akeefer

22 ms·

241.
by akeefer 17y ago
Their thesis, that it increases cravings in certain ways, is reasonable. The implication that people behave like rats with absolutely no ability to reflect upon or control those cravings, however, is not. I'm also one of those people that
242.
by akeefer 17y ago
That's basically what's happened to my company (the lawsuit is still ongoing).
243.
by akeefer 17y ago
But you might want to leave open the possibility that designer could be female (and despite what old-school official grammar books might say, in 2009 I don't think it's acceptable to use "he" for a gender-neutral pronoun, and "they" is much
244.
by akeefer 17y ago
Of course . . . you can also use a flat rock to hammer in nails when framing a house, but a framing hammer might be a better idea. Doesn't mean it can't be done, though, especially if you're really good with rocks and already have them lyi
245.
by akeefer 17y ago
The best languages for writing quick-and-dirty 15-minute scripts are never going to be the best languages for million-line, mission-critical applications, the best languages for embedded programming are not going to be the best languages fo
246.
by akeefer 17y ago
I think the point is less about competitive advantages, and more that time is never irrelevant. What you want to maximize is, as it were, the area under the curve on the time-value graph. That means delivering a reasonable amount of value
247.
by akeefer 17y ago
The most difficult part here is probably around integrations. As you point out, piggy-backing on some existing system is one way to make that easier, but it makes it hard to replace core parts of the system, and it makes the SaaS model far
248.
by akeefer 17y ago
I work in enterprise software, and we have a fairly traditional sales and pricing model from what I know (a fair one, but nothing ground-breaking, aside from the fact that most of our licenses are yearly instead of perpetual). There are tw
249.
by akeefer 17y ago
We (i.e. Guidewire Software) are pretty much always hiring good software engineers, product managers, and QA engineers. http://www.guidewire.com/about_guidewire/careers_listings Of course, we build software for insurance companies, which
250.
by akeefer 17y ago
It's a bit random, but: if you're not already in good shape (and many of us hacker types aren't coming out of high school), find where the gym is and learn what to do there, and go three times a week. College is one of the first chances wh
251.
by akeefer 17y ago
Academic work on subjects like sorting tends to focus more on things like big-O runtimes and less on implementation details that lead to reducing the various constants that big-O simplifies out, or that arise from real-world data patterns r
252.
by akeefer 17y ago
I think Jeff is exaggerating a bit with his phrasing, but I think there's an important point there: humility is always important, and it's the only way you ever improve. As soon as you start being really satisfied with your own work, you
253.
by akeefer 17y ago
The first principle you mention is, more or less, Kant's idea of the categorical imperative ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative ) Perhaps not the end-all be-all of moral reasoning, but certainly very influential (and there
254.
by akeefer 17y ago
There's nothing like a totally contrived example to prove absolutely nothing about the efficacy of any given methodology or programming paradigm.
255.
by akeefer 17y ago
It could be practically anything; sometimes it's a little less pretty, sometimes it's a lot less pretty, sometimes a few little parts of the UI don't work as intended (maybe changing field X doesn't update field Y like it should, maybe butt
256.
by akeefer 17y ago
What would those metrics be, though? Pretty much every metric anyone has ever come up with to "measure" software development has been worthless, and it doesn't look like that trend is going to be broken soon. It's like trying to apply met
257.
by akeefer 17y ago
. . . except that doesn't get you a modifiable list, it just wraps a List interface around the array that's implicitly created by the var-arg, so it's a trick you have to be careful with. Personally I often end up writing little helpers lik
258.
by akeefer 17y ago
Reading that article, one thing that stood out is how the game industry was so focused on such a young market segment: they talk about kids and trying to get them to spend their allowance money. It's interesting how much the gaming demogr
259.
by akeefer 17y ago
I'd say the critical question really isn't around speed of an interpreter, since if you care about speed you're using something like a JIT compilation model to actual machine code anyway. A more important question, if you want the VM to be
260.
by akeefer 17y ago
Well, the example they give includes the words Ruby, DHH, active, record, rspec, mongrel, jruby, and rubinius as the potential dictionary, and they close the post with "The Ruby community is nothing if not persistent, creative and intellige
261.
by akeefer 17y ago
I might suggest that there's some irony in suggesting that one use Ruby to write an algorithm that's going to basically be 100% compute bound . . . seems like this contest is a classic example of exactly the sort of problem where you do, in
262.
by akeefer 17y ago
And how exactly would that help? As the article points out, even if everyone were an organ donor that wouldn't significantly impact the massive waiting list. It's also the case that people who are receiving the organs probably aren't the
263.
by akeefer 17y ago
Does anyone know where something like profit sharing falls on the reward continuum? It's still a "bonus" in effect, but it's a shared bonus if done right with no per-person computation and thus no individual component to cause people to di
264.
by akeefer 17y ago
I wasn't one of the ones who upvoted or downvoted you, but just because you asked . . . while abstractions around your data-handling code are always a good idea, on some level they always leak. (For example, see the classic post http://bl
265.
by akeefer 17y ago
I would contend that the point of the RFP process is to make it harder to rig. That doesn't mean that the vendors themselves don't try to influence the RFP such that it makes them look better, or that the people issuing the RFP don't do
266.
by akeefer 17y ago
Keep in mind that, especially for government agencies, part of the goal of the RFP process is to avoid any question of descrimination by making the decision criteria as "objective" and explicit as possible by making it possible to compare v
267.
by akeefer 17y ago
TDD is one approach, and like most approaches when it comes to creative acts (writing, painting, whatever), different approaches are a fit for different people. Tests are crucial to maintaining quality over the long term and to preserving y
268.
by akeefer 17y ago
The flip side of that question, though, is how often you add in abstractions that you either never use or to code that you don't really need to change. Planning for the future, as it were, is only a win if the amount of time you save when
269.
by akeefer 17y ago
The phenomenon that people tend to adapt to their material circumstances is generally referred to as "the hedonic treadmill." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
270.
by akeefer 17y ago
One problem with that approach in the enterprise is that most of that $100k+ software is stuff that takes a long time to customize and integrate; there's just no low-cost way to try something out. More peripheral services like instant messa

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