balloot

17 ms·

121.
by balloot 14y ago
That interview question would be completely irrelevant for 99.9% of software jobs. Nobody is denying that this stuff is essential for some very specialized software teams. But the claim that it's something every software engineer needs to
122.
by balloot 14y ago
It seems that every day on HN there is some post offering something "every programmer needs to know", yet the post is actually some very in-depth dive into the minutiae of the author's pet subject. The other day there was some post on front
123.
by balloot 14y ago
That is also crazy wrong. Google and Facebook, between them, employ somewhere in the range of 15,000-20,000 engineers. Look at the entirety of the two companies' web presence (ie their jQuery hacker designed stuff) - that's work that could
124.
by balloot 14y ago
No, Google/Facebook can NOT get by with self-taught programmers. Much of what they do is the realm of highly educated people with a PhD or Masters in CS. Look at one of Google's highest visibility projects - the self driving car. I highl
125.
by balloot 14y ago
Wow, are you wrong. First off, at any decent school the CS curriculum focuses on theory and other things that are relatively slow changing. Big O theory, language parsing, etc are absolutely just as relevant now as they were 10 years ago.
126.
by balloot 14y ago
I just can't believe that this works as seamlessly as the handbook would have you believe. It seems it would create a very Lord Of The Flies/cliquey atmosphere. In a group of people, there always exists some kind of hierarchy, whether i
127.
by balloot 14y ago
To be fair, they also have the opposite quality wherein one great person can positively affect an entire tree. Many great companies have been built by a great leader positively affecting hundreds or thousands of people.
128.
by balloot 14y ago
Well, I can imagine there's a lot of web designers who would love to take a shot at working on the physics engine for the next Portal game. Or play testers that would rather be actually doing development on the games. It would be interest
129.
by balloot 15y ago
No, this is not arguing semantics. A contract programmer and a technical co-founder are two totally different things.
130.
by balloot 15y ago
Anyone else notice that there have been exactly zero specific cases of an employer asking for a FB password? It seems that "Employers ask for FB passwords!" is more of an outrage tool than an actual issue. For those who watch TDS/Colbert,
131.
by balloot 15y ago
That's about right. Without teams/scores/standings an ESPN API is useless. Fail.
132.
by balloot 15y ago
The spin in the article was that this was just a routine culling of the employee base. And to be fair, an ideally managed company would actually have this happen every once in a while. A company like Blizz that has no problems hiring reall
133.
by balloot 15y ago
I assume that if Blizz kept 90% of its employees it likely kept most or all of the employees that would otherwise do kickass startups. If it didn't, then there is something very wrong with its layoff process!
134.
by balloot 15y ago
An increment/decrement operator is unary and doesn't give you the ability to change the value by any more than one.
135.
by balloot 15y ago
This feels like it was written by a guy who wrote a popular OS and has had people kissing his ass for 15 years. Basically the coding version of a diva musician.
136.
by balloot 15y ago
It's not this one post - if you read HN regularly you get a weekly dose of "We're 37 Signals! Check out how awesome we are!". It's obnoxious.
137.
by balloot 15y ago
Find them totally arrogant as well. Everything corporate strategy they employ is the "right" way of doing things and necessitates a self-fellating post on Hacker News.
138.
by balloot 15y ago
I don't think it's subtle at all. My primary knowledge of 37signals is as the company that spends an inordinate amount of time on Hacker News telling everyone how great it and its methods are.
139.
by balloot 15y ago
Bah. Looks like the server is now not responding. Bummer, because this is really fun.
140.
by balloot 15y ago
So you're saying that he would be a better prospective employee if he spent less time working on his primary job and instead spent more time writing other code? That seems totally counterintuitive to me.
141.
by balloot 15y ago
So what happens if someone is employed? Do you just not hire them? Do you expect your employees to spend lots of time coding random stuff outside of work? That's not generally a quality I would put a lot of weight on.
142.
by balloot 15y ago
This is exactly why Github will not ever be the standard. It's fine to show off what you play around with in your spare time, but the very best and most productive workers actually won't have an extensive up-to-date Github repo. This is
143.
by balloot 15y ago
The article is only looking at the relationship in one direction. It's not entirely that learning clojure makes you money, it's that high level academic types that are predisposed to high wage jobs are more likely to know clojure. I would
144.
by balloot 15y ago
Exactly my experience.
145.
by balloot 15y ago
My attempt at feedback: If you are trying to promote a game you made, promote the game. I have no clue why there are all these pictures of you with random girls, but I can tell you that it lost my interest far before I ever read a word abo
146.
by balloot 15y ago
That's a great article. The same situation has developed here in San Francisco, where the magnet public high school that admits based solely on test scores is Asian by a large majority. The problem is, in the drive to get perfect grades an
147.
by balloot 15y ago
I would be interested to see their definition of "all other credentials equal". My assumption is that it is some very simplistic compilation of grades and test scores, because the article barely mentions any factors other than these. Also
148.
by balloot 15y ago
This article fails to mention that college admission is not based solely on test scores. Many Asians are almost solely test-driven and tend to ignore the other aspects of a "well-rounded" eduction. I am sure if you looked at race-based sta
149.
by balloot 15y ago
Same deal as the other post. The easy part of creating a declarative language is describing it. The hard part is actually implementing it.
150.
by balloot 15y ago
I have a feeling the second question will stay open. :)

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