tom_b

30 ms·

241.
by tom_b 15y ago
I find that with a REPL in hand, I tend to play with functions while letting my mind almost drop into the problem space. So I do less up-front design, but wind-up with somewhat better code at the end. The other weird effect is that I find t
242.
by tom_b 15y ago
Nice job - congrats. Is it difficult to prevent gaming the results? I'm curious about "pump and dump" approaches that exploit the social media data stream.
243.
by tom_b 15y ago
IBM is very good at acquiring companies, rebranding acquired products as Big Blue offerings, and then pumping these down the established sales pipe to their enterprise customers. Notice that global services is the majority of their reven
244.
by tom_b 15y ago
I think analysis tools like this are more an indictment of ceremony code that surrounds a big object-oriented design than a win in programmer productivity. I really do like the idea of taking an existing OO codebase and being able to probe
245.
by tom_b 15y ago
Given a philosophy that says your top hackers should be creating DSLs that facilitate dev in the problem space, this might be common at companies in well-defined problem spaces. So, it might be quite exciting to dive into. If you are well-
246.
by tom_b 15y ago
"Having said that, there are languages that are designed to solve hard problems." Which kind of says that there are actually elite languages, right? I agree that people conflate their use of an "elite" programming language or framework wi
247.
by tom_b 15y ago
But isn't it neat how shit still works? Never fails to amaze me what users will do with a software tool. I've seen experienced devs and support staff run a C program written to parse some weird data against another data set in the vain hope
248.
by tom_b 15y ago
I wonder if JavaScript is mainly loved for its frameworks and libraries? Without jQuery, node.js, etc., how many people would be singing its praise?
249.
by tom_b 15y ago
All valid parts of the general problem, but I think most multimedia networking courses talk compression, QoS, jitter, adaptive protocols, etc . . . While in no way attempting to say that these issues don't exist or are trivial, what I'm dri
250.
by tom_b 15y ago
Why not? Video chat is probably a pretty standard multimedia networking class project? Or does bi-directional video streaming mean something different that what I assume?
251.
by tom_b 15y ago
Second that code is awful (it wraps funny, even in landscape mode). But . . . I hate buying dead tree books that expire in two versions. Admittedly not a huge concern, but still.
252.
by tom_b 15y ago
I actually read PDFs pretty frequently on my Kindle. I usually set it to landscape mode. I used briss to convert some big pdf books (On Lisp and I think a free version of SICP) so they would be a little more readable. briss does some clip
253.
by tom_b 15y ago
I recently picked up: The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read: The Proven Way to Beat the "Pros" and Take Control of Your Financial Future by Daniel Solin. A good basic starter book and very short. For a larger (and timely) economic
254.
by tom_b 15y ago
For a significant number of gigs, you don't need to know algorithms and data structures. This continues to surprise me. I think for interviewers, this approach to quizzing on algorithms and data structures is probably just a well-known pra
255.
by tom_b 15y ago
I am a strong believer that hackers need a portfolio of work for potential employers. I am not convinced that such a portfolio must exist in an online and easily discoverable package for potential employers. Having a strong and trusted pers
256.
by tom_b 15y ago
There seems to be a pressure for coders to blog. Writing well (and creating useful posts) requires the same attention to craft that coding does. Thoughtfulness is a rare quality in both code and blog posts - I savor it when I find it. W
257.
by tom_b 15y ago
Just to point out, Nathan will be speaking at the Clojure/Conj conference this year. Talking about Cascalog. I have a schedule conflict this year :( but would recommend the conference to everyone - the first year was informative with cont
258.
by tom_b 15y ago
For a nice read about stress and the body's stress mechanisms you should have a look at Why Zebra's Don't Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky. The book is more about the effects of stress than how to avoid it, but the author suggests: 1 - Exercis
259.
by tom_b 15y ago
For more re: Ragel, look at http://zedshaw.com/essays/ragel_state_charts.html What I really like there is the idea of a DSL that generates your state machine code for a protocol.
260.
by tom_b 15y ago
My co-workers have very diverse backgrounds - PhDs in bioinformatics all the way to folks with a BA in history. They all seem to be hackers. So I would say, if you're already a hacker, you can probably find a way in somewhere given enough
261.
by tom_b 15y ago
This is definitely true. I deal with unstructured data, and every flavor of data storage weekly (XML, Access, Oracle, Postgres, MySQL, a few MS SQL Server instances, Excel, and plain text). <edit> oh, and forget about stuff being n
262.
by tom_b 15y ago
I haven't had much luck getting people on my team interested in code reviews. The day I started we put a ton of stuff in version control though. In general, you should interview a team when you're trying to get a job and trust your gut on
263.
by tom_b 15y ago
This is my first bioinformatics job and my first return to an academic environment since finishing a MS in CS and doing the standard industry thing. This group is mostly a core services group rather than a pure research support group. I ca
264.
by tom_b 15y ago
My gut feeling is that there is a large need for good query/visualization tools of the datasets the sequencers produce. At least, I think if researchers could "play" interactively with data they would be pretty excited. But I am most defi
265.
by tom_b 15y ago
So I'm not really an ask me anything type guy, but I work on a bioinformatics team at an academic cancer research center. We have genomic sequencers and a software stack running 24/7/365 plus your normal collection of IT and small dev proj
266.
by tom_b 15y ago
Mainly when I want to drive more technical/hacking posts up to the front page. It's too time-consuming to do a good job though.
267.
by tom_b 15y ago
What led you to klib? Looks interesting . . . given the fasta/fastq format parser in the source code base, we can guess that super high performance/low memory footprint development is pretty critical for the klib author. The macro-oriented
268.
by tom_b 15y ago
I've used XQuery in Oracle quite a bit and I wouldn't exactly say it isn't an issue. My use case is weird - thousands of xml files that have to be uploaded and then queryable/joinable to an existing relational model. We found that the only
269.
by tom_b 15y ago
hmmmm . . . . does that mean I have to gain back the 50lbs I dropped counting calories with LoseIt?
270.
by tom_b 15y ago
I have a neighbor who manages Juniper support engineers. These engineers are typically working onsite at Juniper customers. He has been almost constantly recruiting new support engineers (who seem to either have CCIE certs or a similar ex

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