scottyallen

15 ms·

91.
by scottyallen 15y ago
Very slick. I tend to jump into fullscreen MacVim when I want to write distraction free, but this is clean enough I could see using it for some tasks.
92.
by scottyallen 15y ago
I use a 13" macbook air with 4gb of ram. When I'm at home, I hook it up to a Dell 30" lcd with an old school MS Natural Keyboard and an Evoluent Vertical Mouse.
93.
by scottyallen 15y ago
Java is to Javascript as car is to carpet.
94.
by scottyallen 15y ago
Love the idea. The concept of short, self-contained projects is really appealing, particularly if they're for high quality clients.
95.
by scottyallen 15y ago
Yep, I've got the same problem.
96.
by scottyallen 15y ago
Yes, rewriting from scratch is considered bad. However, rewriting from scratch isn't the only way to improve a codebase. It's also possible to refactor it gradually, making a series of smaller changes rather than on big change. This has
97.
by scottyallen 15y ago
Elance and odesk.
98.
by scottyallen 15y ago
I've used virtualenv extensively for production deployment in a large environment (100+ servers), with an environment very similar to yours. We developed on macs as well, and ran RHEL in production. All building/pushing to production was do
99.
by scottyallen 15y ago
Yes, right. However, your build/staging environment should be the same platform/architecture as your production environment, for lots of reasons other than just this. Development environments can be different, of course...
100.
by scottyallen 15y ago
This article is missing the best tool of the bunch: virtualenv. Part of the fundamental reason managing python packages is such a pain (or perl packages, or ruby packages, etc) is that they're installed once for the whole system. Virtualen
101.
by scottyallen 15y ago
This will sound condescending, but I'll say it anyway: Become the kind of guy who finishes things. Forget about the programming part for a minute. It's the finishing things part that's the hard part. If you focus on that, you'll master w
102.
by scottyallen 15y ago
Wow, that's truly fascinating. Seeing that 5 minute clip gives me a much better feeling for how long ago Lincoln's death really was. Deeply understanding timelines was always my weakness when it came to history, which is part of why high
103.
by scottyallen 15y ago
You don't need to build a big app with lots of features to make money. That's the wrong lens to look at it through. You need to build an app that solves a big problem. People pay you based on what solving that problem is worth to them. I
104.
by scottyallen 15y ago
I wouldn't worry about not having non-work projects or open source contributions. Most startup and Google engineers I know are in the same boat. Don't worry about trying to measure up to the Hacker News image of what a well rounded startu
105.
by scottyallen 15y ago
I'm always on the lookout for good business ideas, HN or elsewhere. Once you get in the habit of looking for business ideas, you can't help but see them everywhere...
106.
by scottyallen 15y ago
This doesn't come at all as a surprise to me. Google Labs was well known internally for being a graveyard for projects that, ironically, was really hard to launch stuff in. Anything that Google launches anywhere automatically gets a huge
107.
by scottyallen 15y ago
Yes, some places more than others, though. It's not highly generally highly publicized. That is, other than the "offical" April Fool's jokes. Googlers LOVE April Fool's day, and there's generally a solid handful of nonpublic April Fool's
108.
by scottyallen 15y ago
The vending machine isn't quite what the article makes it out to be. For starters, it's one vending machine in all of Google (as far as I know). It magically appeared one April Fool's day, and has been attributed to some of the SREs in cha
109.
by scottyallen 15y ago
I designed my own using http://www.moo.com . They've got a quick tool for making simple font/color/text choices, which were enough to meet my simple needs. The best part though, is that they'll print however many designs you want, evenly
110.
by scottyallen 15y ago
Brainstorm a product idea for which recruiters are the core market segment. Every time a recruiter calls, treat the call as a free half hour customer development interview or usability study. As you continue to refine the idea, build some
111.
by scottyallen 15y ago
Not to belabor the point, but none of the three things you listed are unique to you. They're the same three things that every other entrepreneur that's looking for an engineer or CTO is saying to prospective candidates. None of these three
112.
by scottyallen 15y ago
Wait, 100k downloads and you're making $100 a month? Those numbers don't seem right to me... Still, nicely done:)
113.
by scottyallen 15y ago
The counter argument to that is "Great idea - what other value are you going to bring to the table?" For me, being asked to sign an NDA is often a signal that they don't have anything else unique to bring to the table, which is usually a r
114.
by scottyallen 15y ago
Clever idea. How much are you making from it?
115.
by scottyallen 15y ago
Get used to developers not wanting to sign NDAs. We've had it banged into our heads again and again that we shouldn't be signing NDAs, particularly when just starting to talk with someone about their project. Besides, it'll be good practi
116.
by scottyallen 15y ago
"I wanted to start a business doing something I enjoy that let me live a great life now." I wish we as a valley entrepreneur culture valued this more. I quit my fulltime job at a startup recently, with the goal of starting my own company.
117.
by scottyallen 15y ago
Ditto for when I worked on improving the speed of Google web search. Shaving 100ms off of page load time was (and is) a major accomplishment.
118.
by scottyallen 15y ago
Have you actually tried bidding on jobs on these sites? Or have you just looked around at the other bids, gotten discouraged, and given up? I put myself through college as a freelance programmer and system administrator, primarily finding
119.
by scottyallen 15y ago
6 weeks of vacation per year, and the understanding that it's actually ok to use it. It's normal in Europe and Australia. Why couldn't it work here?
120.
by scottyallen 15y ago
When I look at resumes, I'm looking for a few things: - You're passionate about being a software engineer. This could manifest itself as side projects, or simply showing that you were passionate about a work project and went above and beyo

More ›