pliftkl

9 ms·

31.
by pliftkl 6y ago
One of the best software engineers who worked for me was the guy who deleted the most code. He absolutely produced negative net lines of code, and it was a running joke that we were paying him to write code, but he was doing the opposite.
32.
by pliftkl 6y ago
I'm always amazed at people who think that programming languages and typing and editing are the hard part of what software engineers do. I spend much more time trying to understand the problem that I'm trying to solve, and to mak
33.
by pliftkl 6y ago
I think the objection to statistics about immigration (or minority populations) and crime is that they are inherently misleading because they generally compare crime rate to the population as a whole (as you did, jumping to the per capita),
34.
by pliftkl 6y ago
I think they could be measuring the wrong thing. While it may be true that the air temperature doesn't change the biology of the virus, air temperature definitely changes human behavior (what activities we do and where we do them).
35.
by pliftkl 6y ago
Ruby played a big role in helping me rediscover my love of programming, and it also acted as a bit of a gateway drug to think much more about language design and to explore a lot of other languages. I don't use Ruby much anymore, but
36.
by pliftkl 6y ago
This made me laugh, because I actually am planning on making a transition to woodworking. My house is paid off, and I can live on a fairly small income that I can probably generate mostly from passive income. If I can actually supplement t
37.
by pliftkl 6y ago
"This one weird trick copy editors don't want you to know..." I think journalism has to go this way because of what it competes with.
38.
by pliftkl 7y ago
While coq is an automated theorem prover, I've had a tremendous amount of fun working my way through Software Foundations[1]. The vast majority of the proofs are assembled "by hand", but with coq verifying steps. For someon
39.
by pliftkl 7y ago
I really enjoyed reading the first chapter, and I was looking forward to purchasing the book, but like others, I'm really turned off by your purchase process. Entering email and getting to a payment page where the easy ways to pay dis
40.
by pliftkl 8y ago
We have Briggo[1] here in Austin. The one I used is in a private large office building, and it's actually really convenient, since I'll generally order by app from the parking lot and be able to pick it up when I walk in. I thin
41.
by pliftkl 8y ago
Being in prison for part of your life doesn't rule out passing your genes off to your kids. Your post made me do a bit of googling, and it looks like about half of the men in prison have kids before they go in. Some will certainly ha
42.
by pliftkl 8y ago
That seems like a very strong statement. The air pollution from rubber and brake dust is minimal relative to the emissions from combustion engines. You seem to be arguing "there's no way to continue cars because we won't ge
43.
by pliftkl 8y ago
Those books were both brilliant. I don't recall his tech books being "bad", at least in terms of being somehow worse the the other Windows programming books that several large publishing houses cranked in volume.
44.
by pliftkl 8y ago
First - I'm really glad that you are alive to post this, and it sounds like that wasn't a given based on your story. I wanted to comment on one of your last sentences - that "natural recovery" doesn't warrant attent
45.
by pliftkl 8y ago
I think you're broadly labeling "us addicts" here, which is sort of the point of the article. I outgrew my addiction (but I'm not suggesting that anyone who needs help just "wait it out!" - see below). The art
46.
by pliftkl 8y ago
Obviously when humans designed the universe, we didn't use the metric system. We used English units, which is why the speed of light is 1 foot per nanosecond! (Actually that's a _really_ close approximation and very helpful in re
47.
by pliftkl 8y ago
I love that. I definitely have more recipes than cooking skills. Better head to the kitchen!
48.
by pliftkl 8y ago
I'm a little surprised by the combination of a study on low dose (1 g) of fish oil coupled with the recommendation to get fish oil from diet. When I eat a tin of sardines, I'm certainly getting more than a gram of fish oil. Am I
49.
by pliftkl 8y ago
The best piece of this post is hidden in a sentence in the middle, and I wanted to call it out: If cost is an issue, go to a community college BEFORE going to a 4-year engineering school. Community colleges are a fraction of the price of a
50.
by pliftkl 8y ago
PayPal _was_ legitimately owed money. I don't think that's at question - when you die with a debt, that doesn't "erase" the debt. The issue here isn't "dying with debt", it's PayPal's phra
51.
by pliftkl 8y ago
I'm 48, and I'm starting to crank up font sizes on my monitors. I can jam lots of tiny font on my monitor if I wear reading glasses, but I then end up much closer to the screen than I'd like.
52.
by pliftkl 8y ago
A college tuition in what sense? College degrees have different values - an engineering degree has a very different value than a history degree. Since the tuition at four year schools for both degrees is (largely) the same but the financia
53.
by pliftkl 8y ago
A better headline might read "I wrote a review on Yelp in which I accused a doctor of committing insurance fraud on other patients that I had no actual knowledge of, and it made my life a nightmare". Courts have established that y
54.
by pliftkl 8y ago
Independently of the background checks that European companies might not do, any European government almost certainly knows that he's a felon and would bar entry. That would preclude showing up for an in person interview or ever showi
55.
by pliftkl 8y ago
I think that's a broad over simplification. You're a "user" of your compiler or interpreter. Is it the act of typing that makes it programming? We've had a definition and model for computation since Turing that i
56.
by pliftkl 8y ago
I think this is an incredibly valuable skill, but it's one that is sometimes looked down upon because many people have negative emotions around "being sold to". Good sales is really about learning to ask the right questions
57.
by pliftkl 9y ago
What other things do we, as an industry, have a responsibility to pay attention to? Environment? Health and sanitation in developing countries? The civil war in Syria? HIV? There are a variety of areas where tech could play an important
58.
by pliftkl 9y ago
I really enjoy their podcast despite the fact that I don't really do much .NET these days. They have excellent guests, a good range of topics, and makes for a very nice commute listen.
59.
by pliftkl 9y ago
To the point of the article, having 5000 professional archers likely does NOT translate to 25,000 arrows in the air at once, but rather some number lower than 5,000.
60.
by pliftkl 9y ago
You're one of the first people I've seen on the internet actually admit this. Over the last month, as the price has dropped, many people have pointed out "sure, it's dropped - back to November price levels". Which

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