virgilp

88 ms·

841.
by virgilp 7y ago
> academia has written papers but not built much that people want to use. Does "started in academia" not count? Because that'd give you easy counter-examples, e.g. Scala, Spark.
842.
by virgilp 7y ago
Also it's strange to not include the Norway, Sweden, Finland in this. Do they have similar programs?
843.
by virgilp 8y ago
You really don't remember the "web scale" memes about Mongo? It was always primarily about "performance".
844.
by virgilp 8y ago
The glass is half full, not half empty. About 50% of users DON'T skip onboarding - and for those users, it really matters.
845.
by virgilp 8y ago
I was sure that SOME things you can control, but now I believe you just have some variable amount of influence - in the end, luck matters a lot. E.g. we managed to "train" our first two kids to eat well, but the third broke us. At
846.
by virgilp 8y ago
I would totally do it if it's obviously not for profit. My previous employer asked me to investigate and try to fix a Firefox bug over the weekend; they had nothing to do with Mozilla, and I claimed no prior experience with Firefox (an
847.
by virgilp 8y ago
You are right in lots of stuff but you are probably underselling your skill combo. You are probably good (even if not great/amazing) at more than one thing - not just managing projects, but also sales, and maybe marketing too. You are
848.
by virgilp 8y ago
It's perfectly correct and does not contradict physics. Think about it in the opposite direction - say you have a perfect laser, with perfect pointing ability. You pick two planets that are far away from each other but at roughly the s
849.
by virgilp 8y ago
Yes - and I was saying that I realized that solving these problems require the elusive "common sense". If we get that figured out, even just roughly, I think we'll break the barrier of general-purpose AI. I'm not sure we
850.
by virgilp 8y ago
Rust is awesome, and I thought of mentioning it; however, instead of proposing to "fix" C, I wish people would focus on getting Rust to have the same sort of footprint that C has. Because right now, sorry, but it just isn't &
851.
by virgilp 8y ago
I'm tempted to write a "what every programmer should know about compiler writing" article. In particular, that they're not alone in the universe. The price that you have to pay for the incredible combo "performance
852.
by virgilp 8y ago
I got bear-ish on self-driving cars when I realized that, in order to be able to drive in Bucharest, you _have to_ break the (letter of the) law fairly often[1]. Knowing when to do so requires "common sense" which is a notoriously
853.
by virgilp 8y ago
> So what is so special about an employment contract, compared to all other businesses? Oh, this is really easy to answer. For example, the fact that purchaser dictates the price, not supplier - to such an extent, that purchaser voluntar
854.
by virgilp 8y ago
It was a generic "you" - and yes, you did make an analogy that does not apply since employees are not fungible. You also present now a distorted view about business relationships - they're about trust far more often than they
855.
by virgilp 8y ago
> You probably did. But I learned that they don't care about that, didn't I? Would it not be stupid to ignore this information? I have a chance higher than 0 at the new co...
856.
by virgilp 8y ago
That is exactly the point. I'm not constantly optimizing my salary, so if I do get a significantly better offer, it'd better be because you couldn't afford to make me one that was competitive. Otherwise, screw you, I no l
857.
by virgilp 8y ago
>When you get an offer to leave your boss gets more leverage as well to offer you more comp. That's a good indicator of sub-par company that you're better served if you avoid it, in the long run.
858.
by virgilp 8y ago
> Cool, but then you end up with less money overall. Highly debatable, because in the real world you need to do multivariate optimization and most people can't (don't have the skills and/or desire) to be constantly optimiz
859.
by virgilp 8y ago
I don't view myself as coffee - if your employees are fungible resources, I don't want to work for you (99.9% of the cases, there may be exceptions, but they're just that - exceptions).
860.
by virgilp 8y ago
A former manager - and friend - of mine told me that, when switching jobs, former employer made a handsome counter-offer, I think basically doubling his compensation; it was more than he got at the new gig. His reaction? "Now I also fe
861.
by virgilp 8y ago
Actually, in some cases you do. But anyway, blackmail is not about telling secrets, it's about coercion under the threat of telling secrets. You know, kinda like how rape is about consent, not about preventing people from having sex.
862.
by virgilp 8y ago
It’s quite simple, really: since you’re not a slave owner, i don’t belong to you, so the “threat” to quit can’t possibly be legally qualified as a threat (you never had the right to assume that I will continue to work for you beyond my not
863.
by virgilp 8y ago
What's wrong with the Wikipedia definition? > Blackmail is an act of coercion using the threat of revealing or publicizing either substantially true or false, and often damaging, information about a person, to the public, family mem
864.
by virgilp 8y ago
There is a joke popular in communist countries: > Two old men are talking. "Ah, life was so much better during Stalin's rule!". "Are you mad? We barely had anything to eat, and they were randomly killing people, we li
865.
by virgilp 8y ago
This is also what I find most infuriating. One should at least be able to receive compelling evidence of what lead to the banning decision, and get a fair chance to dispute it. I understand Google doesn't want to give bad actors inform
866.
by virgilp 8y ago
This is an amazingly effective setup; I've worked at a company that has this by accident, and nothing compared to it in terms of productivity
867.
by virgilp 8y ago
I would recommend pen & paper (or whiteboard) first. Once you know exactly what you want to draw, it becomes much simpler to actually draw it (e.g. in Gliffy, or Lucidchart, or PPT or whatever) There are tools like e.g. https:/&#
868.
by virgilp 8y ago
It's either going to be supplanted, or it won't be. There is no third option. You're welcome.
869.
by virgilp 8y ago
I don't think that's how it works; "best" is sooo hard to define. Humans are very diverse, and have different needs/preferences. Also what is best today may not be best tomorrow (not because of the system itself, bu
870.
by virgilp 8y ago
I said "you went to far" to claim Kafka, Spark and Flink do basically the same thing. It's reasonable to use all 3 of them in the same team - so they clearly don't do the same thing. > I believe it drastically reduces

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