bpyne

41 ms·

421.
by bpyne 16y ago
In the northeast of the US, getting winded is breathing heavily from exertion. It implies reaching your max exertion point. I would think the rest of the US uses it the same way, just based on talking with friends throughout the country. I'
422.
by bpyne 16y ago
Java was not considered easy to understand back in 1997. There were cries about it being "too object-oriented". Developers were mostly used to procedural coding at the time. Thanks to hundreds of OO and Java books, along with the internet,
423.
by bpyne 16y ago
The only place you may see a data driven argument to support advanced languages would be a journal on software engineering or the like. (I'm a little skeptical that many CTO's read academic journals.) Developers in the field are not going t
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by bpyne 16y ago
I wouldn't qualify it as an edge case. It was more of a change in philosophy about teaching kids to spell, which is something like "kids should spell it the way it sounds". The change started in the US at least 15 years ago. When I went th
425.
by bpyne 16y ago
We bought Roku a few months ago. I find we use Netflix and Amazon in a complimentary fashion. However, we lean towards Netflix because of the pricing model - a flat monthly rate - rather than Amazon's brick-and-mortar video store model. Als
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by bpyne 16y ago
university IT department
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by bpyne 16y ago
Steve's advice is sound in some situations but one factor not mentioned by him is the stability of the current platform. Are customers affected by bugs, poorly thought out process flow, etc.? Rewriting simply to add new features may be a lo
428.
by bpyne 16y ago
I could be taking your comments wrong, but they make Fantasy seem like bad SciFi. Well told fantasy stories explore the world in an introspective way. The "magic" systems provide drama, "color", and a vehicle representing power but typicall
429.
by bpyne 16y ago
I think comfort zone plays a part in IT developers seeming uninterested in "new" ideas. Closer to the heart of the problem IMO is that most business applications are just not very interesting. You can reduce them to: take input values from
430.
by bpyne 16y ago
Oddly, my mind went immediately to the 50 yo being larger and, in a flimsy lifeboat, more costly space-wise. In a life-threatening situation, I don't think I would stop to consider the relative benefit of each person to society.
431.
by bpyne 16y ago
The noise category assumption is a fair one. "Work harder" is a vague recommendation. Are there more specific recommendations you could make? No, a discussion would create noise, which would not be valuable for the HN community. A voluntary
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by bpyne 16y ago
As long as someone has opened up a guideline discussion.... "Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." Agreed in full. However, downmodding without constructive criticism leaves the dow
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by bpyne 16y ago
One of the most important take aways is understanding the rules of the game. It's important any time humans organize. A French professor I had in college gave me the sage advice, "Know the rules before you try to break the rules." It's a l
434.
by bpyne 16y ago
Great list. Just a few more items I wish I'd realized at 17. 1. When you go to college study something you're interested in. I studied math and found it a challenge but I wasn't passionate about it. If I had a do-over, I'd double in compute
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by bpyne 16y ago
I noticed the same thing when I was a math undergrad. While working on proofs for Abstract Algebra and Real Analysis, I couldn't go more than a couple of hours.
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by bpyne 16y ago
I can see your scenario happening. Around me, the housing market crashed just after some large condo and apartment building projects got underway. The developers dropped prices/rents, which caused the owners of smaller, older apartment buil
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by bpyne 16y ago
It's not possible to do unless you fully understand the problem you're trying to solve. When you're exploring the problem you need a "scratch area". In modern times, the scratch area is your programming environment rather than paper and cha
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by bpyne 16y ago
I saw a PBS documentary sometime in the early 90's about the Labor Movement in the US. Just after getting the 40 hour work week, they pushed for 32 hours because it was found to be optimal. Industrialists fought harder against that one so C
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by bpyne 16y ago
My thought pattern was more along the line of urban areas have plenty of apartments available off campus. Rent fluctuates according to the local market: my own city is a steal for students right now. Some markets are always ridiculously hig
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by bpyne 16y ago
His references to C++, C#, and Haskell were about language size relative to Scala.
441.
by bpyne 16y ago
I'm employed at a university in the US and have what we consider a "cushy" job: i.e. good benefits and a short work week. Just for comparison, here's what my employer offers. vacation = 2 weeks personal time = 6 days (sick time is considere
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by bpyne 16y ago
"Suite Sister Mary" still gives me goosebumps when I listen to it.
443.
by bpyne 16y ago
If you liked Rob Halford, then Geoff Tate from Queensryche should be a real treat. Anything from Operation Mindcrime would be worth a listen.
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by bpyne 16y ago
"You look at my life and see empty houses (nevermind that I live with a bunch of fun, like-minded people); I look at yours and see sleep deprivation, debt, stress, loss of the ability to travel and develop myself personally--basically the e
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by bpyne 16y ago
I can't speak to early computing, but starting around when business applications emerged (60's/early 70's?), developers were very involved in gathering requirements, designing, coding, testing, etc. Shortly after I entered the field, circa
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by bpyne 16y ago
Agree 100%. Just adding: The "dictating specs to programmers" practice seems to stem from the silly notion of applying manufacturing processes to software development. In the view of companies with this notion, programmers are little more t
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by bpyne 16y ago
Far better than I. I can read French and German but my speaking French makes native speakers cringe. German is easier for me but I've lost too much vocabulary to hold a long conversation.
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by bpyne 16y ago
All systems have their problems. Thanks for sharing your experience. Still, I get the feeling I'd rather be poor in France than poor in the US. Some states in the US recognize the transition from public assistance as an issue. My wife used
449.
by bpyne 16y ago
"Maybe you were in a public school." Through 8th grade I was. For high school I went to a private school with religious affiliations. I'd qualify the private school as antiquated at the time, so my education was better in the public system.
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by bpyne 16y ago
This hopelessness shows up in the US as well. It's the people who fall off the unemployment stats and have given up looking for work. Another group of people stay on government assistance because they realize that paying for daycare, rent,

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