alexdowad

10 ms·

61.
by alexdowad 5y ago
I think two important points which distinguish many implausible conspiracy theories from real conspiracies are 1) disregard for what humans are actually capable of doing and 2) not having any reasonable motive to attribute to the purported
62.
by alexdowad 5y ago
Historically, I have rarely tried running code under review, but I have a coworker who routinely does this and by doing so, he has caught my mistakes a couple of times. I should probably learn from him.
63.
by alexdowad 5y ago
Cool stuff! Thanks for sharing, Drew!
64.
by alexdowad 5y ago
This. Reading 3rd-party code, figuring out how it works, and figuring out how to fix it is a critical skill. It takes time and practice to develop, but the more you do it, the easier it gets. Perhaps the biggest step is simply believing tha
65.
by alexdowad 5y ago
Because that busy man has garden tools and other stuff which needs to be stored somewhere?
66.
by alexdowad 5y ago
Eric Raymond's Art of UNIX Programming is excellent for budding programmers, even those who are not UNIX enthusiasts. I am not as convinced as Mr Raymond that UNIX is the be-all and end-all of computer operating systems, but regardless
67.
by alexdowad 5y ago
Hmm. Were the "old days" really all that great, though? You talk about websites which use 10MB of JS to display a 32KB article. I think what we have seen historically is that most software developers will work only as hard as nece
68.
by alexdowad 5y ago
Some idle words from a passer-by: It would have been good if this project had a pronounceable name. "To Google" has entered the English lexicon as a verb, but I don't think anybody will ever say they "mwmbled" somet
69.
by alexdowad 5y ago
Could someone put a more appropriate title on this link? The story has nothing to do with "running away from open source".
70.
by alexdowad 5y ago
Understood. I was hoping that someone here in the HN comments might have the low-down.
71.
by alexdowad 5y ago
What is the alleged impropriety which she was removed for? The article is missing the most important piece of context.
72.
by alexdowad 5y ago
Well, maybe the people you have available to review code aren't all that good. Nobody ever wants to admit that their team is below average, but 50% of teams are. Maybe due to limitations on team size, it's not possible to have an
73.
by alexdowad 5y ago
I can't speak for other experienced programmers, but for me (28 years experience)... I could do all the things listed, but I would not finish any of them in less than an hour.
74.
by alexdowad 5y ago
There are many, many, many things which a person can do to make a living in this world. Many of them might be more enjoyable and pay more than what you are doing now. Random example: I once cleaned windows for a couple of years, and the p
75.
by alexdowad 5y ago
One of the really fabulous things about working in tech (or doing it as a hobby) is that you can participate in creating new things, bringing something useful into existence. Another is the joy of figuring out how intricate things work&#x2F
76.
by alexdowad 5y ago
Yep, exactly. Usually we don't see content this poor make front page of HN. Knew it as soon as I read this: "In a REST architecture, the client makes an HTTP request and data is sent as HTTP response, but in GraphQL, the client re
77.
by alexdowad 5y ago
If 'x' is a vector, then it works for a lot of other functions as well (all the projections into a lower-dimensional vector space).
78.
by alexdowad 5y ago
There are some good points in this article. At the same time, "10x engineers" are not a myth. Anecdotally, I have seen plenty of situations where the most skilled engineers in a group were many times more productive than the least
79.
by alexdowad 5y ago
Funny stuff. I remember reading a comment by Professor Terry Tao, where he mentioned that one of his weaker areas of mathematics is "algebra". I guess he should have paid more attention in 9th grade math classes!
80.
by alexdowad 5y ago
When a book is titled "Algebra", it's always a bit ambiguous whether that means "high school algebra" or "abstract algebra". I clicked on this link thinking it was about group/field/ring/etc
81.
by alexdowad 5y ago
Great article. While there is definitely some software which needs to continually change by its very nature (think tax preparation software, where the tax laws change a bit each year), probably there are a lot more programs which could be
82.
Visualizing important algorithms: Huffman coding(alexdowad.github.io)
1 points by alexdowad 5y ago|0 comments
83.
Visualizing the Inverse Discrete Cosine Transform(alexdowad.github.io)
1 points by alexdowad 5y ago|0 comments
84.
by alexdowad 6y ago
Hmm. This makes sense, but I wonder if it would be more accurate to say the quality of open source code is more variable than closed source. If you filter out the worst junk, would low quality code still correlate with open source? Just t
85.
by alexdowad 6y ago
That statement was what caught my interest in this piece. What is the "much evidence" which the author refers to? I'm genuinely interested; if anyone here knows of any such evidence, please, tell us! What is it? My personal e
86.
by alexdowad 6y ago
It started with just noise, but a bit later there was actual music which was very impressive if indeed synthesized out of 'nothing' by a neural network. Chord progression which was something like I-V-IV-vi, a simple melody based o
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by alexdowad 6y ago
If nemiah is reading these comments... well done! Loved your story!
88.
by alexdowad 6y ago
Talk to other expats who have already stayed long-term in your country of interest. Anybody who has been there for enough time will know their way around the immigration & visa system and people are usually very happy to share what they
89.
by alexdowad 6y ago
> Doesn't it look suspicious for a middle-aged guy who looks to be from a different part of the world trying to get a job he clearly does not need? Not at all. If you can find a company which needs or wants an employee like you, whe
90.
by alexdowad 6y ago
I suggest you just try his e-mail address: fabrice at bellard dot org.

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