2,549 karma · joined September 26, 2011
For example, perennial fruit and veggie gardens in your backyard let you invest a small amount of time and energy building a long term yield of high value food. This year I spent about 25 hours growing $800 of clean organic veggies. I also prepped areas to plant fruit trees and bushes that I expect will increase my yields in a few years.
Solar on the roof / yard can reduce electricity costs for decades.
Rainwater capture and filtration can reduce water costs.
Renting out a bedroom can produce dollars.
Building a climate battery into a yard can reduce heating and cooling costs.
I ran some numbers and figure I can shave several hundred dollars a month off at a 30% ROI.
And it's not just about dollars, there's something very powerful about knowing my property is supporting my life with these investments.
Languages like C#, Java, C++, Scala, Kotlin, and Python in 2025 feel like industrial computerized bandsaws with twenty different settings and controls. Some more complicated than others. They can be tuned to crank out a factories needs but you could spend days just fussing with a single setting that isn't right.
That being said, modern Python to me feels like the least thought out of these. It has been incrementally changed from one language to another, while being forced to keep many of the worst parts of both. To be honest, I think they should keep up the "breaking backwards compatibility" trend and make Python 4 an optionally-compiled, statically-typed language more like Go, but with more expressivity than Go.
I suppose F# is already like my ideal Python 4. It's possible to run as a script or compiled binary. It's a nice clean syntax, and the type system is a joy to use.
A valid F# program can be a single line script or dozens of configuration files. This let's the developer use it for quick and dirty work, then progressively tweak settings to run in a more industrial scale setting.
It encourages helplessness and fatalism. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_processing_sensitivi...
We should be living in a time of ease, where the whole planet is sustained with all of us only working a few hours a week. Instead most people are fighting for scraps barely able to afford rent.
It won't continue like this forever. The line doesn't always go up.
And that doesn't even touch on the fact that most professors have absolutely no clue how modern software engineering is done. The courses are planned by even more out of touch heads of departments. And the quality of most of these student's projects is atrocious. How could they know better? They've just got a tiny micro assignment to do, and maybe 50-100 lines of code per assignment.
I'm not trying to be too pessimistic, but let's be real here and say a modern CS degree is a terrible way to be trained to be a modern software engineer. You'd be just as likely to succeed with a degree in mech engineering, biology, chemistry, physics, math, philosophy, or accounting. Or spending a year or two working on an open source with some mentors.
Granted there's also a huge range of quality of degree programs. I regularly hire Drexel students who shock me with how good they are, but that's a 5 year degree with 18 months of on job required training. That's a degree made for turning out quality software engineers.
My coursework to finish all my classes had me write a grand total of under 4k lines of code. And I finished those courses with high marks. That's such a small amount of code, I remember graduating and still being confused what a function was. It's unbelievable I paid almost 6 figures and spent 4 years to not even learn what a function was. I think that I'm not alone in this.
I'm usually trying to rein in the chaos of an over-engineered mess or explain docker containers and CI servers. Definitely makes for an interesting day switching between the two types of clients!
That being said, I prefer to work with smaller companies. I'm usually the only consultant, and I'm a freelancer not part of a larger consultancy. This probably significantly changes the types of teams I meet.
We want to give out all the data we possibly can for free.
It's paid for by our enterprise SSA tools, but the spacebook site will always be free and not need a login to get access to the public APIs.
Next month we're rolling out a historical API so you can get the data all the way back to the 1950s and visualize it in the explorer.
Attention destroying apps reduce the long term focus and reward centers such that doom-scrolling through the catalog probably feels better than just watching something. Most of the folks I know who start a movie or show immediately pull out their phones anyway to scroll elsewhere.
From when we started in 2009 to today, we both had to increase two shoe sizes.
She just finished her first 50 mile ultramarathon using Xero thin soled shoes. It was half on the AT, and she had no issues with that.
I'm a less serious runner, just enough to be able to knock out a few miles on demand and the annual Broad Street 10 mile run.
We both hiked 1000 miles of the AT on a thru in 2022. We've also clocked around 3O00 miles of other small day hikes and overnight trips. All with Zeros or Altras, and with a 30lb pack.
Over the years, she's had some minor issues with plantar fascitis that went away when she added in regular stretching. She's had a few bouts of hip bursitis when ramping up mileage for the ultra.
I've had some issues with knee pain that started on the thru hike related to scoliosis. My one hip drops lower than the other, twisting the knee and causing issues on both. Regular single leg exercises and heavy lifting keeps that in check (hard to do on the trail unfortunately).
Neither of us have had any issues with ankles, calves, or typical runner knee issues. I'm not sure I can credit the shoes for all of it, but I'm very glad we started with them and neither of us have any reason to change. Regular thick foam trainers now feel very uncomfortable, it's hard to describe. They squish my toes (which are very wide). They change my gait which feels awkward.
It's funny, now I feel like I see lots of runners in my area using these thin soled shoes, like the Merrel Vaporglove, Xeros, or alternative. Maybe it's cohort bias? Either way I am glad I found them when I did!
Also it's not just sore arms, CPR on an elderly patient will often crack ribs which is pretty upsetting. A 9/10 chance you'll feel like you killed a person by crushing their chest is pretty high.
Mouth to mouth is really gross and I wouldn't do it to someone with vomit all over them. Without a suction device it's not effective anyway.
I do think everyone should have to take CPR+AED in high school and college, it's a great skill to have and shares the burden of basic life support around the community. But I totally understand why someone wouldn't want to perform it.
Same with folks who were used to ftp directly into prod and used folders instead of source control.
Look, I get it, it's frustrating to be really good at current tech and feel like the rug is getting pulled. I've been through a few cycles of all new shiny tools. It's always been better for me to embrace the new with a cheerful attitude. Being grumpy just makes people sour and leave the industry in a few years.
It's absolutely wild that I can drink a mug of a beverage that everyone else drinks by the liter but be crippled with anxiety. Brain chemistry is weird.
- Belgium and Netherlands: ~1.5%
- 19th century European city dwellers: ~6%
- Certain tribes in Namibia with cultural multiple partners: ~48%
City dwelling was always higher than rural in Western cultures.
I've loved the game for some time now, fascinating to see how it was made
- It's dangerous for the manager's career to lose the ability to code. After five years they will have regressed nearly to a Jr engineer's ability and would need significant effort to get back into interviewing shape. I've interviewed so many managers who didn't like management or aren't quite good enough to stay in the management track who can't even remember how an if statement works.
- Small companies and early startups are much more likely to need engineers over politicians, so the manager working on engineering is much more helpful in smaller teams.
In my experience in all pretty small companies, keeping hands on the keyboard was essential for me and the team. This was great because I got tired of being a manager and wanted to go back to pure engineer again.
It sharpens my mind.
It heals my trauma.
It expands my creativity.
A lot of folks here their stock portfolio propped up by AI companies but think they've been overhyped (even if only indirectly through a total stock index). Some were saying all along that this has been a bubble but have been shouted down by true believers hoping for the singularly to usher in techno-utopia.
These signs that perhaps it's been a bit overhyped are validation. The singularly worshipers are much less prominent and so the comments rising to the top are about negatives and not positives.
Ten years from now everyone will just take these tools for granted as much as we take search for granted now.
My wife and I often do at least a ten minute break every 90 minutes! The idea of just grinding on and on for hours feels like torture. My car forcing frequent stops to charge sounds great! I'd go for a nice walk, maybe find a local eatery.
Only later might they care about what server they are on, but that's a great place to start.