tom_b

51 ms·

421.
by tom_b 17y ago
Thanks . . . I think. As someone more used to playing in the enterprise backend software space, I figured that combining html, css, and javascript was the hell required to really get into web dev. Plus adding in the "you're either have tas
422.
by tom_b 17y ago
Ugh. That's as bad as some of the programs I've re-written to leverage SQL. Way too many resultset/for loop combos that took hours to run in Java or C# that turned into seconds with a little set-based thinking.
423.
by tom_b 17y ago
I know that IBM is masterful at bundling software or selling its customer base enterprise software licenses. When I worked there, my division could trace a huge piece of its revenues (and profit) to a mainframe monitoring app that basicall
424.
by tom_b 17y ago
I can't make any reasonable statement about the likelihood of Yahoo having done this, but it seems easily possible to do in a few minutes. Forget hours, unless there is some fundamental aspect of the data structure used that I'm missing. F
425.
by tom_b 17y ago
I'm not a runner, but recommend "Born to Run" as a fun read (it's mentioned in the article and clearly inspired the article). I've always thought ultra endurance athletes were a little off - in a fun way - and the book tells some good stor
426.
by tom_b 17y ago
Ok, I'll go out on a limb and say no we don't. If you followup to the authors blog, he states: "At its core the theory relies on practices. Now there are good and bad practice concepts. The idea of practices has been around for fifty yea
427.
by tom_b 17y ago
Perhaps you should start by altering your definitions - to be a great programmer or hacker requires the ability to work with others and explain yourself coherently. So candidate A is not really a great programmer. I think you have to keep
428.
by tom_b 17y ago
It is implied, but not a given that A is an a-hole. This detail bothered me too. There are a huge number of intangibles needed to actually gauge whether A or B is a better fit. With such a sparse description of A and B, it seems like many
429.
by tom_b 17y ago
Anything that scores me points with my wife gets my $$$. When my wife called me and said, "Honey, I love dropbox" I figured this team had hit a homerun. I'd been pushing a backup/network solution for her for a few years because of various
430.
by tom_b 17y ago
Many organizations care, but frankly have little to no hope of actually differentiating good and bad programmers. I personally have seen this in both sw dev firms and other firms (financial and biotech) that have internal teams of programme
431.
by tom_b 17y ago
Do you already know any hackers/programmers who you consider reliable? Request a few small code samples from candidates with some short (a few sentences description) of what/who/how the code was designed for and a little bit of context (ie,
432.
by tom_b 17y ago
This is absolutely correct - at IBM, successful patent applications based on any idea you could come up with directly affected your reviews, ability to get promoted, and general perception of worker bees by the management chain. Patents inc
433.
by tom_b 17y ago
Using some test like this to rate applicants probably only points out a weakness in communication skills, but is better than just slamming through random resumes. A well-written cover letter should easily answer the first two (and listed a
434.
by tom_b 17y ago
At this point, I'd prefer smart, experienced developers who can demonstrate results by showing me complete projects and code over resume wonders with a full listing of magic acronym soup under a skills section. Seriously, people really, rea
435.
by tom_b 17y ago
I think it is hard to underestimate how much SQL code and database design is an afterthought on many projects. I tend to see lots of ad-hoc relational table/view/procedure creation by developers on the fly, without much thought put into ho
436.
by tom_b 17y ago
What do you want to do next? Grad school? Stick in school, take some advanced math or CS, work on building your references/recommenders? Get a job? If you've think you can pick something up easily, leave early. You'll start earning and le
437.
by tom_b 17y ago
Thanks much for the article. As a sometimes PokerStars player and fulltime software guy, this stuff (including the Coding the Wheel article set on a poker bot) is super interesting. I haven't been playing as much online this past year and
438.
by tom_b 17y ago
For those interested, I have enjoyed using Arch Linux on an old T23 Thinkpad with limited (512MB) memory. With one of the light-weight windows managers, it kept the machine nicely usable as a dev/fun environment.
439.
by tom_b 17y ago
This is a weird goal. I would guess your best shot would be making each chapter of the book short enough to be read in a short period of time and (more importantly) an independent story capable of standing on its own. How you balance that
440.
by tom_b 17y ago
A good article, although I would have preferred some editing down on the assembly example. Most readers who bother to read through it are probably somewhat already on the SQL path, so parts are long-winded. I know it's more of an intro to
441.
by tom_b 17y ago
Probably. It actually had the opposite effect on me. I try to keep my code cleaner and more understandable now. I'll stick in better, more expansive comments in difficult spots. I'll schedule a code review with peers. If I can explain/j
442.
by tom_b 17y ago
Some years ago, doing high performance dense matrix code in C, I replaced a bunch of modulo calls with a bunch of bit operations. You had to work with matrices that were a power of 2 in rows and columns, but you could pad it out and stuff
443.
by tom_b 17y ago
This article is timely for me, having recently started a new job in bioinformatics. Specifically, building a centralized database (warehouse) for a variety of cancer research study data. I'm coming from the opposite direction - a computer
444.
by tom_b 17y ago
There is no doubt that many claims made by chiropractors are bunk. Many chiropractic practitioners are a little "out there" in my experience. That said, I think it is a mistake to entirely dismiss chiropractic care as not providing real be
445.
by tom_b 17y ago
Or at least his disciple, Stephen Few. I worked on some dashboard projects and have found that following some basic good guidelines from Few really improved the end results. As a plus, the Few books were short and simple, so a minimal time
446.
by tom_b 17y ago
Knowing more than one approach for dealing with hierarchies in relational dbs is a good idea. I've used both nested sets and proprietary approaches (things like CONNECT BY in Oracle). Thanks for the link to the PostgreSQL ltree, I wasn't a
447.
by tom_b 17y ago
Hi, do you have a blog or would you be willing to post something about your experience with Q and KDB+? I worked in the financial industry for awhile and we were pulling some data from KDB+ systems. I thought about digging deeper into Q a
448.
by tom_b 17y ago
Just to insert my 2 cents - you are doing "real" computer work. I have a friend (neighbor actually) who has degrees in geology, but is clearly a top notch developer. He runs a very successful small software shop (doing custom development
449.
by tom_b 17y ago
Thanks, at first glance this looks like a good set of notes to skim over. I wouldn't spend a tremendous amount of time trying to deeply understand the query optimization details. My experience has been that being able to grab out low hang
450.
by tom_b 17y ago
Good to know I'm not the only SQL junkie out there. So far, I'm making a pretty decent living eliminating thousands of lines of code by leveraging all that SQL gives me for free. I continue to be surprised by the number of hackers who don'

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