4 ms·

Pardon me for asking, what are your programming achievements, besides writing a long-length comments and blog posts?) Where could we see your code?

statictype 14y ago
You're asking the wrong question. A better question would be "what have you achieved while being a programmer?". Possible answer: Learning a skill that most programmers shy away from, are afraid of, or down-right scorn, thus giving me (him) an almost unfair advantage over virtually every other programmer out there.
patio11 14y ago
Turning strings into strings, quoth the Turing machine.
jasonkester 14y ago
You're showing your bias in that question. In the spectrum outlined in the post you're replying to, from valuing "really really good at writing code" to valuing "makes a ton of money as a result of applying a little bit of coding skill in the right direction", you appear to value the "good at coding" side of the equation. If you read the comment you're replying to again, you might notice it to be written by somebody who lies towards the other end of the spectrum. As such, you might as well be asking him how much he bench presses, as it is equally relevant (as in, not at all so) to the utility of the advice he's giving.
olalonde 14y ago
He lives from selling his own software... isn't that quite an achievement in itself? Unfortunately, his software isn't open source so I don't think we'll get a chance to take a peek.
- wikwocket 14y ago
  Patio11 makes some of his software, A/Bingo, available as open source. A/Bingo is a Ruby on Rails A/B testing framework, available at his Bingo card site.
  - loumf 14y ago
    The question you should be asking yourself is, why did patio11 make A/Bingo available as open source. Clues: 1. It's called A/Bingo 2. It's hosted on his bingo card creator site, not on github or kalzumeus.com (his personal site) 3. People tend to link to interesting open source projects 4. The text they use in the link is usually the title of the project 5. Google uses the number of links and the link text to rank sites on keywords This is what he means by using his coding skill against his competition in ways orthogonal to programming.
    - akavi 14y ago
      Ooh, that's clever. And a little more greyhat than I've come to expect from patio11
      - tptacek 14y ago
        Naming a project "A/Bingo" and hosting it on his own site is "grey hat"?
        akavi 14y ago
        Naming it "A/Bingo" and hosting it on his own site? Nah. Naming it "A/Bingo" and hosting it on his own site for the intent of garnering linkjuice while at the same time presenting the name choice as simply a guileless, clever pun (as he does in his announcement of the project [1]) and within the context of his normal policy of broad disclosure? A little bit. Perhaps "grey hat" is too strong a word. Swap in "a little discomfiting". [1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/08/15/introducing-abingo-rails-split-testing/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/08/15/introducing-abingo-rails... (To clarify, my discomfort is due to the tying together of two orthogonal axes, ie, the quality of Bingo Card Creator as a result for the keyword "Bingo" and the quality of Bingo Card Creator as a source for an A/B testing framework.)
        tptacek 14y ago
        Baffling.
tptacek 14y ago
You just asked a non-sequitur question. Patrick said, "consider carefully what you mean by success; one measure is geek status ranking, another is financial success". You responded by saying "show me your code" --- in other words, by implying that there is only geek status ranking, which makes no sense as a response. When you grok what Patrick is doing, the programming angle on it makes more sense. On HN, he's best known for Bingo Card Creator (that's the work he has the easiest time talking about). Here is the right way to think about Bingo Card Creator: it is an experiment in how much engineering effort you can apply to marketing as opposed to product features and what the payoff on that is. The engineering in BCC is invisible to users; the product itself is "hello world", hooked up to a random number generator. The result of the experiment: he matched his salary with it, and then left his full-time development job, because 5-10 hours a week of effort was paying him better than the 60 he spent as a salaryman. Also: get past the idea that you can gauge people's skills from their Github profiles. Nerds are in love with that idea because it sure would be nice if it were true. I've been a professional developer, mostly in C, since I was ~17 years old. Only a tiny fraction of the lines of code I've written --- and virtually none of my favorite lines --- are publishable on a site like Github.
- dschiptsov 14y ago
  It is not, of course, about github. It is much simpler. When some scientist met, say, mathematicians, it is very normal to ask - show me what you have done. Or the same thing with writers - Oh, you're writer? What did you wrote. This thread was about programming, and the given comment was mere a self-assertion. So, it is OK to assert oneself if one wants to. But, show us, then, what you have done.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    No. It is desirable that people contribute their answers to questions. It is undesirable for people to respond to those questions not by challenging the substance of the answer, but by questioning the respondent's standing to provide the answer. There is no "but, show us then". You have no status to demand that of anyone here. I you have lots to say, for instance about modeling natural language as s-expressions, you too can write lots of long comments and blog posts, and we will enjoy reading them. Unlike the short, nasty one you wrote above.
wglb 14y ago
A reading achievement would be to read his blog and understand the magnitude of what he has done.

statictype 14y ago

You're asking the wrong question. A better question would be "what have you achieved while being a programmer?". Possible answer: Learning a skill that most programmers shy away from, are afraid of, or down-right scorn, thus giving me (him) an almost unfair advantage over virtually every other programmer out there.

patio11 14y ago

Turning strings into strings, quoth the Turing machine.

jasonkester 14y ago

You're showing your bias in that question. In the spectrum outlined in the post you're replying to, from valuing "really really good at writing code" to valuing "makes a ton of money as a result of applying a little bit of coding skill in the right direction", you appear to value the "good at coding" side of the equation. If you read the comment you're replying to again, you might notice it to be written by somebody who lies towards the other end of the spectrum. As such, you might as well be asking him how much he bench presses, as it is equally relevant (as in, not at all so) to the utility of the advice he's giving.

olalonde 14y ago

He lives from selling his own software... isn't that quite an achievement in itself? Unfortunately, his software isn't open source so I don't think we'll get a chance to take a peek.

wikwocket 14y ago
Patio11 makes some of his software, A/Bingo, available as open source. A/Bingo is a Ruby on Rails A/B testing framework, available at his Bingo card site.
- loumf 14y ago
  The question you should be asking yourself is, why did patio11 make A/Bingo available as open source. Clues: 1. It's called A/Bingo 2. It's hosted on his bingo card creator site, not on github or kalzumeus.com (his personal site) 3. People tend to link to interesting open source projects 4. The text they use in the link is usually the title of the project 5. Google uses the number of links and the link text to rank sites on keywords This is what he means by using his coding skill against his competition in ways orthogonal to programming.
  - akavi 14y ago
    Ooh, that's clever. And a little more greyhat than I've come to expect from patio11
    - tptacek 14y ago
      Naming a project "A/Bingo" and hosting it on his own site is "grey hat"?
      - akavi 14y ago
        Naming it "A/Bingo" and hosting it on his own site? Nah. Naming it "A/Bingo" and hosting it on his own site for the intent of garnering linkjuice while at the same time presenting the name choice as simply a guileless, clever pun (as he does in his announcement of the project [1]) and within the context of his normal policy of broad disclosure? A little bit. Perhaps "grey hat" is too strong a word. Swap in "a little discomfiting". [1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/08/15/introducing-abingo-rails-split-testing/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2009/08/15/introducing-abingo-rails... (To clarify, my discomfort is due to the tying together of two orthogonal axes, ie, the quality of Bingo Card Creator as a result for the keyword "Bingo" and the quality of Bingo Card Creator as a source for an A/B testing framework.)
        tptacek 14y ago
        Baffling.

tptacek 14y ago

You just asked a non-sequitur question. Patrick said, "consider carefully what you mean by success; one measure is geek status ranking, another is financial success". You responded by saying "show me your code" --- in other words, by implying that there is only geek status ranking, which makes no sense as a response. When you grok what Patrick is doing, the programming angle on it makes more sense. On HN, he's best known for Bingo Card Creator (that's the work he has the easiest time talking about). Here is the right way to think about Bingo Card Creator: it is an experiment in how much engineering effort you can apply to marketing as opposed to product features and what the payoff on that is. The engineering in BCC is invisible to users; the product itself is "hello world", hooked up to a random number generator. The result of the experiment: he matched his salary with it, and then left his full-time development job, because 5-10 hours a week of effort was paying him better than the 60 he spent as a salaryman. Also: get past the idea that you can gauge people's skills from their Github profiles. Nerds are in love with that idea because it sure would be nice if it were true. I've been a professional developer, mostly in C, since I was ~17 years old. Only a tiny fraction of the lines of code I've written --- and virtually none of my favorite lines --- are publishable on a site like Github.

dschiptsov 14y ago
It is not, of course, about github. It is much simpler. When some scientist met, say, mathematicians, it is very normal to ask - show me what you have done. Or the same thing with writers - Oh, you're writer? What did you wrote. This thread was about programming, and the given comment was mere a self-assertion. So, it is OK to assert oneself if one wants to. But, show us, then, what you have done.
- tptacek 14y ago
  No. It is desirable that people contribute their answers to questions. It is undesirable for people to respond to those questions not by challenging the substance of the answer, but by questioning the respondent's standing to provide the answer. There is no "but, show us then". You have no status to demand that of anyone here. I you have lots to say, for instance about modeling natural language as s-expressions, you too can write lots of long comments and blog posts, and we will enjoy reading them. Unlike the short, nasty one you wrote above.

wglb 14y ago

A reading achievement would be to read his blog and understand the magnitude of what he has done.