gerbilly

9 ms·

31.
by gerbilly 3y ago
> I see nothing here but potentially, literally, wasting your life. Funnily enough, I wondered the other day whether all the time I spent sitting in a chair having petty arguments with a computer (aka.programming) to have been a waste of
32.
by gerbilly 3y ago
You know @dang, I appreciate what you're trying to foster here, but despite that I think that some of the commenters on this site are keeping people away. My friend—who is much more restrained in speech than I am—and I were saying that
33.
by gerbilly 3y ago
Are you seriously suggesting that the indigenous were practising controlled burns over millions of hectares of boreal forest? I find this 'sweep your floors' meme a bit of an oddity: 1. It involves conservatives casting native ame
34.
by gerbilly 3y ago
> the only difference between a canadian and an american is a line on a map Kindly keep this kind of ignorant viewpoint to yourself. There are a lot of differences, and if you can't or won't see them that not our problem. As a
35.
by gerbilly 3y ago
> You definitely don't speak for us all, whatever the case. Yeah OP doesn't speak for me either. While this might not be implemented in the best way, Canadian culture is a real thing, but only because we are active in trying t
36.
by gerbilly 3y ago
Noted, companies have convinced governments to help protect their pricing structure. What I find disquieting are all the long comments discussing the intricacies of these 'grey market' tactics. To even discuss it lends this kind
37.
by gerbilly 3y ago
Here's my falsifiable predictions: 1. We won't be able to evolve these systems such that they become 100% accurate. 2. Despite this, because they are so convenient, we will lower our standards to accept some falsehoods as acceptab
38.
by gerbilly 3y ago
I myself never liked agile or this idea of "iterating" towards a better solution. Every time I've designed a software system that ended staying in production for years, it was a system that I'd thought about a lot up fro
39.
by gerbilly 3y ago
When I'm on vacation my stress is reduced to the point where my 'appetite' drops, and this is despite the fact that I'm increasing my exercise load enormously (surfing, hiking, etc...) I've noticed that stress cause
40.
by gerbilly 3y ago
'Dog Strangling Vine' is a nasty invasive in north america. https://www.invadingspecies.com/invaders/plants/dog-strangli...
41.
by gerbilly 3y ago
Whats to stop people from just taping black construction paper over the 'special ads screen?'
42.
by gerbilly 3y ago
Unpopular opinion: Life was better before smartphones. I wish they'd never been invented.
43.
by gerbilly 3y ago
> I think this is interesting too. To me it seems the attitude stems from conflating gratitude with weakness. More examples I thought of: * Extreme opposition to mask wearing, perhaps due to conflating nurturing/protecting with wea
44.
by gerbilly 3y ago
> Where are the L5 cars after 14 years of research? Uber and Lyft. Turning humans into automatons works better right now that trying to turn computers into humans.
45.
by gerbilly 3y ago
> It seems to me the vaccine industry should be put in a severe category of "distrusted entities" It [feels] to me the vaccine industry should be ... FTFY I hate being controlled by 'the man' just as much as anybody,
46.
by gerbilly 3y ago
> the ability to write song lyrics does not make Bruce Springsteen unique. Springsteen is fact very good at writing lyrics. Some of his lines draw beautiful character portraits, very economically: > Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, J
47.
by gerbilly 3y ago
> It’s 2023 - if a VPN is how you’re doing your privacy you’re probably doing it wrong. I'm honestly interested, how could one 'do privacy' the right way then?
48.
by gerbilly 4y ago
I wanted to chime in here and mention the concept of "Email Apnea"¹. The idea is that we hold our breaths when anticipating an outcome. The term was coined in relation to email, but I believe that programmers probably have it even
49.
by gerbilly 4y ago
> if you had walked in a year previously with exactly the same plan would you have gotten any traction? Nope, most of the time it wouldn't and my experience bears that out ("Let's not boil the ocean..."). Thinking sim
50.
by gerbilly 4y ago
Literacy is a good way of putting it. Another example I can give is when a client had some process represented by a graph, with boxes and arrows, but the structure of it was really ad hoc. It was _mostly_ a DAG except with some extra back e
51.
by gerbilly 4y ago
> 10 times programmers don't exist. Maybe not, but I _can_ say that for me the problems I unstuck for customers _were_ about programming, not requirements gathering or process. It usually was some small kernel of a larger codebase t
52.
by gerbilly 4y ago
Oh it payed good! But it cost me plenty in burnouts too. Don't worry about asking me to be humble, it's _taught_ me to be humble, believe me. I also understand what you say about alternating between being the hero and being the pr
53.
by gerbilly 4y ago
Ok one specific example. I'd say the 10x part isn't about productivity but insight into the problem. Most people solve the problem as given, but the times when I've been 10x I managed to change the definition of the problem
54.
by gerbilly 4y ago
I know 10x programmers exist cause I am one. I guess you'll have to take my word for it. For years I worked as a contract consultant. I'd usually only get called in when projects were in crisis. I'd get into town, solve th
55.
by gerbilly 4y ago
I worked at a startup where 'staying late' was expected. The best analogy I can give for it is that the technical staff were asked to work on a transport truck's engine as it drove down the highway at 150km/h, no stoppi
56.
by gerbilly 4y ago
To me Fight club is a boy meets girl story. The whole Fight Club and later Project Mayhem id a complex digression he invents to avoid facing the fact that he wants to get close to Marla.
57.
by gerbilly 4y ago
I remember writing what I felt was thoughtful essay for a history class I took in first year UNI. I did a lot of research, and being a CS major, I Think I crafted a solid logical argument. The week after the TA started complaining about pe
58.
by gerbilly 4y ago
Think of all the coworkers you've ever had and see if you can imagine them writing RFCs and debating back and forth and revising them? I have worked at a lot of companies and I find the kind of people who can or are willing and able
59.
by gerbilly 4y ago
Ok, I never said there weren't smart people still around. But I stand behind what I claim. A large collaborative, and disinterested project like DARPANET could not get off the ground today. Are you seriously arguing that the generatio
60.
by gerbilly 4y ago
> This simply reads to me like a "kids these days" type of old-man argument, which has, as we know, existed since time immemorial. And this counterargument has existed since time immemorial + 1. It proves nothing.

More ›