dasmoth

11 ms·

91.
by dasmoth 8y ago
I agree regarding the symptoms, but am less convinced that run-time efficiency is the sole (or perhaps even major) cause. If it were, I'd argue that we'd see less usage of, e.g. , Python. I don't know the true cause -- I wi
92.
by dasmoth 8y ago
It’s a good question, but there are counter-examples too (Bill Gates, arguably Elon Musk) and I’d argue that these get more attention and praise — so on the whole things may not be too badly out of kilter.
93.
by dasmoth 8y ago
This is one of those cases where the word “average” is kind-of unhelpful. Mean? Mode? Median?
94.
Avoiding burnout: lessons learned from a 19th century philosopher(codewithoutrules.com)
4 points by dasmoth 8y ago|0 comments
95.
by dasmoth 8y ago
John D. Clark's "Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants" is back in print as of a few months ago, and pretty readable overall (but does venture into some of the less travelled corners of chemistry as well
96.
by dasmoth 8y ago
Jeff Bezos has more money and can speed things up if he wants. The first part is obviously true. The latter, I’m not so sure —- Blue’s budget has increased dramatically over the past few years, but New Glenn flights remain rare, and New
97.
by dasmoth 8y ago
If you're looking for a reasonably readable summary, there was a fair amount on Raymond Chen's blog recently. Part one (of about 15 IIRC) here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20180806-00/?p
98.
by dasmoth 8y ago
I'm not a night owl in the sense you are, but still find the idea of fixed 9-5-style hours pretty frustrating (in particular, because they make it hard to get much outdoors time in the winter months). You don't say what field you
99.
You Gotta Own It (2005)(blog.codinghorror.com)
2 points by dasmoth 8y ago|0 comments
100.
by dasmoth 8y ago
Yes, I said I didn't really like the answer and the slow updates are a big part of that. The "Google warnings" aspect, I'm pretty ambivalent about. They probably have saved some people some trouble, but on the other han
101.
by dasmoth 8y ago
I don't particularly like this answer but: Safari. It's now back to running (legitimately...) only on Apple's hardware (there was a Windows version in the past, but it's long gone), so you are paying for it -- it'
102.
by dasmoth 8y ago
APL could be interesting, but the last time I checked everyone wanted real money for APL that you could run on modern hardware. There are definitely some options today: There's a GNU APL implementation ( https://www.gnu.org
103.
by dasmoth 8y ago
The “ton of debt” thing isn’t true everywhere (although the UK seems to be pretty committed to that route now...). I’m not totally against the idea that people should consider the likely financial value of education when choosing between co
104.
by dasmoth 8y ago
Yep. “A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.” —- Alan Perlis. Quite an old quote, but the principle seems sound. I’d probably add a LISP and an APL-family thing as valuable alternative poin
105.
by dasmoth 8y ago
I find nearly anything that gets me away from the screen can help with creativity. For me, gardening is one of the best. An interesting property of the shower is that it’s one of the few places where hardly anyone takes electronics. Even
106.
by dasmoth 8y ago
Yep. The tricky thing is that "help a colleague on some little problem" can end up being an expensive context switch, but can also be pretty valuable. A degree of asynchrony, and perhaps some kind of "office hours" typ
107.
by dasmoth 8y ago
See also: http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
108.
Holding a Program in One's Head (2007)(paulgraham.com)
215 points by dasmoth 8y ago|79 comments
109.
by dasmoth 8y ago
Sure, it's process which is mandated in some fields. I still think it's net harmful, and can lead to over-emphasising the small/local vs understanding the application and its value as a whole. In cases where "you reall
110.
by dasmoth 8y ago
mostly making sure it’s linked to a reasonably-written ticket This one seems to come up quite often recently, but to me sounds an awful lot like "satisfying the urge for process and structure". Yes, code people write in profess
111.
by dasmoth 8y ago
I'm not aware of anything that meets both of these requirements. If you just wanted Javascript, Clojurescript is definitely worth a look, but the readability of generated code is debatable (especially since you're strongly encour
112.
by dasmoth 8y ago
I'm not sure I follow. Do you think improving in other areas means the focus is no longer on the dev? Yes. There are always trade-offs, especially when you're adding user-facing features as slowly as GitHub [1]. The author tag
113.
by dasmoth 8y ago
Do you think that focus is gone? Obviously, this comes down to opinion, but honestly: yes. In the case of GitHub, the point where I reached that conclusion was when they added built-in enforcement of code review workflows. A feature whi
114.
by dasmoth 8y ago
It is somewhat remarkable that the first reply to that (in 2012!) was "Smells like the next Microsoft acquisition to me."
115.
by dasmoth 8y ago
It certainly seems to fill a niche. That said, I rather miss the minimalism and focus on individual developers ( vs organisations and processes) of early Github.
116.
by dasmoth 8y ago
a friend of mine worked on the next Lisp-like version of R under Ross Ihaka Did anything come of this? I seem to remember seeing a paper or article where he proposed doing this, but I’ve never seen an implementation. Edit: paper I was th
117.
by dasmoth 8y ago
How to be alone. Not all the time, of course. But solo reading, solo building-stuff, and solo walking/cycling are my fondest childhood memories and on the whole I think they've stood me in pretty good stead. It's worth maki
118.
by dasmoth 8y ago
You should , yes, but it seems as though open plan offices and the trappings are close to 100% in some areas. Remote jobs now seem to be the main alternative, but not everyone loves that setup (especially those who want to keep the work&#
119.
by dasmoth 8y ago
Unless you’re just reproducing a high fidelity mock-up from a designer, HTML/CSS work absolutely can include experimentation. And I’d argue that this is pretty important if you want web apps that are at all pleasant to use.
120.
by dasmoth 8y ago
Discussions that are peripherally related to something you’re working on can be dramatically worse than something random. Hence people who can work in coffee shops but not open-plan offices.

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