bstpierre

20 ms·

91.
by bstpierre 12y ago
Dilbert was 10 years younger in 1997 than in 2007 It depends on your frame of reference :)
92.
by bstpierre 12y ago
What about the half of the tree that's underground?
93.
by bstpierre 12y ago
Going slow is often a good idea, but part of the wisdom that comes from 20 years writing software is knowing when you should choose between slowing down, coding like hell, slapping something half-working together, etc.
94.
by bstpierre 12y ago
The information in that wikipedia article seems incomplete or contradictory. It says that boiling for 10m degrades the toxin. If that's the case, why is cold soaking for 5h necessary?
95.
by bstpierre 12y ago
That's not even close to true. I've worked in more than one shop where the 19-23yo kid fresh out of high school/college is 10x better than most of the 40-50s. Or, in a few cases, infinitely better than the guys in their 50s w
96.
by bstpierre 12y ago
I found ocaml to be a more flexible alternative -- I can sprinkle printf for quick debugging without having to alter types. (I think this is what you mean by "having to use the IO monad". I didn't work with haskell much, so i
97.
by bstpierre 12y ago
I spent a little time with Haskell and gave up because progress was slow. Later I picked up Ocaml and found many of the concepts to be similar but had a much easier time making progress. Having used Ocaml to familiarize myself with strongly
98.
by bstpierre 12y ago
also: pipelining, "advanced" instructions
99.
by bstpierre 12y ago
Are universities using single-language curricula now? I hear people talking about "python schools" or "java schools". That seems like a mistake. I don't have any hard data to back it up, but it seems like students w
100.
by bstpierre 12y ago
> If we wanted to engage in the same level of software engineering for all software, we could. But we don't want to. Of course. Like building structures, there are different kinds of software. I can build a garden shed by myself as
101.
by bstpierre 12y ago
I don't understand the underlying argument from Tim Parks side ("we should read more quality"). It seems to take for granted that "quality" literature is in some way better for us. How does reading, say, Faulkner or
102.
by bstpierre 12y ago
In "The Hobbit", Bilbo Baggins is a boring little non-noteworthy hobbit who rises to his circumstances. The same thing applies to Frodo in LOTR. I read James Patterson's "The Beach House" on a pair of short plane fl
103.
by bstpierre 12y ago
Not saying anything is better than lying -- whatever you do say, truthful or not, can get twisted around and used against you. "I respectfully decline to answer your questions." "I prefer not to answer." Also, I have to
104.
by bstpierre 12y ago
Amen to this! One or both of my kids, depending on the activity, will beg to do stuff that my wife and/or I are doing: gardening, learning about electronics, home repair, sports, music, cooking, crafts, animal care/husbandry, fore
105.
by bstpierre 12y ago
I presume this is a reference to Michael Hastings - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_%28journalist%...
106.
by bstpierre 12y ago
Amazon already has all the infrastructure to deal with this, they can quickly achieve volume to build the readers at low cost (and take a loss in basically giving them away). Small shop owners are more likely to be familiar with the amazon
107.
by bstpierre 12y ago
That's not real: > This was a thought experiment
108.
by bstpierre 12y ago
Thanks for the article. I'm in the same boat you were -- picked up ocaml a couple of times but it hasn't "stuck". Is dead-tree RWO worthwhile or is it going to become obsolete quickly? I like (prefer) reading on paper, b
109.
by bstpierre 12y ago
The .info is icing on the cake. I worked for @Comm many years ago (www.atcomm.com) and telling people my email address was always awkward. "My email address is myname at atcomm dot com" "Huh??" "Here's my card.
110.
by bstpierre 12y ago
I am reading it as the creation of an entirely new industry which will spawn sub-industries, hundreds or thousands of firms, and a million jobs over the course of the next 20 years.
111.
by bstpierre 12y ago
Or "a million entrepreneurs who are responsible and fully in control of their own healthcare and retirement benefits". If you're self-employed, you can choose the precise healthcare and retirement package that makes sense for
112.
by bstpierre 12y ago
> "Fun with no limits" is a stick and a paper hat. This is what I came to say. This thing has a limit, and that is that you are tethered to the thing. And as an electronic thing, it is relatively fragile. You can't take it
113.
by bstpierre 13y ago
Thanks for that tip! I wandered in here hoping someone had already asked and answered and got my reward. I mostly use emacs for the past 15 years, but I learned vi about 20 years ago and use it regularly at something approximating level 4,
114.
by bstpierre 13y ago
Thanks! I didn't know about INTERACTIVE_COMMENTS. Adding a comment there is a neat trick. It also works with bang searches (!?), almost like creating a temporary ad-hoc alias: find . -name "*.png" -print0 | xargs -0 -P8
115.
by bstpierre 13y ago
Yes, I have written some of those too. Just make sure the script is in your PATH. I drop them in ~/bin/ -- which reminds me of another thing you should have in your ~/.bash_profile, if it isn't already in the template pr
116.
by bstpierre 13y ago
I've worked on a lot of systems that don't have pgrep. 'ps aux | grep' works everywhere
117.
by bstpierre 13y ago
IMO the aliases for git should be in ~/.gitconfig instead. I have a bunch of these, like: [alias] br = branch co = checkout ci = commit -v sci = svn dcommit --interactive cp = cherry-pick l = log --pretty=
118.
by bstpierre 13y ago
> Land is finite and does not depreciate. The value of land can definitely depreciate. Perhaps not in [sub]urban areas so much, but in rural areas the value of land can be tied to things like timber, water, or mining. If I buy some acrea
119.
by bstpierre 13y ago
One thing not mentioned here is the waiting period. I.e. after you are injured and stop working, you are typically required to use up all of your sick/vacation time, and/or wait for 180 days until you can receive benefits. I'
120.
by bstpierre 13y ago
> they do OK in very nutrient poor soils I generally agree with your comment, but I'd maybe say that "they can thrive in nitrogen-deficient soils". There are still other variables that affect the growth of nitrogen-fixers

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