ellius

18 ms·

121.
by ellius 7y ago
Your first paragraphs are entirely correct. "Shadow banking," for example, has created a notoriously complex and opaque credit market. Your last paragraph, though, is completely at odds with basic financial and economic theory. Lo
122.
by ellius 7y ago
I put a lot of thought into what I want out of life, and "contemplation" is a big one. Hannah Arendt drew a distinction I love between "thought" and "contemplation," essentially saying that just because you are
123.
by ellius 7y ago
There are certain jobs that I think could really benefit from pairing, akin to pair programming. I used to do compliance work for a bank, and I think as a whole our reporting defect rate would have plummeted had we worked in pairs. Obviousl
124.
by ellius 7y ago
There's a weird moral element to these discussions though. Lots of people think this is "wrong," or that the CIA is accusing the Chinese intelligence services of doing something wrong, whereas other people admit that all coun
125.
by ellius 7y ago
Love bullet #2. Being able to start with more constrained features and using more powerful techniques when necessary would be a huge aid in developing good architectures.
126.
by ellius 8y ago
Very few people have the discipline to do proper postmortems, and even fewer industries and companies have the discipline to enable those people to do them.
127.
by ellius 8y ago
I doubt that anyone frequently predicts emergent properties precisely, but I still think that thoughtfully considering them is beneficial. There is a line in "Clean Architecture" to the effect that every architectural decision is
128.
by ellius 8y ago
I mix eBooks and physical copies, and I agree with your list, but here are a couple advantages of eBooks: 1. Space -- I have an entire closet full of books. Every time I buy another physical book, I am slowly crowding myself out of a little
129.
by ellius 8y ago
Anecdotal, but I'd take lower pay to go remote and move back to my hometown (not a small town, but a small city with a weaker tech market than where I currently live). Being able to live near your friends and family that you grew up wi
130.
by ellius 8y ago
There’s: • Agile as a set of values • Agile as a set of practices • Agile as a faddish silver bullet marketed to people who don’t know any better I assume OP is thinking mainly of the latter two. It sounds like their business avoided formal
131.
by ellius 8y ago
You’re the kind of person I’m rooting for to become a billionaire.
132.
by ellius 8y ago
This episode of Odd Lots entitled "Why the Eurodollar Might Be Ground Zero for De-Globalization" is a great listen: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/odd-lots/id1056200096?mt...
133.
by ellius 8y ago
I'm not sure, I'd really have to think about that one. I'm pretty sure there has never been a society where the bulk of activity was not labor. That seems necessary by definition: you can't build things if you don&#x27
134.
by ellius 8y ago
You're assuming that I'm implying capitalism is "bad" and that no other form of society could produce the same effect. I don't believe either of those things. I've actually made many pro-capitalism comments on
135.
by ellius 8y ago
Hannah Arendt draws a useful distinction between "labor" and "work." Labor is effort required to sustain life: catching food, finding water, plowing crops. Because living creatures need these things continually, labor ne
136.
by ellius 8y ago
I'm a counterexample to your statement about Hacker News capitalists. I certainly don't consider Facebook's behavior ethical, even if it is legal. But I also think democratic societies with capitalist economies have been the
137.
by ellius 8y ago
Anecdotal data point, it took me a little over 3 years of nights and weekend learning to go from zero programming knowledge to a full-fledged coding job. That included interim positions where I was using code to solve problems (VBA, R, and
138.
by ellius 8y ago
Case in point: I'm self taught and have a junior manager job in software engineering. I had a lot of good resources and got some guidance, but I never went to a boot camp or had a dedicated mentor. It was just a lot of "learn some
139.
by ellius 8y ago
I don't think that's inflammatory at all. I tend to agree with you that a very good engineering organization would enforce data-first design and maintenance practices and build types around that. But unfortunately a lot of places
140.
by ellius 8y ago
Another problem is highlighted by Joe Armstrong and Rich Hickey, which is that as soon as you move beyond the confines of a single program and start dealing with a system of programs, type guarantees become less relaible. So you have these
141.
by ellius 8y ago
I don't have a single book for you as that is a very broad theme, but honestly something textbook-y might be what you're looking for. Google for good surveys of American history. If you want to understand America as a world power,
142.
by ellius 8y ago
The problem with that strategy is that this isn't boxing. There isn't a sideshow first followed by an objective measure of skill. Arguments are directly judged by their presentation. So I guess you can argue that it's a trad
143.
by ellius 8y ago
I like Taleb's work. It's always good food for thought and frequently insightful. That said, his posture towards academia of late seems a bit juvenile and not a little annoying. Which isn't to say that he doesn't have a
144.
by ellius 8y ago
I really like his comment that "two minds are better than one not because either is infallible, but because two minds are unlikely to go wrong in the same way." This is sort of the same thing I like about pair programming, except
145.
by ellius 8y ago
I've only worked on a single blockchain application, but this was my experience too. I was actually pretty skeptical when I was told we'd be working on it and figured it was just a hype thing, but the use case involved a B2B proce
146.
by ellius 8y ago
My armchair opinion is that the middle ground / something missing is characterized by a few things that used to be somewhat fulfilled by the workplace: 1. Tribal feel: 100-200 individuals not your immediate family. 2. Pursuit of some s
147.
by ellius 8y ago
I don't have kids yet, but I'm looking forward to the prospect of having Starcraft and chess tournaments on along with my usual Sunday football once I do. One (obvious) very cool thing about the internet is that these hobbies that
148.
by ellius 8y ago
The Golden Gate Bridge is a landmark, not a workplace.
149.
by ellius 8y ago
It also probably makes counterfeiting and fraud an enormous problem.
150.
by ellius 8y ago
For the record I'm not saying that sexy knowledge is bad. I'm saying that it has the potential to devalue homely knowledge and crowd it out of mindshare. That isn't to say that fascinating and flashy theories aren't valu

More ›