atomashpolskiy

Yeah, let them eat kinoa and avocado

This is another excellent investigative piece by James uncovering the ongoing bioethics/social biology discourse and how the very same people advocating for the right to kill newborn babies and forcefully sterilize mentally disordered kids -- how these same people are now headlining the immunity passports initiative.

> Plus some people don't know when to ask for help, or when they're (for instance) duplicating effort.

This is the gist of it. Some people just have this (very sincere) belief that everyone else are clueless idiots and need to be nurtured, protected and helped. This is the spirit of our age, and Scrum in particular is just another manifestation of this belief.

Recent discussion from 2 weeks ago (200 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26101937

Sure. Icome tax is paid by the employer, it varies from around 25% to more than 30% depending on place and personal conditions. Public healthcare is fine, and I also pay for a private insurance. Bureacracy is so-so, and reportedly got worse with covid, though my employer helped me with the adaptation, so everything went smooth (spent 1 month in total to settle everything for everybody). Also, all family members are granted visas with the right to work, at least when you hold a "highly qualified professional" type of visa yourself.

I understand that this is not very informative, but I'm still new here, and most of this stuff is similar in most places in EU.

Realistically, the only things to worry about are money and the lack of jobs. The latter will hopefully be solved by remote becoming the norm in IT, and the former depends heavily on personal conditions. E.g. if my wife worked, it would be much easier for us. If I had a different attitude towards saving and investing in the past, it would be much easier for us. And so on and so forth.

There are quite a few rich people here, and their lifestyle is awesome. Weather is good throughout the year (20-22C and clear skies with bright sun now, and February is the coldest and harshest month here), sea and mountains provide lots of opportunities for leisure and sports, birds and flowers and scents everywhere... Weirdly, I feel like I'm back in my childhood, when everything was so bright and fascinating. Completely forgot how it feels after having been deprived of all of these things due to living in a big industrial city.

Somewhat surprisingly, it depends. For instance, in our case application support is responsible for/interested in the documentation, and they make sure that developers create/update the relevant documentation for each of the release items. Stale comments, on the other hand, need to be identified and addressed in code reviews, and in practice we're not always good at that.

Hehe, I, for one, moved to Spain (Costa del Sol) from a high paying location. Working remotely for a US company through a Spanish outsourcing company and getting payed peanuts compared to what I earned back at home, not to speak of US salaries (though my pay here is still 2x average local salary). Heck, although I'm basically living paycheck to paycheck right now, I could not be happier with my decision, life is good here. I'm sure I will be able to find new sources of income over time to compensate for the initial losses. But I could never have found the great climate, nature and relaxed people in many other top paying spots. Can't have everything right away, have patience.

While I agree to some extent, the problem with comments is that they need to be maintained in order to be helpful: code comments - updated when the code changes, general comments - when the context changes, etc. This is a work in itself: developer has to remember to do it, reviewer has to remember to look for it. In my experience, people tend to forget to do it or just don't bother, which means that someone else finds himself with a contradictory, outdated, confusing comment further down the road.

Maybe because silos are an important target for the attacking side? So you want to have many in order to reduce the risk of being left without arms in case your enemy attacks first?

It's incomprehensible how anyone would not shudder from anger seeing such injustice or how anyone would be clueless enough to argue that centralized, uncontrolled power of any kind has the right to exist in our time. We should all be working hard on dismantling these barbarian relics of the past as soon as possible, even if only to let their innocent victims to stand in the shambles and breathe the sweet air of freedom once again in their lives.

traceroute?

Access has been restored, nothing to discuss here.

It also shut down the account of the Russian-made vaccine Sputnik V today. Seems like they are taking too much upon themselves lately, aren't they?

UPD: Access has been restored.

I rather meant government taking measures to stimulate IT business and venture capital, like it's done in certain Eastern European countries, for instance - mostly by tax exemptions and concessions.

Regarding bonuses - here in Spain they are subject to personal income tax...so yeah, it's only good for employers.

Given that in modern economy it's insurmountably more difficult to earn first million than the next ten, 50% increase in SWE salary would give a huge advantage and produce non-linear effects on inequality gap.

I don't think it's cheaper to live in Europe than in US.

The reasons for lower salaries in my opinion are:

- most developer jobs are in "real" businesses, which see IT as a cost center

- compared to US, there is a vanishingly small number of technically innovative IT-first companies, so there's little competition for talented professionals

- taxation is progressive and harsher in general due to being the primary source of govt income in most (all?) European countries, and increasing gross salary kinda stops making sense at some point

It would be great, if these issues were addressed, and there are well-known ways to do that. But I'm not sure, if increasing salaries is a noble goal per se. While much lower than in US, they are still decent and allow one to live a comfortable life. So it's rather US being an outrageous outlier (no wonder, given that post-WWII economy is operated on their terms). The elephant in the room here (as almost everywhere in the world) is real estate. Now that one (and prevalence of mortgage) is a huge issue, and it needs to be solved at all costs, even if just for the sake of younger people.

As for salaries, most developers simply don't generate that much real value (real, not money). Though they somewhat compensate for inproportionate incomes on a "higher" level of economy by over-spending the surplus above the necessary living costs, though I doubt it's by design.

Overall, I'd argue, that developer (and many other occupations) salaries should be lower, so that we had fewer get-rich-quickers to work and to compete with. To be clear, I'm not saying that a dev should earn as a janitor, but rather on par with other "highly skilled" occupations.

> I've been interviewing non-stop for a few months. For a few months prior to interviewing I watched computer science lectures online, read CTCI, and had a premium Leetcode subscription with a good amount of practice.

> I haven't done mock interviews with a friend, but I did pay for a few mock technical interviews.

Chances are that, given such extensive preparation, it's not really the technical part that is the problem, if you haven't been able to get an offer after going through a full process at 15 companies. Of course, it might be a severe case of bad luck, but I'd bet that your anxiety and stress are somehow leaking through. Did you self-reflect on that, and if yes, what are your thoughts?

JVM has default memory usage limits and sophisticated GC algorithms, which may cause the JVM process to allocate more memory than actually needed for the application's data. In most traditional Java's use cases (long running, memory intensive apps and servers) this is beneficial, but if you know the upper bound on the total size of the data to be smaller than the default limit (which varies by the environment), it's easy to restrict it further with a couple of program parameters. For example, after some tuning I commonly run a full-fledged Java-based BitTorrent client with under 64 MB of RAM in total. You can definitely run a Jetty web server with Hello world page with 32 MB RAM or less.

I vouch for JVM, specifically:

* Bootique (better Spring Boot),

* Vert.x (reactive framework and libraries for unmatched performance),

* Akka (for distributed coordination, if necessary; though depending on the use case, it might be simpler to just use external services, like Zookeeper or Consul -- Bootique has integration with those)

Honorable mention goes to Netty, which is great for high performance networking, but going so far is rarely needed in most servers.

For Github projects, we could have an organization that would conduct project audit and certification on owner's expense. As an owner of a few open-source projects, I'm a little tired of hearing such insinuations as in the post above (although there is certainly a grain of truth in it -- we live in the Age of Bullshit, after all), so I would gladly cash out $1000 for getting a "quality approved" stamp from a widely trusted entity.

Location: Moscow

Remote: Yes, but relocation is preferred

Willing to relocate: Yes (Europe)

Technologies:

Server applications, microservices, distributed and decentralized computing, peer-to-peer

Networking, multithreading, performance tuning and optimization

Languages: Java, SQL, Rust

OS: Unix/Linux, macOS

Databases: SQLite, H2, MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, Apache Cassandra, RocksDB

Protocols: TCP, UDP, (s)FTP(S), SSH, HTTP(S), Websockets, gRPC/Protobuf, BitTorrent/DHT

Middleware: Docker, Consul, RabbitMQ, ZeroMQ

Other: Bootique, Jetty, Vert.x, RxJava, Akka, Apache Cayenne, Jackson, Activiti BPM, JUnit 4/5, TestNG, Maven, Gradle, Git, Liquibase, JDK, async-profiler, VisualVM, Intellij IDEA, CLion, Wireshark

Resume/CV: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fxQf0l6_RqHPQPj2-ijypGNZhBG...

Email: please find in CV

Yep. I started working full-time at 21 in 2010 and didn't stop until the beginning of 2020. Currently on a sabbatical (kinda) and passively looking for a new job in EU. In parallel with working full-time and being highly productive on the job (always was a top performer, thanks to mild OCD, I guess), I also married my gf, who gave birth to my son, when I was 24, and did my best to be a good husband and father all along. On top of that, I spent huge amounts of time (at nights, mostly) studying online courses, reading CS books, learning stuff, etc. Finally, at ages 27-30 I was quite involved with open source, in particular, my own projects: bittorrent library, which atm has almost 2K stars on github, and a face detection engine in rust.

All this said, it was definitely a tough period in my life, and I'm kind of happy, that it's over. My son is going to school this fall and does not require as much attention as when he was a toddler. My projects are kinda "finished", meaning that I'm not actively working on them anymore. If I'm reading something nowadays, it's mostly history, philosophy and natural sciences. Having time for myself, playing an occasional video game, going out to skate or just hang around in the city is important to keep sane and not lose the desire to work anymore.

So yeah, I've learnt first hand, what "hard work" really means, and learnt to value free time, leisure and hobbies.

Comments here are going very far beyond discussing a "particular article", including you specifically, who is a (maybe former) Russian citizen. Replying to you feels like stepping in a pile of crap, but God asked us to be kind and wise, so I'll tolerate my disgust for a moment and tell you: Please, be ashamed of youself. And STFU.

I read (among others) Tippelskirch's History of the WWII, and it's pretty objective. I don't think you can blame Germans for the anti-USSR propaganda, considering that it was the US, who was having their skin in the game (Cold War, started by corrupt politicians, bought by big business and financiers) after the war has ended.

I don't like this person (and our officials in general), but I feel compelled to say, that I find the mockery of his points and all things Russian (in this thread and overall) absolutely disgusting and borderline insulting.

Sadly, it's quite typical. The most atrocious example of this mentality is (still, after so many years) US propagandist efforts to make everyone believe, that their participation in the WWII was decisive, with D-Day being the turning point, that ultimately brought the victory over Nazis. When someone dares to notice, that there were Kursk and Stalingrad in 1943 and a full-on race to Berlin quite some time before the first American troops even landed on Omaha beach, the official propaganda dismisses all evidence or smears the Russian side: like, yeah, sure, they helped a lot, no shit, but it was only possible, because Red Army was overrunning German tanks with millions of vodka-infused unarmed savages, who were machinegunned in the back by commissars, oh, and don't forget lend-lease and food, that US was providing to Russia, otherwise Hitler would have taken Leningrad in 1941...yadda-yadda

Adequate people tend to understand, that any such collective fight (conquering space is also a real fight) is collaborative, and every party plays an important role. Denigrating former allies after the fight is finished is behaving not like a human, but like an ape. It's equally disgusting to see this happen both on Russian and on American side.

I'm also 31, been in the industry for 10 years, and can agree on most, if not all, points, that you've made.

I totally understand, that since the 80s and early 90s IT has transformed from a craft into a full-fledged industry with a lot of money to be made, so the dilution of the original spirit and an influx of all kinds of people was to be expected.

Sadly, with all the money and hype and cultivation of the "nerd" culture among the masses, the IT has become "mainstream". By this I mean the very same process that happened in other niches, originally populated mostly by enthusiasts, that at some point showed the potential to bring huge profits. Like rock music or skateboarding, you get the idea. Basically, anything, that a person chooses as a way to express themselves, to oppose themselves to the rest of the world, both in healthy and not so healthy ways. To rebel, even.

I feel like in the past there were more people in this field, who were genuinely punk and misfits and revolutionaries (and I understand, how this may sound ridiculous, if taken at face value, but I'm speaking about the human spirit and attitude, not the intentions). These guys (overwhelmingly male, by the way) did not give a flying fuck about becoming celebrities and earning tons of money, or about saving the world and solving contemporary problems, or about outlook and diversity and inclusion and bringing everybody, including neighbour Joe and his wife and their dog onto the ship. They were happy just by doing the stuff they liked and sharing their happiness with a very limited circle of people, who really digged it.

Fast forward 30 years, now being an IT worker is completely normal, it's just an occupation, a job, where people earn money to spend them on other things, that they really like. Of course, there are many really smart and bright and devoted people as well, probably many more than ever before, but I feel like they are not of the same kind as 30 years before. They are nerds, not punks, and it makes all the difference in the world.

And with these structural changes comes the almost suffocating blandness (despite the outer gloss) and conformity, that you just can't relate to.

Just my 2 cents.

What about sport? Something challenging, that requires years to master, e.g. martial arts or skateboarding or climbing? I feel like our happiness is tightly correlated with how much physical activity we get. I feel most happy and satisfied with life and myself, when I'm completely physically exhausted.

Previous one was flagged; by HN forces of Good, apparently.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23433185

Do you think you will hold the same opinion 5-10 years down the road?