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TheAnswerMan

14 karma · joined December 31, 2020

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TheAnswerMan··on Ask HN: Why did Atom Text Editor failed?
Performance. It matters even in the 20's.
TheAnswerMan··on Choice paralysis between CL and Clojure
Common lisp because it's lisp all the way down which makes debugging in slime is better then clojure. With CL you can just have a buffer and start writing code, evaling snippets through slime. With clojure you have to have a project structure set up on disk first, it feels very java enterprisy , made for suits.
TheAnswerMan··on Ask HN: Why are UFO stories mainly from USA?
The rest of the world didn't have area 51 military testing 50+ years ago producing sights no one had ever seen before. In a desert with clear skies.

That triggered a cultural phenomenon. Tons of people like to make fake photos and videos and tons of people want to believe aliens are visiting us.

TheAnswerMan··on Why Robinhood disabled buys but not sells
What if I told you people break the law and are dishonest?
TheAnswerMan··on Ask HN: How to Stop Reddit Addiction?
There is no cure. The best solution is to feed the addiction. Buy as many monitors as you can then display as many subreddits on the screen as you can. Then develop your ability to read multiple reddits simultaneously. At night make sure you have text-to-voice software to read reddits for you while you sleep.
TheAnswerMan··on More than 100M Americans have diabetes or prediabetes (2017)
Would you consider rice to be "whole food plant based"? Populations that eat rice as a staple tend to get diabetes.
TheAnswerMan··on Ask HN: What laptop should I buy in 2021?
If you are are already familiar with apple software you'd be crazy not go with the new M1. Super power efficiency without compromising on power? Yes please. It's the first big advancement in a while. It's priced very well for what you get.

The only reason I'm not jumping on the M1 train is I'm die hard linux. I also prefer desktops and never work outside of a home/work office. So I can get the same/better performance with AMD Ryzen and not need to care so much about power/battery.

TheAnswerMan··on Ask HN: Should I learn arch Linux or Debian Linux?
Deciding between Debian/Arch is mostly about the package system. Debian locks in to package versions for stability. You don't need to worry about updating package A changing it's API and breaking package B. It's sort of a professionally managed package system. The downside is you might miss out on cool new feature of package A since you're locked in to an old version.

A lot of the big moving and shaking in Arch has already come to pass, so it's not likely you will brick your system from an update.

So if you are really into the latest versions of things, then Arch. If you prefer to remove the risk of breaking your system and limit updates to security patches then go with Debian.

TheAnswerMan··on SARS-CoV-2 501Y.V2 escapes neutralization by South African COVID-19 donor plasma
Sure, reducing transmission rate makes you less likely to be exposed in the first place. But it's not an alternative solution to a cure.

Corona's have been with mankind since before history. They never go away and its a matter of time before you are exposed to one of the coronas again.

TheAnswerMan··on Ask HN: Tabs or Spaces?
Both. Tabs up to the current level of indentation. Then spaces after that for alignment. Spaces never come before a tab, only after and only for alignment purposes.

Everyone likes to take a dump on mixing tabs/spaces. But it solves all problems with both. Everyone can view the indentation width they prefer; 2, 3, 4, 8, whatever. And alignment is always correct no matter what width you prefer. An auto format tool can remove the need to manually deal with anything.

Indent width is a visual effect that should not be mandated. You wouldn't mandate a color scheme for your code base, so why would you mandate indentation width?

TheAnswerMan··on Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?
Your assumption forgot that remote applies to the entire world, not just the Europe. Have fun competing with team from <insert South American Country> who mirrors time zones more closely with the US.
TheAnswerMan··on Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?
> Remote work will take care of this.

If by "take care of" you mean put downward pressure on European wages, then sure. Unrestricted remote competition would benefit 3rd world developers and the 1st world employers. But not the 1st world employee.

TheAnswerMan··on Ask HN: How to increase SWE salaries in Europe?
You have to destroy your social safety net or escape it.
TheAnswerMan··on Major Incident at Fastly
Unreadable gray text on white background is the latest in Web Designer fashion.
TheAnswerMan··on Airbus hit as new US tariffs come into force
You may want to tell that to France.
TheAnswerMan··on Airbus hit as new US tariffs come into force
If you punch the US in the gut with tariffs you may get reciprocation.
TheAnswerMan··on On Repl-Driven Programming
You don't even need the "REPL" buffer to do REPL style development. You can just use the "eval" keybinds of your editor to eval the source code in the files.

For any test/scratch code, just create a scratch file outside your project and write the experiments there, eval'ing as you type. That file could even be an "official" unit test you include in the project.

TheAnswerMan··on On Repl-Driven Programming
So REPL may make people less likely to document the code?

I don't see the correlation.

TheAnswerMan··on Ask HN: How have you fared working remotely this past year?
1) fully remote

2) 50 miles away from physical workplace.

3) Great. Life is easier with less commuting.

4) Pro: no commutes. Helping the environment by not driving, and conserving precious fossil fuels for future generations. Con: physical distance does increase the time to copy files here and there, but overall not a big deal.

5-A) I wonder if this blessing may be a curse in disguise. Will high salaries in job centers start to drop off when physical location is no longer a factor? I choose to live far away and commute specifically to get the best of both, low cost of living and high salary. Could international competition bring down salaries? Could any laws preventing this be changed? New laws written?

5-B) I think having a big monitor and a good keyboard are key. Working on the laptop directly sucks and is uncomfortable. Basically have a real desk/workplace. I notice some of my coworkers sitting on the couch with the laptop in their lap. They don't seem to mind.

6) Yes for myself. Yes for most programmers. I do wonder if there could be issues with new fresh programmers being thrown into the world with a monitor as their only view port to the team. But that's how the open source world works, and many people have learned much with that remote style of interaction.

TheAnswerMan··on Bitcoin is a disaster
Their scarcity is not "like". The owner of beanie babies has/had full power to produce any amount of beanies, inflating their supply. The owner could start up the factory again and flood the earth with beanies.

Bitcoin scarcity is protected by mathematics and the nature of the universe. And the public ledger.

I guess anyone can dream up a new mathematical system and ledger and unlimited dreams can be dreamt making more supply of electronic currency. But the specific instance of a dream "bitcoin" and it's public ledger cannot be inflated.

TheAnswerMan··on Bitcoin is a disaster
> How often is it used for that use case?

100% of all cases. You just used gold to ask that question.

TheAnswerMan··on Why Jira Sucks
Java minecraft did have issues. Professional game streamers were having issues due to the pause-the-world garbage collection.

I don't mean to over hype the issue, minecraft became on of the most successful games in history riding on Java. But the re-write to C++ was not just because Microsoft is a C++ shop. The C++ rewrite delivered measurable performance gains, making it much better on low end devices especially.