tom_b

54 ms·

391.
by tom_b 17y ago
I think in a more demanding job market, we're probably not going to have much choice. Hackers in general are going to need to be able to demo their "portfolio" to break into places where they don't have strong personal network connections.
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by tom_b 17y ago
SQL: Requires your vendor to wrap in basic programming constructs or wrapping the SQL yourself in the code of your choice. No ability to create dynamic functions on the fly. Why can't I do something like: SELECT something, {some custom fu
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by tom_b 17y ago
My anecdotal experience is that CS grad school is probably worth it. I have a MS myself and when I wrapped it (at the end of the Internet bubble in 2001), it was still worth 15-20% in starting salary at big corps. Some of my cohort contin
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by tom_b 17y ago
second proggy fonts here
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by tom_b 17y ago
Yeah, I have a lot of "there has to be a better way to do this" thoughts . . . One of the aspects of software development I'm really interested in is finding drills and ideas that more rapidly build the intuitive response you can trust. Th
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by tom_b 17y ago
I've been thinking some about the idea of coding fast, or coming up to speed on new languages quickly. From that viewpoint, I'm wondering about what the minimal set of language features you need to have committed to memory to enable you to
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by tom_b 17y ago
Deep statistical analytics is fun. It's also pretty far down the road as a need for most businesses. My experience is that when people say analytics in the corporate world, what they really mean are simple reports. The only reason it is r
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by tom_b 17y ago
It's a mistake to think that corporate mediocrity follows from employee mediocrity. On the contrary, a significant amount of bad software is made to work by the efforts of a large number of rather smart people. A more nuanced view might fo
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by tom_b 17y ago
The missing discussion point for me is more fundamental - how and when should I break with my RDBMS data modeling habits? I can't say for sure, but suspect some of the headlong rush into denormalized NoSQL stores is motivated by the ease of
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by tom_b 17y ago
I've known people who did a MS in comp sci, followed by a 1 year MS program in financial math. The one guy I'm thinking of in particular was a pretty brilliant math/cs double undergrad who used the 1 year financial math program as a spring
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by tom_b 17y ago
Bullet graphs and sparklines as default chart options please? After Tufte and Few, I basically look for these first when evaluating any chart library.
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by tom_b 17y ago
I like it from the person to person interaction level. What about wear and tear on the audio in jack? Gas pumps and grocery stores have card swipers that look like little tanks bolted on.
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by tom_b 17y ago
Yes. A significant amount of software stinks. The enterprise vendors are almost magical in their ability to extract dollars from their customer base. I believe that many of the one-eyed men are starting to wake up to the power of the tools
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by tom_b 17y ago
BI software and enterprise software in general is a huge opportunity for startups - I know PG and YC had it as one of the RFS listings at one point. I'm not sure that the winners will be those can deliver results fast and exhibit quick adap
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by tom_b 17y ago
Not really. IBM has a huge presence, still over 8500+ employees I think and has traditionally paid at the higher end of software developer salaries on average. And until Nortel imploded this decade, they were also in the mix as a top-payin
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by tom_b 17y ago
My best guess is that most online players are now "augmented," using at least PokerTracker (hands played databases) with HUDs (heads-up displays that overlay the game window and provide some significant statistical info based on mining hand
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by tom_b 17y ago
I second the much mentioned idea of building timeless/technology independent skills. For example, use pure SQL as much as possible in your T-SQL procedures - this experience will transfer nicely to Postgres, Oracle, DB2, etc. Course, you'
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by tom_b 17y ago
Snob or not, what increasingly pulls me to languages are the highly productive DSLs that seem to fall out of them. For example, I need to deliver a few lightweight web apps/services - and I stumble across Sinatra on Ruby (with a little Seq
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by tom_b 17y ago
I'm assuming you meant 100GB? not MB? I get a lot of mileage out of standard ANSI SQL. Given that Hive isn't quite as forgiving, can you give some specifics on things you lose in Hive that you miss the most?
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by tom_b 17y ago
Oh good grief. Use a RDBMS when the relational model makes sense and luxuriate in the declarative power that SQL throws at you. When your data model doesn't fit the relational idea, use another solution. While I am certainly no expert wit
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by tom_b 17y ago
Sustainable competitive advantage - excellent phrase. It covers a wider range of possibilities than are implied by rocket science. One of the reasons I originally posted the question is that I'm particularly interested in one of the ideas
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Ask HN: How important is "rocket science" to startups
11 points by tom_b 17y ago|8 comments
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by tom_b 17y ago
I think there is a reasonable chance that the number of non-"shithole" employers (using Joel's term from the article) that know the difference or maybe even care that they are not getting the top 10% of talent is overestimated. I hope that
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by tom_b 17y ago
Thanks!
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by tom_b 17y ago
How deep have you taken interview coding? Have you found that pseudo coding at a whiteboard is as effective as giving a candidate a test assignment on a box in the office? I've also wondered about the effectiveness of reviewing candidate-s
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by tom_b 17y ago
Speaking about hackers, retention is probably underrated . I have personally observed that a tremendous amount of software knowledge and understanding simply walks out the door when a really great designer/hacker leaves a team. The abilit
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by tom_b 17y ago
For those of you interested in a longer look at this, check out "E, the Story of a Number" by Eli Maor. Yes, I read when I should probably be hacking.
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by tom_b 17y ago
How much less db admin stuff, other than backup and patching, are you actually getting out of here? I tend to spend most of my time as an application dba (doing schema design and SQL programming using lots of analytical functions for data w
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by tom_b 17y ago
One of the comments after the original article caught my eye, so I'll post it here as well: "It has been my experience that people who read books like this are an immediate no-hire. They're the one who have time to read books about programm
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by tom_b 17y ago
Have you checked out "The Mathematics of Poker" by Bill Chen and Jerrod Ankenman? This books does some neat game theory based analysis of poker and comes up with some surprising results. I've pondered what some sharp hacker type might do

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