wynand

13 ms·

31.
by wynand 16y ago
Why do you think it's more likely that employees are in the wrong? The asymmetry of the relationship makes it more likely for the employee to be get the short end of the stick. It's not inspiration and respect that get passed down the corpo
32.
by wynand 16y ago
I'm a long time Python programmer and I am currently using it for scientific programming (for my PhD). I've shopped around a lot for alternatives to Python and looked at Ocaml, F#, Boo, Clojure, Common Lisp, Haskell and Scala. There are a c
33.
by wynand 16y ago
Your software will time out long before a packet arrives. You could make your (custom) software never timeout, but your software is likely to become unusable due to pauses whose durations are unknown - what if it takes 5 minutes for a small
34.
by wynand 16y ago
"accomplished far, far more than you or I ever will" This is a common snowclone (X is <far superior in some dimension - often intelligence> than you or I) that really bothers me. It's a kind of hero worship that attributes too much
35.
by wynand 16y ago
Arg. I'm only landing at Gatwick at 20:15. I can't imagine that I'd be able to get there until around 22:00. I don't suppose that anyone will still be around then?
36.
by wynand 16y ago
Wow, I wish I knew which tech companies you are talking about. The world I know is one where people work all the time, are lucky to have half decent computers on which to work and definitely never get any of those cushy benefits. Thing is,
37.
by wynand 16y ago
(I don't mean this comment to criticize you in particular kylec) I can understand that some on HN have an Apple preference but Apple almost gets free advertising by the way some talk over here. Why vote up a comment because someone says the
38.
by wynand 16y ago
Posts like this really make me want to move to Clojure. Python is now my go-to language, especially because of Scipy, NetworkX and bridges like RPy. I would definitely put in the time if someone with mathematical modelling experience can su
39.
by wynand 16y ago
> My guess is it's the 80/20 rule applied to customers and Apple likes profit margins much more than just revenues. Speculating is one thing... > Also, it's stereotypical that third world folks abuse store return policies and custom
40.
by wynand 16y ago
Black kettles and pots come to mind. While I cannot be sure that Jeffrey Zaslow is a Boomer or Gen Xer (the fuzzy dates around those eras makes it difficult to decide), this accusation of entitlement seems to be a Boomer message. We're talk
41.
by wynand 17y ago
Research wouldn't be necessary if we knew beforehand what we needed to look for. Granted, it doesn't help to glue things together indiscriminately, but I doubt that is that OpenCog is doing. Someone has to try this and if their idea doesn't
42.
by wynand 17y ago
Nothing would do more for women in engineering than having more well known female engineers. Social proof is a strong thing. But until we have more of that, cultural items like Barbie might help to bootstrap the process. I agree that it's a
43.
by wynand 17y ago
I got really angry when I first read this blog post (see my other comment here) and I was thrilled that most people here are as annoyed. I read maxklein's other story (about how programming is procrastination). I'm going to give him the ben
44.
by wynand 17y ago
That's an interesting take. At least in the case of Buffett, I think he really likes what he does (I mean, the man still lives in a normal family house). To me there is a distinction between people who want to make more money and people who
45.
by wynand 17y ago
Exactly. Group 2+ is also the most valuable to the world in the long run, if only because people's mental health will be much better. I also wouldn't be surprised if the members of Group 2+ generally hate the control that the typical manage
46.
by wynand 17y ago
I'm no Ruby fanboy (I once wrote a little GUI app in what was probably horribly unidiomatic Ruby). I think that he gave terrible reasons for not using Ruby (fanboyism & not enough code?). Plus he's on the JVM, so JRuby gives you access
47.
by wynand 17y ago
A while ago I had an argument with a chemical engineer about exactly this. He claimed that software engineering is an immature field and that we will eventually learn how to apply engineering principles to get more reliable programs. When I
48.
by wynand 17y ago
What did you use to compute P(D|Ci)? This uses your notation from the Dr Dobbs article, so that Ci (a category) is a user and D is a document (a comment?). Did you use something like trigram signatures? Also, is P(Ci) equal to #comments mad
49.
by wynand 17y ago
The project manager's view includes both the business side and personal fears/biases. And as people are wont to do, a PM will disguise personal doubts as business decisions. What is also never mentioned is that what employees desire is as m
50.
by wynand 17y ago
Being thought of as a "subordinate" (I mention this, because he talks about programmers as being subordinates). Am I the only person on earth that rails against this? I trade my time for money, but I am no-one's "subordinate". To me, a mana
51.
by wynand 17y ago
Could you elaborate on that? I think a lot of people here probably don't share your reservations and it would help to say what they are.
52.
by wynand 17y ago
I'm a functional convert but my colleagues will tell you just how convoluted some of my code has been due my trying to shoehorn everything into a functional mold. Many in the functional world realize that some things are akward (see Peyton-
53.
by wynand 17y ago
I think you really have to live in the Philippines to know (so my opinion is obviously not worth that much), but it seems like a good basic business tool (and those are obviously going to sell well if no-one else has jumped in yet). Probabl
54.
by wynand 17y ago
This is a cool idea. I'm just wondering how people without credit cards would be able to join (I know quite a few people who don't have credit cards). Perhaps via a premium SMS (very few people have neither a mobile nor a credit card).
55.
by wynand 17y ago
I think that really hits the nail on the head. I don't know if people will ever stumble upon a set of interaction constraints that will make people civil if they're not already committed to civility. In that regard HN has always been good (
56.
by wynand 17y ago
The mathematician Stieltjes never completed a PhD, but was first rate. He was given an honorary doctorate so that he could apply for a chair at Groningen university.
57.
by wynand 17y ago
As someone whose stress has almost wrecked his life, I can relate to many of these points. The levels of stress that I have can be debilitating and actually keep me from doing my work. It's useful to see lists like this to remind myself of
58.
by wynand 17y ago
Reminds me of an erstwhile Egyptian colleague of mine who said that he was "randomly selected" for screening every single time that he passed through the check-in gates at an airport.
59.
by wynand 17y ago
I just downloaded his article, and he states that "With the advent of computers, algorithms for maze solving have become automated, but the solution times still scale unfavorably with maze size/complexity" and then references a paper by Dij
60.
by wynand 17y ago
I don't see anything in the article that shows that he made the statement about NP-completeness. It seems that the quoted chemist made that statement. For someone who's not a graph theorist, it's an easy mistake to make, since the longest p

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