tmoertel

49 ms·

511.
by tmoertel 13y ago
It's a weakly predictive indicator. Yes, it tells you something, but not much. Extrapolate at your peril. Look at it this way: Most of the people interviewing you are other programmers – the exact opposite of skilled interviewers. P
512.
by tmoertel 13y ago
You're missing the point. Regardless of the circumstances in which an interview takes place, you can ask for changes. And usually get them. The only way to be guaranteed not to get the changes you want is not to ask. So, if you ever
513.
by tmoertel 13y ago
True. But it's not nearly so asymmetrical as most people seem to believe. Most interviewers aren't great at interviewing and know it. They're usually open – surprisingly open – to changes that will help them conduct a more r
514.
by tmoertel 13y ago
Can I offer you some advice? An interview is a negotiation. The rules aren't fixed. If you're asked to do something that won't give a reliable measurement of your ability, say so and offer the interviewer a better option.
515.
by tmoertel 13y ago
The primary way in which interviews are different from after-the-hire social interactions is that interviews are high-stakes events, and the candidates know it. For some people, that knowledge is enough to put them into a self-reinforcin
516.
Facebook Leads an Effort to Lower Barriers to Internet Access(nytimes.com)
4 points by tmoertel 13y ago|0 comments
517.
by tmoertel 13y ago
> You shouldn't be expected to know Floyd's algorithm [1]. Bob Floyd had more than one algorithm named after him. I thought you were referring to his beautiful algorithm for sampling without replacement [1], described by Jon B
518.
Geo-Spotting: Mining Online Location-based Services for Optimal Store Placement(arxiv.org)
1 points by tmoertel 13y ago|0 comments
519.
Foursquare check-ins tell stores where to set up shop(newscientist.com)
1 points by tmoertel 13y ago|0 comments
520.
by tmoertel 13y ago
I guess that conclusion would depend on whether the upper managers expected to better off (a) by staying at the same company for life or (b) by pumping the short-term returns and then using them as a shortcut to a better position at some ot
521.
by tmoertel 13y ago
> It boggles my mind, given the big money involved, why so many people continue to bet huge sums of cash on the proven short-term penny-wise/pound-foolish idiocy of MBA-think. A lot of this "idiocy" is in fact rational (if
522.
by tmoertel 13y ago
The tragic part isn't that the schema is given in XSD but that it's defined in XSD. What I'm lamenting (yes more hyperbole) is that a schema this important wasn't defined in a schema language that had clear semant
523.
by tmoertel 13y ago
It's tragic that the United States (Federal) Legislative Model (USLM) is defined in terms of W3C XML Schema Definition language (XSD) instead of the comparably sane RELAX NG and its easily interpreted compact syntax. You would think th
524.
by tmoertel 13y ago
Or as the physicist and Bayesian pioneer E. T. Janes, wrote: In any field, the Establishment is seldom in pursuit of the truth, because it is composed of those who sincerely believe that they are already in possession of it. From Probabi
525.
by tmoertel 13y ago
Certainly, if you have an "otherwise likely lethal infection," take the antibiotics. If they screw up your immune response down the road, it's still better than dying now. I need to be clear that I'm not talking about t
526.
by tmoertel 13y ago
Who is claiming that microorganism-involved disease was nonexistent before the "war on germs"? My claim is that in light of what is now known about the human microbiome and its role in immune function, many common practices for &q
527.
by tmoertel 13y ago
Don't you suspect that a large portion of "a functioning immune system" is the naturally occurring human microbiome (e.g., especially in the gut)? So isn't any rational response to the question What is to be done with
528.
by tmoertel 13y ago
What seems surprisingly ignored by most of the medical community is that many microorganisms harmful to humans can thrive only in environments that have been artificially stripped of the normally dominant microorganisms that humans are most
529.
by tmoertel 13y ago
I think you're misinterpreting what Dijkstra said and getting it almost backward. His point is that testing is inadequate: only a convincing proof of correctness is sufficient to conclude that software works without error. In his words
530.
by tmoertel 13y ago
> The syntax in Haskell for dealing with side effects is tedious/verbose by design. I don’t think Haskell’s designers have ever had the goal of making imperative programming more difficult. Simon Peyton Jones himself, as far back
531.
by tmoertel 13y ago
The historical evidence suggests that when it comes to massive social systems like the Linux kernel project, Linus knows more about keeping them vigorous and relevant than just about any other person in existence. He runs what is probably t
532.
by tmoertel 13y ago
The printout-and-highlighters method of reverse engineering was indeed common way back then. It became even more well known in 1982, when Don Lancaster wrote a book entitled Enhancing your Apple II . In it was a chapter on "Tearing
533.
by tmoertel 13y ago
I wasn't contradicting you but trying to reinforce the point that there's an equivalence between "impure" functions and pure functions that produce actions (having impure effects if sequenced). In particular, I wanted t
534.
by tmoertel 13y ago
Actually, every function in Haskell is pure. It's just that some of those pure functions produce values of type (IO a) representing IO actions and, if you sequence those actions into the main action (or a subthread's action), th
535.
by tmoertel 13y ago
And my point is that the action that mapM_ ultimately produces is not actually executed unless you sequence it into the main action (or a thread's action). Since mapM_'s eventual action is a singleton, you can do this sequenc
536.
by tmoertel 13y ago
(mapM_ print) produces a pure function that produces a single IO action, and (map print) produces a pure function that produces a list of IO actions. Neither has any effect unless called in a context that sequences the resultant actions int
537.
by tmoertel 13y ago
While (map) is pure, (map print) is not. Thus map is a higher-order function that can create both pure and impure functions depending upon the purity of its arguments. How then would your syntactic scheme allow for higher-order functions?
538.
by tmoertel 13y ago
Indeed. To be precise, I should have written that the lack of X in a function's type assures you that the function does not cause X effects.
539.
by tmoertel 13y ago
The big win of "managing side effects as a type" is not that effectful code gets an IO type but that everything else does not. Thus the lack of IO in a function's type assures you, reliably, that the function does not cause
540.
by tmoertel 13y ago
Even with advanced type systems, the sweet spot will be a mix of types and tests. With types, you can prove many claims, including some you can't test for. With tests, you can gather evidence to support the claims you can't easi

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