunity for technical experiment 8 also less responsibility if things break), and these complexity will make project context switching much, much more painful, which will lead to less time of meaningful developing. |
ask hn: how do you find time for pet projects?
i have a zillion pet projects i really would like to work on, but how can i find the time for it? i mean, i have a full time job, a wife that i need to keep entertained, and i need some time for sports/relaxing/whatever, no?<p>so really, how to make time for pet projects?<p>the real reason it's so important is that i would really like to start my own startup one day based on one of these projects... | you need to keep the technical architecture of the pet projects as simple as possible.from what i can see (myself included), there's more tendency to make pet projects more technically complicated than needed (usually because they're thought of as an opportunity for technical experiment 8 also less responsibility if things break), and these complexity will make project context switching much, much more painful, which will lead to less time of meaningful developing. | i have struggled with the same issue for so very long that i have, just this week actually, negotiated with my employer to move to a 3 day work week. 2 full days are now going to be dedicated to my start up. so maybe this is an option for you too?here are a few things i took into consideration when making this move:1. my employers current codes of conduct contract prevented me from earning income elsewhere. moving to 3 days a week allows me to both get clients and keep my current work relationship intact.2. the last 30% of my income was taxed at the highest rate (canadian tax). when i took the time to do the math, surprisingly it wasn't all that big of a hit (at least it's not for me).3. doing this removes any complications around code-ownership, copyrights or product rights.just another option to consider for those who are really serious about their start up, but can't find the time or money otherwise. |
ask hn: how do you find time for pet projects?
i have a zillion pet projects i really would like to work on, but how can i find the time for it? i mean, i have a full time job, a wife that i need to keep entertained, and i need some time for sports/relaxing/whatever, no?<p>so really, how to make time for pet projects?<p>the real reason it's so important is that i would really like to start my own startup one day based on one of these projects... | i have struggled with the same issue for so very long that i have, just this week actually, negotiated with my employer to move to a 3 day work week. 2 full days are now going to be dedicated to my start up. so maybe this is an option for you too?here are a few things i took into consideration when making this move:1. my employers current codes of conduct contract prevented me from earning income elsewhere. moving to 3 days a week allows me to both get clients and keep my current work relationship intact.2. the last 30% of my income was taxed at the highest rate (canadian tax). when i took the time to do the math, surprisingly it wasn't all that big of a hit (at least it's not for me).3. doing this removes any complications around code-ownership, copyrights or product rights.just another option to consider for those who are really serious about their start up, but can't find the time or money otherwise. | back before quitting my job to work on one my projects full-time, i used to wake up an hour early and getting work done in the morning. i'm not a morning person by any stretch, but i found i was a lot more productive right when i first woke up than coming home after 8+ hours coding at work. as a secondary benefit, i found that starting off my day by creating something of value that i cared about energized me and tended to put me in a better mood for the rest of the day. |
stolen laptop contains cancer research data
| the reward is only $1,000. while their research may have offered some interesting insights into cancer, they clearly didn't have an absolute cure (for prostate cancer, which is mentioned in the article). if they had a real cure, then around this moment merk would step in and offer a $10,000,000 reward for the return of the laptop, in exchange for the right to commercialize the technology.i've several friends who have pursued biology in universities. they could claim that their laptops have data offering possible cures for diabetes, high blood pressure and aids. this is the kind of thing they will talk about when we meet for lunch. i realize, of course, that they are not on the verge of a genuine cure. but occasionally their research offers an important new insight. i sense that these researchers, in the story, had info at that level.otherwise, the reward would be more than $1,000.i do think the university should do more to help researchers manage their data. | that's grossly negligent behavior on her behalf.family pictures, unpublished novel and a gigabyte of emails? fine. but research data that only exists on one consumer-level machine? work that was financed by her employer and various other organizations? holy shit. |
stolen laptop contains cancer research data
| that's grossly negligent behavior on her behalf.family pictures, unpublished novel and a gigabyte of emails? fine. but research data that only exists on one consumer-level machine? work that was financed by her employer and various other organizations? holy shit. | i work for a university and i laugh so hard every time i hear this.for the people that say this should be an it policy issue let me explain to you how academic people work.professors and researchers are kings and queens. you cannot tell them what to do, nor can you force anything on them.the only exception are the engineering professors for obvious reasons they have their shit together. other faculty are just plain morons and think they can do everything on their own.professors and researchers get to buy and chose their own laptops, and they can do whatever they want. unless they fall under the administration side, it cannot tell them what to put on or do with the laptop.just to get off my chess i'll tell you one of many stories. a faculty member brought in his school paid laptop, and he obviously used it for personal reasons. this is his main work laptop with all his data (again we can't force them to follow our policy since they are not administration), so he has no backups or any antivirus scans.his laptop had over 5000 viruses when i ran a virus scan. this is no joke, i have the screen shot somewhere. i refuse to clean and told him i will rebuild it. which i did and put all this files back. i explain to him exactly what i did in an email, what he would lose (software etc) and he was okay with it, remember i have this in email. only when he agreed did i go ahead with the rebuild.he comes back and writes an email to the department chair that i had broke his laptop and had to rebuild it. then i lost his software which he paid for and wants the school to pay for it back.i almost kicked him in he face even if it got me fired. luckily my boss stepped in and took care of it. |
stolen laptop contains cancer research data
| i work for a university and i laugh so hard every time i hear this.for the people that say this should be an it policy issue let me explain to you how academic people work.professors and researchers are kings and queens. you cannot tell them what to do, nor can you force anything on them.the only exception are the engineering professors for obvious reasons they have their shit together. other faculty are just plain morons and think they can do everything on their own.professors and researchers get to buy and chose their own laptops, and they can do whatever they want. unless they fall under the administration side, it cannot tell them what to put on or do with the laptop.just to get off my chess i'll tell you one of many stories. a faculty member brought in his school paid laptop, and he obviously used it for personal reasons. this is his main work laptop with all his data (again we can't force them to follow our policy since they are not administration), so he has no backups or any antivirus scans.his laptop had over 5000 viruses when i ran a virus scan. this is no joke, i have the screen shot somewhere. i refuse to clean and told him i will rebuild it. which i did and put all this files back. i explain to him exactly what i did in an email, what he would lose (software etc) and he was okay with it, remember i have this in email. only when he agreed did i go ahead with the rebuild.he comes back and writes an email to the department chair that i had broke his laptop and had to rebuild it. then i lost his software which he paid for and wants the school to pay for it back.i almost kicked him in he face even if it got me fired. luckily my boss stepped in and took care of it. | (1) whatever happened to backups?(2) the hardware could have failed just as easy as the laptop got stolen who would get the blame then?(3) i don't buy the premise that there is 'cancer cure data' on this laptop to begin with until after it has been recovered they come out with a cure for cancer within measurable time.(4) if the data is on the laptop it got on to the laptop somehow, either by doing experiments and recording the data or by copying it from some other medium, data does not exist in a vacuum as it's 'only copy'.(5) $1,000 reward? really? that must be some crappy cure.(6) what if the researcher 'lost' their laptop on purpose? that's a stretch, but with a claim this big i'd really like them to get to work on re-creating their miraculous results rather than cry over spilled milk, after all, recreating the results can't be nearly as much work as it was to do it all the first time. assuming the experiments were real there should be a whole pile of knowledge that only needs to be verified rather than created from scratch so this is just a matter of time.(7) i had a laptop with the design for a small and safe nuclear fusion reactor, unfortunately it got stolen...what sickens me most about this whole thing is that the 'cure for cancer' gets trotted out again giving a whole pile of people hope that there is such a thing. |
stolen laptop contains cancer research data
| (1) whatever happened to backups?(2) the hardware could have failed just as easy as the laptop got stolen who would get the blame then?(3) i don't buy the premise that there is 'cancer cure data' on this laptop to begin with until after it has been recovered they come out with a cure for cancer within measurable time.(4) if the data is on the laptop it got on to the laptop somehow, either by doing experiments and recording the data or by copying it from some other medium, data does not exist in a vacuum as it's 'only copy'.(5) $1,000 reward? really? that must be some crappy cure.(6) what if the researcher 'lost' their laptop on purpose? that's a stretch, but with a claim this big i'd really like them to get to work on re-creating their miraculous results rather than cry over spilled milk, after all, recreating the results can't be nearly as much work as it was to do it all the first time. assuming the experiments were real there should be a whole pile of knowledge that only needs to be verified rather than created from scratch so this is just a matter of time.(7) i had a laptop with the design for a small and safe nuclear fusion reactor, unfortunately it got stolen...what sickens me most about this whole thing is that the 'cure for cancer' gets trotted out again giving a whole pile of people hope that there is such a thing. | people need to learn the basics of working with a computer. i can't imagine working for years on an important project without any backup system whatsoever. getting your computer stolen is only one of the tens of the possible scenarios of things that could happen. |
why do most public toilet doors open inwards?
| in the uk doors almost always open inwards. from the more public area to the less public area. i always figured this was for safety so you don't hit people in the more public area when opening the door. the comments on the linked site also indicate this could be to stop the possibility of the door being blocked from the outside.interestingly, in finland, in my experience it's the opposite - almost everything opens outwards. which is surprising considering the much higher probability of being snowed in and not being able to push the door out. | i'm disappointed. i thought this was going to be about why stall doors always open toward the actual toilet. and i thought the accepted answer was going to be so the user can hold the broken door closed with his foot. |
why do most public toilet doors open inwards?
| i'm disappointed. i thought this was going to be about why stall doors always open toward the actual toilet. and i thought the accepted answer was going to be so the user can hold the broken door closed with his foot. | as an architect, the confidence and speed with which these 'ui'-people put forward half-baked (and mostly-incorrect) ideas is both heartening and disheartening.a better question which i'm yet to find a good answer for - why do american's feel the need to fill their toilets to the brim with water as opposed to everywhere else in the world? |
why do most public toilet doors open inwards?
| as an architect, the confidence and speed with which these 'ui'-people put forward half-baked (and mostly-incorrect) ideas is both heartening and disheartening.a better question which i'm yet to find a good answer for - why do american's feel the need to fill their toilets to the brim with water as opposed to everywhere else in the world? | while it's not the main problem he's talking about, i think marco arment blogged a related solution for this. here's the link, <link> it's a great post guys, i encourage you to read it. :) |
why do most public toilet doors open inwards?
| while it's not the main problem he's talking about, i think marco arment blogged a related solution for this. here's the link, <link> it's a great post guys, i encourage you to read it. :) | this has already been solved to the satisfaction of germaphobes in virtually all us airports. it is also the norm in public sports venues....no doors. |
10 tips to get your startup noticed.
| saw a bunch of hackernews posts from startup entrepreneurs asking how to get their product noticed, so i thought i'd throw this list together. sure, it's a lot of "duh" stuff, but if you go through the list and submit your site and use each of the items, i guarantee you'll be off to a good start. also, am i missing a "forgot password" link? i tried to login but my password was wrong, so i had to create a new account. | this advice is almost entirely useless if your startup doesn't appeal to the tech crowd. |
10 tips to get your startup noticed.
| this advice is almost entirely useless if your startup doesn't appeal to the tech crowd. | andrew- just fixed that. this is the first article i've submitted through hackernews. didn't realize i'd get that kind of traffic. whoa.i posted the article and by the time i got home, my bandwith limit was reached. sorry about that. |
10 tips to get your startup noticed.
| andrew- just fixed that. this is the first article i've submitted through hackernews. didn't realize i'd get that kind of traffic. whoa.i posted the article and by the time i got home, my bandwith limit was reached. sorry about that. | hey - you forgot adwords. not only to get clicks, but it'll also get you to thinking about your vertical. you can't come up with good keywords unless you know who you're targeting. |
10 tips to get your startup noticed.
| hey - you forgot adwords. not only to get clicks, but it'll also get you to thinking about your vertical. you can't come up with good keywords unless you know who you're targeting. | ouch. i just clicked over and got a 509. bandwidth limit reached. |
the gospel of consumption
| sorry, i can't stomach another self-righteous screed against people's private choices that offend the sensibility of the author. it seems that i was born without the "meddle in other people's affairs" gene, which is so widespread and popular in society. i can't get worked up in a hissy-fit if other people smoke, or watch goat porn, or work more than i would chose to. a lot of people think something is wrong with me, but i enjoy the free time i save from not caring about others' private lives.the author's flawed world-view can be summed up in the following quote:2in other words, if as a society we made a collective decision to get by on the amount we produced and consumed seventeen years ago, we could cut back from the standard forty-hour week to 5.3 hours per daythe error is that we "as a society" don't make choices. individuals do. if i thought a conspiracy of government officials and oligarchs were making work choices for "society" as a whole, then i might be as offended as the author.humans have consistently chosen to live better rather than work less. i live in much greater wealth than my father did at my age in the '60s and '70s and i am happy about that. you would have a hard time convincing me to give up dishwashers, central air, my own bathroom, wireless internet, and satellite tv in order to work less. the average person in the western world has the electronic equivalent of hundreds of human servants working for him. it's my choice to accept the luxuries available to me, and other people are free to make different choices. | on some levels, i'd like to knock a day off the work week and live like its 1948, but then again, when i'm headed in for laparoscopic surgery, i'm really glad all of those people put in the extra hours instead of "playing ping-pong for hours on end."humanity in the 21st century is a little like a startup. we have huge problems to solve and the outcome is tenuous at best. so we work our asses off. some of it is on stupid stuff but some not. we're learning the difference. when we "get over the hump", get ourselves into space, get some of the big killers cured in medicine, and work out how lo live in peace with abundance for all of the people on earth, then maybe we'll have earned a break. |
the gospel of consumption
| on some levels, i'd like to knock a day off the work week and live like its 1948, but then again, when i'm headed in for laparoscopic surgery, i'm really glad all of those people put in the extra hours instead of "playing ping-pong for hours on end."humanity in the 21st century is a little like a startup. we have huge problems to solve and the outcome is tenuous at best. so we work our asses off. some of it is on stupid stuff but some not. we're learning the difference. when we "get over the hump", get ourselves into space, get some of the big killers cured in medicine, and work out how lo live in peace with abundance for all of the people on earth, then maybe we'll have earned a break. | this is a really great article, if a bit long. this is something that is definitely coming to the fore in our circle. the 37signals "less is more", four day work week philosophy is becoming more and more popular, and this article lays the groundwork for the philosophy quite well.i sincerely wonder why people don't strive to work less. when most people finally achieve a comfortable wage, the thought process is always "buy more" and never "work less." i wonder if we'll see that change in the near future. i hope so. |
the gospel of consumption
| this is a really great article, if a bit long. this is something that is definitely coming to the fore in our circle. the 37signals "less is more", four day work week philosophy is becoming more and more popular, and this article lays the groundwork for the philosophy quite well.i sincerely wonder why people don't strive to work less. when most people finally achieve a comfortable wage, the thought process is always "buy more" and never "work less." i wonder if we'll see that change in the near future. i hope so. | this seems to be a poor study of the economics of branding and churn (apologies, i have forgotten the technical term for that piece of slang).this really is a terrible article, and it spends a good deal of it's time dealing in analogy, mixed up (and long disproved) ideas of economics and sociology.it is so bad, that i cannot stomach to read all of it. |
the gospel of consumption
| this seems to be a poor study of the economics of branding and churn (apologies, i have forgotten the technical term for that piece of slang).this really is a terrible article, and it spends a good deal of it's time dealing in analogy, mixed up (and long disproved) ideas of economics and sociology.it is so bad, that i cannot stomach to read all of it. | is it bad that i at first read the article as coming from "the onion" ?
about 3 paragraphs down i began to realize that the satire sounded all-to-real. |
coinpunk - run your own bitcoin wallet service
| this is the last thing we need in the bitcoin world... online wallet services run by people not even smart enough to roll their own.kudos to you and spending time on this project, it looks pretty slick, but it's a horrible thing for bitcoin in general.if the only thing it manages to accomplish is accelerate the rejection of online wallet services then i suppose it's a good thing. | 2help me buy cheap beer and fixed gear bikesi think the name you were looking for is "coin hipster" |
coinpunk - run your own bitcoin wallet service
| 2help me buy cheap beer and fixed gear bikesi think the name you were looking for is "coin hipster" | is this storing the private keys on the server ? |
coinpunk - run your own bitcoin wallet service
| is this storing the private keys on the server ? | can somebody please describe the most basic use case for this server? |
coinpunk - run your own bitcoin wallet service
| can somebody please describe the most basic use case for this server? | sweet, exactly what i was looking for. |
ask hn: am i being too spammy with my hn comments?
i recently scratched my own itch and created a résumé building app called mighty cv. i'm doing some split testing to ensure that my beta sign up page is converting well before i make the move to advertise it more widely. i'm currently getting about a 33% conversion from visitors to sign-up and feel that this figure could be improved. i suspect my red white and blue color scheme is not helping. so i've been keeping my eye open for posts on hn that relate to job hunting, employment or résumés. i then try and post a relevant and sometimes insightful comment which also mentions that you can sign up for the mighty cv beta.<p>problem is this is beginning to feel a bit too spammy. i've only done it a handful of times but wondered what you guys thought? am i being too cautious here or should i quit doing it. remember i usually try to write something insightful as well as link to my site. your thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated.<p>p.s. you can sign up for the private beta at:<p><link><p>p.p.s. hope that doesn't seem too spammy :) | i'd also put some more information about you the the product in your hn profile (you currently only have the url).this adds credibility to your comments, and also provides a non-spammy place to promote the product (since people will only view your profile if they're interested in learning more about you or mighty cv).(feel free to see, and provide feedback on my hn profile where i do the same.) | this feels like my method of blog post promotion. i read the posts where i comment carefully, if they fit with "me", i write a relevant and interesting comment (trying to add my grain of salt to whatever the post was about), and a link back to some relevant post in my own blog. some days i feel like i'm spamming, some days i feel that i'm just doing what i should. who knows? try to be faithful to yourself: if you add to the conversation, i don't think that adding a back link is a problem: it can solve a problem for one out of a hundred. if it can, and would only bother one out of a hundred other readers, i don't think this is a problem.and no, i won't post a link to a relevant post now ;) |
ask hn: am i being too spammy with my hn comments?
i recently scratched my own itch and created a résumé building app called mighty cv. i'm doing some split testing to ensure that my beta sign up page is converting well before i make the move to advertise it more widely. i'm currently getting about a 33% conversion from visitors to sign-up and feel that this figure could be improved. i suspect my red white and blue color scheme is not helping. so i've been keeping my eye open for posts on hn that relate to job hunting, employment or résumés. i then try and post a relevant and sometimes insightful comment which also mentions that you can sign up for the mighty cv beta.<p>problem is this is beginning to feel a bit too spammy. i've only done it a handful of times but wondered what you guys thought? am i being too cautious here or should i quit doing it. remember i usually try to write something insightful as well as link to my site. your thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated.<p>p.s. you can sign up for the private beta at:<p><link><p>p.p.s. hope that doesn't seem too spammy :) | this feels like my method of blog post promotion. i read the posts where i comment carefully, if they fit with "me", i write a relevant and interesting comment (trying to add my grain of salt to whatever the post was about), and a link back to some relevant post in my own blog. some days i feel like i'm spamming, some days i feel that i'm just doing what i should. who knows? try to be faithful to yourself: if you add to the conversation, i don't think that adding a back link is a problem: it can solve a problem for one out of a hundred. if it can, and would only bother one out of a hundred other readers, i don't think this is a problem.and no, i won't post a link to a relevant post now ;) | hasn't bothered me yet, fwiw. i don't think most people will mind unless you start posting your link in nearly every thread. at some point it starts to become obnoxious, spammy and annoying, but it's subjective.that said, there will always be "that guy" (or girl) who sees one link to your service/product and immediately starts wailing and moaning "oh noes, spam!" you can't please everybody. |
ask hn: am i being too spammy with my hn comments?
i recently scratched my own itch and created a résumé building app called mighty cv. i'm doing some split testing to ensure that my beta sign up page is converting well before i make the move to advertise it more widely. i'm currently getting about a 33% conversion from visitors to sign-up and feel that this figure could be improved. i suspect my red white and blue color scheme is not helping. so i've been keeping my eye open for posts on hn that relate to job hunting, employment or résumés. i then try and post a relevant and sometimes insightful comment which also mentions that you can sign up for the mighty cv beta.<p>problem is this is beginning to feel a bit too spammy. i've only done it a handful of times but wondered what you guys thought? am i being too cautious here or should i quit doing it. remember i usually try to write something insightful as well as link to my site. your thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated.<p>p.s. you can sign up for the private beta at:<p><link><p>p.p.s. hope that doesn't seem too spammy :) | hasn't bothered me yet, fwiw. i don't think most people will mind unless you start posting your link in nearly every thread. at some point it starts to become obnoxious, spammy and annoying, but it's subjective.that said, there will always be "that guy" (or girl) who sees one link to your service/product and immediately starts wailing and moaning "oh noes, spam!" you can't please everybody. | thought i'd provide a link to an example of a comment i made yesterday that mentioned mighty cv:<link> comment was part of the discussion for the hn submission 'everyone thinks they're hiring the top 1%', it's an interesting post from way back in 2005. |
ask hn: am i being too spammy with my hn comments?
i recently scratched my own itch and created a résumé building app called mighty cv. i'm doing some split testing to ensure that my beta sign up page is converting well before i make the move to advertise it more widely. i'm currently getting about a 33% conversion from visitors to sign-up and feel that this figure could be improved. i suspect my red white and blue color scheme is not helping. so i've been keeping my eye open for posts on hn that relate to job hunting, employment or résumés. i then try and post a relevant and sometimes insightful comment which also mentions that you can sign up for the mighty cv beta.<p>problem is this is beginning to feel a bit too spammy. i've only done it a handful of times but wondered what you guys thought? am i being too cautious here or should i quit doing it. remember i usually try to write something insightful as well as link to my site. your thoughts on this matter would be greatly appreciated.<p>p.s. you can sign up for the private beta at:<p><link><p>p.p.s. hope that doesn't seem too spammy :) | thought i'd provide a link to an example of a comment i made yesterday that mentioned mighty cv:<link> comment was part of the discussion for the hn submission 'everyone thinks they're hiring the top 1%', it's an interesting post from way back in 2005. | as long as you're providing value and/or mature discussions about topics that help not only you but the next entrepreneur to you, i think it's a win-win for everyone.if there is a numerical limit when people get fed up with your business, you'll find out. in case there is, this submission is a bad shot. |
the (lost) art of software engineering
| i can easily relate to the frustration behind the crude methodologies that dominate software development these days, but i think the author is missing the crux of the whole issue.software is pure thought-stuff. its complexity knows no bounds. the software universe already has many orders of magnitude more complexity than all physical engineering disciplines combined, and that quantity will continue to grow.to say that we just need to buckle down, measure things, and design rigorous and optimal methodologies is at best naïve. there is no consistency or reproducibility in software development. every project is different, the ecosystems in which development is done are constantly shifting, the dependencies are often unknown, the big picture is too complex for any one person to fully comprehend, and individual skill sets vary so much as to make any hope of "optimal" architecture all but impossible.contrast with bridge building. consider the enormous amount of experience and study that has been expended tens of thousands of times to fulfill basically one requirement that 99% of the population can easily understand. "it needs to be able to support the weight of the traffic going over it". think of all the complex load bearing computation, materials science, fluid dynamics, and everything else that goes into meeting this one basic requirement. sure, nature makes this a challenging task, but at the core you have one simple requirement which you can design your whole process around. you can try different things and over time iterate to optimal processes because the requirements are essentially the same every time.with software you have no such grounding requirement. on the plus side abstraction allows simple software to be very very simple. however for any software of significant complexity the interactions of concerns and requirements quickly balloons out of control. the only way to manage this complexity is on a case-by-case basis. there are many best practices and common techniques that can be applied to improve the quality, but they all have a cost, and they will all have varying degrees of benefit depending on the project and the team. i'd say nasa has very very good methodologies for ensuring quality, but it costs more than the vast majority of projects could even fathom paying 1% of.should everyone that is willing to tolerate some bugs in exchange for a 99% discount tag get out of the software business? should all the developers just go home and leave software engineering to be practiced and defined by corporations and government programs with 9-figure budgets? | good write up. i'm not a fan of analogies between software and physical construction, mostly because they are often used by people who understand neither and consequently think all physical structures are perfect and software should be too. the author seems to have the right perspective though (or at least one i share).some interesting reading -- if a little dry -- on bridges that fall down and other engineering failures
<link> |
the (lost) art of software engineering
| good write up. i'm not a fan of analogies between software and physical construction, mostly because they are often used by people who understand neither and consequently think all physical structures are perfect and software should be too. the author seems to have the right perspective though (or at least one i share).some interesting reading -- if a little dry -- on bridges that fall down and other engineering failures
<link> | i'm sorry, what? the guy lost me at the supposedly lost art of gathering and packaging software requirements. when was this golden age of the not almost-instantly-outdated packaged requirements? maybe only when the success of software was judged by the speed of shipping out versions as opposed to whether users need/like/use it. of course, if you ignore the latter, you can have perfect requirements and code alignment, but... really? |
the (lost) art of software engineering
| i'm sorry, what? the guy lost me at the supposedly lost art of gathering and packaging software requirements. when was this golden age of the not almost-instantly-outdated packaged requirements? maybe only when the success of software was judged by the speed of shipping out versions as opposed to whether users need/like/use it. of course, if you ignore the latter, you can have perfect requirements and code alignment, but... really? | 'software engineering' is still in it's infancy compared to most other professions. it seems a little premature to say 'lost art.' |
the (lost) art of software engineering
| 'software engineering' is still in it's infancy compared to most other professions. it seems a little premature to say 'lost art.' | as we sometimes like to say: "it's not a bug if a requirement is required to fix it" |
say hello to the real real-time web
| real-time means something specific: every operation has a hard limit for upper bounded time.i'm working on an embedded system right now; they typically cannot use garbage collection, because any gc pauses will utterly destroy the project's real-time guarantees. this board's microprocessor has an external hardware watchdog, which reboots the whole system unless i reset a timer every 2.5 msec or less. this is a reasonable limit, because if the program is unresponsive for too long, people may die. (it's automotive hardware.)i think calling anything running in javascript and across a network "real-time" is a bit misleading. what you mean is "soft real-time", which is far more forgiving. | and because the framework is based on node.js,
developers don't have to worry about connection
issues or scale.
err, no. it might be better for open connections, but nothing is worry-free ever.also, i don't buy the selling point "hey this is a new tech so you don't have to learn any tech!". what is this rush to introduce new stuff to solve the problem of too many?and why push it harder by stating not only the big guys can do this? nobody should do it only because twitter or google do it.it's not like i wouldn't use real-time solutions, but this article did sound like "let's find a use for this new thing." |
say hello to the real real-time web
| and because the framework is based on node.js,
developers don't have to worry about connection
issues or scale.
err, no. it might be better for open connections, but nothing is worry-free ever.also, i don't buy the selling point "hey this is a new tech so you don't have to learn any tech!". what is this rush to introduce new stuff to solve the problem of too many?and why push it harder by stating not only the big guys can do this? nobody should do it only because twitter or google do it.it's not like i wouldn't use real-time solutions, but this article did sound like "let's find a use for this new thing." | i think battlelog (<link>, battlefields community, running on real time framework planet (<link> is a good example on how real time web apps should be built. client side rendering, live updating surfaces via "websockets". nice to see this getting more coverage, i think it is a knowledge web developers must learn to master, or at least learn best practices for real time patterns. interesting times indeed. |
say hello to the real real-time web
| i think battlelog (<link>, battlefields community, running on real time framework planet (<link> is a good example on how real time web apps should be built. client side rendering, live updating surfaces via "websockets". nice to see this getting more coverage, i think it is a knowledge web developers must learn to master, or at least learn best practices for real time patterns. interesting times indeed. | this article is so full of platitudes and buzzwords it is embarrassing. |
say hello to the real real-time web
| this article is so full of platitudes and buzzwords it is embarrassing. | meteor and firebase and other novel web app frameworks are one thing... mmo asteroids, or any multiplayer game, is another. game developers have been doing multiplayer for a very long time; the frameworks promise to blur the line between client and server, but mmo asteroids is still trivial with traditional client-server code, without any funky security model, making it a bit of an odd showcase.anyway, i doubt those frameworks have lag compensation (<link>, so good luck avoiding jitter :) |
ascii video using a websocket and a pre tag
| nice proof of concept. i like to see the stretching of node's capabilities.on a slightly related note, you can play with a similar effect in vlc by setting the output module in the video preferences to "color ascii" and restarting it.see also:
<link> | i'd love to combine this concept with my (shameless plug) ascii art kinect demos:<link> like it's time to learn javascript. |
ascii video using a websocket and a pre tag
| i'd love to combine this concept with my (shameless plug) ascii art kinect demos:<link> like it's time to learn javascript. | i get a message that my browser (chrome) appears to support all necessary features, but nothing happens. |
ascii video using a websocket and a pre tag
| i get a message that my browser (chrome) appears to support all necessary features, but nothing happens. | to view on firefox 4, go to about:config and set network.websocket.override-security-block to true. |
ascii video using a websocket and a pre tag
| to view on firefox 4, go to about:config and set network.websocket.override-security-block to true. | video example doesn't look sfw. |
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