mattvanhorn

11 ms·

31.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
I have 20 years of experience developing web apps, most of which was at startups. Some succeeded despite not doing TDD, others failed despite doing it. I don't think doing TDD alone will make or break a startup. But I will say this - when y
32.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
Actually, TDD is the way you figure out what you are building. People who start with a solution in mind may write tests first, doing a kind of pseudo-tdd, but they are not reaping the benefits of letting the requirements drive the design. T
33.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
Since you cannot get your lost time back, it certainly is theft (of services). However, that is not the case at all with digital copying, where the original owner of the data is not deprived of anything. That is the real point - the idea of
34.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
If the closet was off-limits, then the charge should have been a simple trespassing, given that doing the same thing from a publicly accessible ethernet socket would have been completely legal. He was only using the closet, because MIT was
35.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
I learned to do this trick with the following book: http://www.amazon.com/Unleash-Your-Hidden-Poker-Memory/dp/17... It takes me more than a minute though, because I don't practice often enough. The technique is based on leveraging the vis
36.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
Add Epictetus to that list, as well.
37.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
Can someone help me understand why it is a problem if my public key is, uh, public?
38.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
I like this. I need to put it somewhere as a constant reminder.
39.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
If the idea is to keep the intent clear, the or statement is a much better choice, even if less familiar. "I want to set param to the object property or the default" is much clearer than "I want to check if if I have an object property an
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by mattvanhorn 14y ago
My most valuable classes were my electives. Philosophy, Anthropology, & English Lit. especially. My major was architecture, and the design classes gave me a sense of organization and elegant problem solving that are useful even as I bui
41.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
My parents put each other first and were very clear about it. They knew their kids would move out and have their own life. And they would have only each other at that point. So, while I'm sure my mom would have rationed food to the kids fir
42.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
well, there are known unknowns and...
43.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
When the mass stabbing has more fatalities than the mass shooting. That no one died in the stabbing attack, makes a pretty good argument for some form of gun control. (Actually, I prefer Chris Rock's idea for bullet control. Make it too exp
44.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
Spoons would actually make you skinny, if they were all you had to eat with. It's hard to cut a steak with a spoon. By the same token, it's harder to kill a dozen people with a knife, if that's all you have to work with.
45.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
He's in the pocket of big tobacco, wall street and the health insurance industry, for one thing. http://shameproject.com/profile/malcolm-gladwell-2/
46.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
Virginia Woolf died in 1941, so either the piece must be really old, or you must mean Naomi Wolf. ;-)
47.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
Now that we know Karl Rove is advising the Swedish government in the prosecution of Assange, I think it is completely reasonable to assume the worst with regard to Sweden's intentions about extraditing. I think this article makes a much mo
48.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
Any project whose only value comes from being there first is a loser and should be canned before the estimating. "Hey Sergei, Larry says Alta Vista is on track to beat us to market, so lets scrap this search thing and invest in new DRM sche
49.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
Then I wouldn't be accounting for everything, and my estimate is most likely wrong. I might not account for the cat tripping over my network cable. I might not account for a server unexpectedly crashing. I might not account for the office b
50.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
If people were actually to "account for _everything_" they would have, by definition, solved the problem already. So the time to make the estimate would be 100% of the project time, and the estimate would be 100% accurate, since all the wor
51.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
I was responding to the comment that established "X must be done in time T" or the company fails. In a perfect world, estimates would come before deciding to proceed, but in 95% of the places I've ever worked, the project necessity is dec
52.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
As pointed out in the comments on the article page - programmers are actually pretty good at estimating. They are very bad at defending their estimates, though, and are often forced to adjust down unrealistically. Which raises the question
53.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
This is exactly why software estimating is bullshit. If the software has to be out the door by a specific date or the company dies - you DON'T NEED AN ESTIMATE. Are you going to cancel the project based on the estimate? Dead Company If the
54.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
This is really cool. I wish I had more free time, but I will be using what little I have for this (and learning vim as I go).
55.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
Definitely in my case - I play a lot of my Steam games on both platforms. Gaming PC at home, and Macbook Pro on the go.
56.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
I can't wait unti they bring all of Google's UI/UX power to Sparrow. I'm sick of being able to get to my unread email so quickly.
57.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
Ugh. Say hi to Aardvark (and Dodgeball, and Jaiku) for me.
58.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
I thought the example was intriguing, but it would be nice to have some minimal installation instructions for someone with no Clojure experience. Often the initial investment in getting something to function the first time is the biggest o
59.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
Since when is functional programming a "new concept"? Ah, youth.
60.
by mattvanhorn 14y ago
Sounds to me like a cognitive escape velocity. An idea needs a certain amount just to get out of your head, and an even larger velocity to get out of the 'bubble.' People encountering the idea can either increase or decrease its velocity,

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