mwfunk

105 ms·

811.
by mwfunk 10y ago
Well, it's not like there's been any positive Nest press in the last year or so to obsess over. Based on the stories, what's been happening at Nest is an extreme case of many of the same organizational antipatterns that peopl
812.
by mwfunk 10y ago
If you incorporate tribalism into a national constitution, all it does is amplify tribalism in society. Whatever social problems exist between unassimilated immigrants and locals will get worse, not better. A constitution is probably the si
813.
by mwfunk 10y ago
I would be happy with 100% tabs or 100% spaces, but in practice it seems like allowing tabs inevitably leads to source files indented with a combination of both, either by accident or because someone wants to have intermediate levels of ind
814.
by mwfunk 10y ago
Even worse is when someone's founder mythologization (if that's a word :) reaches the point where they always capitalize the word "founder" and talk about founders (sorry, Founders) as if they were some unique species di
815.
by mwfunk 10y ago
Everyone wants to do the right thing, they just all have different ideas about what the right thing is. There's always hope that people will come around. Not much, but it's all we've got. Every time someone decides that someo
816.
by mwfunk 10y ago
I must confess that I don't follow this line of reasoning. You're saying that even though Trump said he wants to execute Snowden, Snowden should come back to a Trump-led US anyway because Trump doesn't follow through on a lot
817.
by mwfunk 10y ago
Unfortunately, I think a majority of those who insist that schools are "just indoctrination centers for our youth" would see your post as an example of that. IMO it sounds like you got a great education, but many other people woul
818.
by mwfunk 10y ago
I agree, but usually when people post nothing more than "why?", they're not communicating that they're a customer or potential investor who is concerned about the long-term viability of the product or the company. Usuall
819.
by mwfunk 10y ago
As a former IBMer in '90s, I would like to nominate VisualAge for Java as another example of awkward naming choices. The team I was on used VAJ (as it was always referred to in electronic communications) extensively. In speech, people
820.
by mwfunk 10y ago
Why not?
821.
by mwfunk 10y ago
If it's a reaction against perceived overreach/arrogance, then those people are just contributing noise to the whole process. People complain about software development in the corporate world being overinfluenced by interpersonal
822.
by mwfunk 10y ago
Who would they file such a complaint against? Do they write it on an index card and drop it in a box in front of the US Department of Labor or something? I'm confused by the premises of this bet. They're a teeny tiny company with
823.
by mwfunk 10y ago
Not only that, but I would think if Reddit participants did get paid, surely the quality (such as it is) would go way down as everyone would be even more incentivized towards producing clickbait comments and stories. I'm actually amaze
824.
by mwfunk 10y ago
Plan 9 was not a product though. You seem to be arguing against the concept of research in the software world.
825.
by mwfunk 10y ago
It was a research OS. That by itself renders the entire article moot. It's akin to someone writing an article about how Minix "lost" vs. Linux- it's apples and oranges. You can't call something a failure if it was n
826.
by mwfunk 10y ago
This is fantastic- it's not going to replace X11 but more importantly it wasn't designed to. I would love to see more projects like this. So much great stuff doesn't get written because people convince themselves it's no
827.
by mwfunk 10y ago
Wouldn't that be their biggest payday ever? They'd go out with a massive pile of cash ahead of real patent reform that would otherwise tank their market cap. I've got to think that that's Plan B for every patent troll, a
828.
by mwfunk 10y ago
At this point when people reflexively sh*t on Stephen Wolfram in HN threads, I reflexively assume they're just piling on, don't actually know who he is, and have never used any of his company's software (except maybe for some
829.
by mwfunk 10y ago
He doesn't announce plans to fix things, he just says how bad something is, says something insulting about whoever tried to fix it before, then says that if he gets elected he'll somehow magically take care of it because he's
830.
by mwfunk 10y ago
You're bringing a butter knife to a nuclear war. If you're going to make that claim you need something a hell of a lot more than "you joshing us, son???". :) It's not like this isn't an area that's been in
831.
by mwfunk 10y ago
Ironically it's the other way around for me. C is not just modern English but some 1000-word subset of modern English. JS feels like Esperanto or something- a synthetic language that was informed by English (and other languages) but is
832.
by mwfunk 10y ago
There are lots of interesting observations and historical tidbits in ESR's writing, but it needs to be taken with a sizable grain of salt for it to not do more harm than good. He presents himself like a social scientist finding hidden
833.
by mwfunk 10y ago
You're making the mistake of assuming that what people talk about on HN/etc. is correlated with the state of the industry. Tech forums are always going to be focused on news and up-and-coming things, whether or not those up-and-co
834.
by mwfunk 10y ago
I'm not sure pwned is the right word: (1) The ObjC/GCC thing happened in the '80s, and didn't prevent them from doing things like shipping (and updating) plenty of GPLv2 software with OS X when it first came out in the l
835.
by mwfunk 10y ago
Oh I don't deny any of those incidents or that such people exist and have been responsible for some bad things, but in my experience for every actual SJW stereotype that exists in the world, there are hundreds or thousands of very voca
836.
by mwfunk 10y ago
I think the idea was to use a wider range of characters, not a larger quantity of characters.
837.
by mwfunk 10y ago
It's also safe to say that no one would give that answer to that question. I mean, I'm sure there are tons of people on the Internet who complain about other people thinking that, I just don't necessarily think those other pe
838.
by mwfunk 10y ago
While their integrity is admirable, you should let your coworker know that iTunes music has been DRM-free for about 6 years now. :)
839.
by mwfunk 10y ago
This is basically the Stack Overflow debate that comes up every few weeks on HN, but I think it's a false dichotomy. The implication is that "real developers" don't need SO/Google/etc., and that our profession
840.
by mwfunk 10y ago
I was thinking the same thing. WebObjects has been on life support for many, many years now. What's shocking is that it had any level of external support 10 years ago, not that that support is ending now. It reads like CNN was framing

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