scombridae

11 ms·

61.
by scombridae 4y ago
Editing text efficiently is not the same as being a productive dev That's like saying suturing dexterity does not a good surgeon make. Anything that reduces cognitive friction, including the ease with which keystrokes go from your br
62.
by scombridae 4y ago
For Middle East, Lawrence In Arabia by Scott Anderson. For computing history, Art of Unix Programming by Eric S. Raymond. For inspirational American stories, David McCullough (1933-2022) is peerless. The Wright Brothers nearly brough
63.
by scombridae 4y ago
Enlisting it to gratify you seems like a waste of a particularly talented hand.
64.
by scombridae 4y ago
Getting John Thomas to stand at attention.
65.
by scombridae 4y ago
Author is part of the problem. If his job of status'ing the stuffing out of everything didn't exist (and it largely didn't until 2010), there'd be no Jira and a lot more front-line workers.
66.
by scombridae 4y ago
That PISA chart was an egregiously bad layout.
67.
by scombridae 4y ago
The chess world is loving Niemann right now, but even more so Carlsen for his high-profile indignation. P.T. Barnum's chestnut about bad publicity applies most to "sports" desperately seeking spectators.
68.
by scombridae 4y ago
All four virtues boil down to the third: devoting one's waking hours for a non-profit cause. This puts Stallman in a pretty massive demographic, one that includes the clergy, public school teachers, and professional baduk players.
69.
by scombridae 4y ago
By vim user count alone, I would conjecture that the venn circle of philosophically opposed devs has more people insisting on the absence of a GUI story, than those insisting on one. Of course the vast majority of devs use whatever suits th
70.
by scombridae 4y ago
Why cast such a judgmental net? I think you'll find common skill-building stories between the meaningful folks and the meaningless losers (I fall squarely in the latter camp).
71.
by scombridae 4y ago
A particular field owes its popularity largely to its financial appeal. In the past the most popular majors were biology (pre-med) and economics (pre-business). Today it is computer science.
72.
by scombridae 4y ago
The modelling of open source as loss leader is spot on, and should really give pause to anyone considering a computer science major. As a broke college student, I revelled in free-as-in-beer Linux, emacs, R, and LaTeX. Now that I'm on
73.
by scombridae 4y ago
Here's one (an example of what's changed): easy for software to commoditize hardware... hard for hardware to commoditize software. (Spolsky 2002) Linus effectively killed the golden goose of writing OSs, a super-difficult task t
74.
by scombridae 4y ago
For the same reason we launched Voyager, buried a time capsule, scrawled an obscenity on a park bench, or tossed a bottled message into the ocean. Amongst all of God's creatures, only man is dumb or spiritual enough to commune with ob
75.
by scombridae 4y ago
no effect on their life. Nearly everything we do has no near- or long-term effect. I'm a bicyclist, but also an organism whose time-distance feedback loop is jarred by a sudden obstructionist anomaly.
76.
by scombridae 4y ago
I agree with the other poster. Far better to leave it out of the faq. Those who care about privacy don't have adjust their summer reading list. Those who don't care, don't care.
77.
by scombridae 4y ago
tl;dr continually test, continually deploy.
78.
by scombridae 4y ago
tl;dr The bean quality and brewing time for artisanal coffee is not significantly better than Dunkins -- the premium you pay is all hipster branding. I wish these mf's would get to the point faster with less ruminating about their fav
79.
by scombridae 4y ago
If ever there were a premature optimization... No one's calibrating their prototype roll-out according to how big or small they think they're going to be. That'd be a bit like turning down a soap commercial because it'l
80.
by scombridae 4y ago
In the same frustrating sense that one broken down car on the highway can ruin everyone's commute, one vendor giving away free product can ruin a market. You can blame Stallman, Torvalds, the Java consortium, etc., who realized the on
81.
by scombridae 4y ago
If we assume every one-on-one transaction is a zero-sum game, and if we assume the salesperson aims to gain, then the buyer necessarily loses. While not every transaction is zero-sum, nearly all those being shoved in our faces daily are. Th
82.
by scombridae 4y ago
For experienced programmers Start with getting an entry-level job doing C++, which 1. financially incentivizes, and 2. gives you something concrete to work off of. I am an experienced programmer.
83.
by scombridae 4y ago
No, I'm afraid ugly is forever.
84.
by scombridae 4y ago
I espouse the minority view that programming is at its heart a one-person job, different from bricklaying or pastry-making where more hands are welcome. Your people-oriented reasons for disgruntlement aren't surprising, nor can they b
85.
by scombridae 4y ago
When I graduated college I interviewed for a few jobs in sales. It quickly became clear that it requires a reptilian adherence to a script, and an unflappable positivism. I'm glad I studied computers for which none of those skills a
86.
by scombridae 4y ago
no code is ever deleted. things are just added. Yeah, we hate that. On the one hand, it's impossible to build off a shaky foundation. On the other hand, software quality rarely correlates with revenue. That why we call it work?
87.
by scombridae 4y ago
My kitchen where the coffee is five cents a cup, the wifi rock solid, and I can take a dump without having to collect all my shit.
88.
by scombridae 4y ago
You are asking HN for whom work is the break -- the break from browsing HN, Reddit, and YouTube.
89.
by scombridae 4y ago
A dollar upfront. Then, an additional dollar every time it catches you dozing off.
90.
by scombridae 4y ago
I'm glad he got rid of the black mourning line. It had gotten really cringey when you thought someone's passing deserved but didn't get it.

More ›