bguthrie

18 ms·

121.
by bguthrie 14y ago
I was a colleague of Aaron's at ThoughtWorks (he joined early last year), and, I hope, a friend. We're devastated by his loss. For a history of the work he was doing over the last year, check https://github.com/victorykit/victorykit . We'r
122.
by bguthrie 14y ago
For what it's worth, if you're looking for another place to put your money, Aaron appreciated the work that Givewell (givewell.org) is doing. It's worth investigating how you can support them and the charities they endorse.
123.
by bguthrie 14y ago
I worked closely with Aaron over the last year, and knew him, though not as well as I would have liked. My belief is that the legal process weighed on him tremendously, though he didn't often show it. I am very, very angry with our system r
124.
by bguthrie 14y ago
Eh. Every field has its jargon. Techies who mock business lingo live in exceedingly fragile glass houses.
125.
by bguthrie 14y ago
My late brother-in-law was diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder last year. Unstable, paranoid, and off his meds, he took his own life a few months later, still in his mid-twenties. He left a surreal suicide note. His family wants someon
126.
by bguthrie 14y ago
I read that entire comment thread, and maybe my perspective is skewed, but I saw none of the behavior that DHH described there. The discussion was generally polite, the participants were mostly experienced Ruby developers with open-source a
127.
by bguthrie 14y ago
I agree with you that the heart of the objection is in Silver's presumption of good faith. That being said, the author has previous experience working on Wall Street as a quant, and is involved with the OWS Alternative Banking Group. She ce
128.
by bguthrie 14y ago
Understanding other human beings is the primary goal of biography. Of course one can never live entirely in another's shoes, but humans were then much as they are now, and we can gain much from trying to understand them more fully. A hundre
129.
by bguthrie 14y ago
I interned at IBM/Lotus in 2006, when I was still in college. I don't know much about its history pre-Notes, which is mostly what the article is focused on. But I liked the place, and I appreciated my time there. It had a lot of history. No
130.
by bguthrie 14y ago
Note that this isn't a critique of the REST architectural style; rather, it documents their decision to prefer supplying clients with prebuilt libraries rather than a public API that their respective language communities can use to build th
131.
by bguthrie 14y ago
I really admired the way the you spoke about the Holden Outerwear company; receiving a C&D is a hard thing, but you handled it in a respectful and classy way by casting in terms of "if this could cause a good company harm then we should
132.
by bguthrie 14y ago
I agree, but unfortunately they're also necessary in circumstances, hopefully rare, when your ability to choose your own names is otherwise constrained for whatever reason - a configuration file, or a framework dictating conventions, for ex
133.
by bguthrie 14y ago
> Rather than "merging often" to take small pain now rather than big pain later, they should be taking a step back and looking at WHY there's pain. They could, for example, choose to stagger their work (work on stories involving unrelat
134.
by bguthrie 14y ago
Note that separately CI-ing each individual pull request still consumes what in past years would be an enormous investment in build automation. Luckily this is increasingly becoming a SaaS thing.
135.
Announcing the Github Commit Status API(github.com)
71 points by bguthrie 14y ago|3 comments
136.
by bguthrie 14y ago
If it was meant as a joke then I rescind my comment, with apologies.
137.
by bguthrie 14y ago
This is a dismayingly flippant comment, and I'm particularly disappointed that you of all people should have made it. Would you be more relieved if our executive branch were entirely composed of people who are completely disengaged from the
138.
by bguthrie 14y ago
Pair programming was invented and evangelized by developers, and are its most ardent defenders at every vendor I know that offers Agile services. ThoughtWorks' sales folks hate selling pairs, for the obvious reason that most clients don't l
139.
by bguthrie 14y ago
This article confused and dismayed me. Since 2001, we've started in on the XP/Agile movement, which, think what you will of it, test-drives and version-controls relentlessly, and fosters a constant dialog about what quality is and how to ac
140.
by bguthrie 14y ago
I had the opposite reaction: I wonder if tests make it easier for you to fix code without forcing you to develop a mental model of it, assuming you're working in an unfamiliar codebase. That seems like something of a hidden drawback.
141.
by bguthrie 14y ago
There was a lot to love about Total Annihilation, and I'm happy to support any attempt to follow in its footsteps. That isn't to say Myth wasn't great too, but even if you missed out on TA, this looks like it may be worth a contribution.
142.
by bguthrie 14y ago
cstross has had a bit of a career change since then. I suspect he'll be okay.
143.
by bguthrie 14y ago
I fundamentally agree with your point: changing processes at large software teams is really, really hard, risky, and expensive. But if I may pick a nit about something I think you were describing as a potential process improvement, per-team
144.
by bguthrie 14y ago
A wonderful link. My votes are: Wolverton for prescience, Silverberg for wisdom. Your AUs per year may vary.
145.
by bguthrie 14y ago
I claim that the mathematics of hiring aren't all that different from the mathematics of beauty: http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-mathematics-of-beauty/ The OP generated a lot of strong negative reactions. But it also generated
146.
by bguthrie 14y ago
This is very much a cultural fit test. If people who use poor grammar are going to drive the author nuts, then as the the person running the company I think he's perfectly justified in treating the candidate as a poor cultural fit. Addition
147.
by bguthrie 14y ago
Self-interest isn't incompatible with passion and personal moral indignation. You're essentially accusing him, if I read you right, of being disingenuous: claiming he's restoring that data for one set of reasons, when really, he's doing it
148.
by bguthrie 14y ago
The original, lean Winamp was a fabulous piece of software--I can't think of many other products I've used that made me so happy, or seemed so much like magic. I still remember feeling awed by the idea that your computer could play, and Win
149.
by bguthrie 14y ago
This actually isn't all that unusual, and there's nothing sinister about it. Amazon does the same thing; try changing http://www.amazon.com/Cryptonomicon-ebook/dp/B000FC11A6/ to http://www.amazon.com/Snow-Crash/dp/B000FC11A6/
150.
by bguthrie 14y ago
Yes, it's a bit disingenuous to suggest that Yelp is filtering fly-by-night reviewers "for no good reason."

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