bgribble

18 ms·

121.
by bgribble 10y ago
(I'm a programmer so my personal rules reflect that) I like these guidelines. For salary, my rule is "does the offered salary meet local norms for the position and the company's situation, and does it show respect for me and
122.
by bgribble 10y ago
I have actually had really good experiences as both a job seeker and a hiring manager with Hired. Their platform makes it easier to keep track of candidates and makes it less likely they will fall through the cracks. My experience with hir
123.
by bgribble 10y ago
Write 5 tests for a piece of code that you think is working but has no tests. You will find at least 1 bug every time. Staying at work longer won't help you produce more and better code. Sleep and exercise will. People who get angry
124.
by bgribble 10y ago
I wrote a shell toy to help me learn vim motions.. the idea is you can grab parts of the output of previous shell commands by passing vim motions. So like when you want to say "git checkout <that branch mentioned 5 lines up in the
125.
by bgribble 10y ago
There are several online learning services that will pair you with a mentor who has already demonstrated that they can and want to mentor you. You pay more but it may be worth it. I happen to work for one such company (thinkful.com) but th
126.
by bgribble 10y ago
Really interesting! Much of the active "prior art" in data flow languages is in audio and music, where systems like Max/MSP [1] and Pure Data [2] have made several generations of musicians into programmers without even telli
127.
by bgribble 10y ago
"Involved in distribution" can mean "possession with intent to distribute", which in some places is triggered by a quantity in possession. One person's "personal party stash" may be enough to cross this t
128.
by bgribble 10y ago
Timezones
129.
by bgribble 10y ago
Microsoft exec #1: "It seems that people are hating us less and less these days. Somehow, the quality of our products and services is perceived as higher and less hostile to users. That's a problem!" Microsoft exec #2: &qu
130.
by bgribble 10y ago
5 whys is my go-to debugging strategy for truly mysterious software and systems bugs. The rubber hits the road at the point where you have an answer like "one of A, B, or C occurred" and you don't know which because none of t
131.
by bgribble 10y ago
Sorry, I misspoke. You are right about it not being a "path" to permanent residence in any legal sense, and I definitely agree that it's not a humane or fair type of visa. OTOH, in my (limited) experience, I have worked clos
132.
by bgribble 10y ago
Yes, but only about 2% have a significant ancestry in the Americas back more than 500 years. Relative to most of the rest of the world, almost all Americans are newcomers.
133.
by bgribble 10y ago
The US is a nation of immigrants. As it stands now, H1-B is one of the few paths for technically-educated people to get lawful work and eventual permanent residence and citizenship in the US. I don't think there's anything wrong
134.
by bgribble 11y ago
There's a popular Quaker anecdote in the OP which is worth quoting in full: "Many years ago, when William Penn converted to Quakerism and pacifism, he was troubled by the thought of having to give up the sword that he wore, a grea
135.
by bgribble 11y ago
There was an earlier version of this document, without the 9/11 discussion of course, on Kuipers' homepage when I was a grad student in the early-mid 90's.
136.
by bgribble 11y ago
Dr. Kuipers was my grad school advisor at the University of Texas. I found his adherence to principles of pacifism and nonviolence, rooted in Quakerism, to be very inspirational. Certainly, as a graduate student, I would have had an easier
137.
by bgribble 11y ago
vim-surround is the bee's knees. `cs"'` change surrounding double quotes to single `dst` delete surrounding HTML tag pair `ysiptp>` wrap this paragraph in <p></p>
138.
by bgribble 11y ago
At this point, I think the burden of proof is on Theranos to demonstrate that they weren't designed from the beginning to be a scam, initially aimed at the military but now just looking for any way to survive as a company.
139.
by bgribble 11y ago
While I appreciate that this process has been great for you, I would think that it probably sucks for all the engineers and managers whose time you took up interviewing "for fun". Have you ever tried to hire engineers? It is a p
140.
by bgribble 11y ago
There's too much missing information in this article. In today's environment, a qualified programmer with the background this guy appears to have should get offers at a much higher percentage of companies.. IF everything is on th
141.
by bgribble 11y ago
OMG the comments on that article... a significant chunk of the threads are talking about the freaking stock-photo model. when will I learn NEVER READ THE COMMENTS (whitelist=HN,Metafilter) I like a standing desk. I have had chronic back p
142.
by bgribble 11y ago
It's odd to speak of Cyc just now being commercialized -- Cycorp has been in business using Cyc as its core tech for a long time. Military contracting, among other stuff.
143.
by bgribble 11y ago
The idea that ANYONE reads any of these emails is just laughable to me. They are dunning emails sent to drum up support, and they basically get shitcanned instantly even by supporters. They DO have some impact, mainly just keeping the can
144.
by bgribble 11y ago
Not every hard-to-work-with person is "on the spectrum". Sometimes a jerk is just a jerk.
145.
by bgribble 11y ago
The corollary of "it's better to ask forgiveness than permission" is "sometimes, you will ask forgiveness and be told 'hell no, what were you thinking?'"
146.
by bgribble 11y ago
You're a "ghost". Your FICO credit score will probably be pretty OK (in the 600s) if you have no derogatory credit, but with no (US) history of high credit, and no established history of attachment to your job and address, a
147.
by bgribble 11y ago
Recent use for me: Semi-technical boss comes to me and says "Hey look! I wrote this cool SQL query to figure out what time of day our service is being used most. Can you turn it into a heatmap?" And of course you know if you do s
148.
by bgribble 11y ago
This works great if you don't mind cutting down the number of car models a whole lot. Factories are reconfigured multiple times a year to make different models and there's weeks of downtime between manufacturing runs. It might b
149.
by bgribble 11y ago
That was the normal case in most of the US until pretty recently. Now manufacturers don't want competing brands in the same building. They want a uniform branded buying experience. So they make it very hard to transfer franchises if
150.
by bgribble 11y ago
Yep, buying a car sucks. But this is one of the largest supply-chain operations in the world. The dealer franchise system and its legal framework have evolved over 100 years and are balanced pretty delicately. It can't just be refac

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