Hacker News Reader

Oh, whoever did this is gonna be in big trouble. Heads are gonna roll.

…Hmm? What do you mean "they meant to do that"?

badman_tingon Why Node.js is becoming the go-to technology in the Enterprise

“Why go to Facebook and do PHP when you can go to PayPal and do Node.js”

Why choose the company you work for based on technology when you can choose the company you work for based on the company you will be working for?

badman_tingon Where did all the developers go?

Where I work, what began as a studiously followed Scrum process (where teams decided which parts were important and which weren't) has devolved into "we put a bunch of stuff in Trello and take it off as if we are short order cooks" and we never meet to reflect on what we've been doing. Very little enthusiasm for process all around. And as everyone knows, Agile has won so thoroughly that it's a meaningless buzzword. Everyone says they're agile even if they aren't. But I doubt I would ever go to an "agile conference", whatever that is.

badman_tingon Removing User Interface Complexity, or Why React is Awesome

I recently watched a presentation about React's approach (I think from a recent JSConf) and it sold me, at least enough to try. The approach makes total sense to me, and I agree with many of its criticisms of Angular in particular. I really loved the reconsidering of our idea of "separation of concerns", that if we reconsider the scope of the concern, we can devise an approach where templating and logic go together. I'm excited by these ideas.

badman_tingon Kindness is Underrated

Not for nothing but it's easier to be kind to your coworkers when they're not fucking up their work. Or even worse, yours. Of course in those times you have bigger problems than kindness. Or perhaps better put, empathy and kindness have many dimensions. Having a smile on your face while you make a mess for your coworker isn't actually kind.

badman_tingon Introducing ASP.NET vNext

I moved away from C# and .NET about 4 years ago, and use all those things too. The recent developments are great, but I view them more as a cool glass of water for people in a hot place (not hell, far from it).

I don't like how .NET as a platform/ecosystem/community lags on certain things that are almost taken for granted in other areas, like deployment tools and package managers. Then again, when I worked with .NET those things were my responsibility so I guess their lack affected me more than many .NET devs.

badman_tingon Responsive design works best as a nip'n'tuck

In my experience there are times when using the same element in all the different layouts becomes unwieldy, and it becomes much easier to have two versions of it which are hidden and shown with media queries, then altered for the specific layout. So at that point it's really not much different than actually having different templates on the server side.

About the conclusion (one performer/many tricks), I agree in that now that responsive design is our new toy, designers can go a bit crazy with vastly different layouts for different viewports. This may distill over time to an approach that aims for one layout that more or less works for all viewports, with only small differences between them.

badman_tingon GitHub Is Your Resume Now (2012)

I fought this for a while, then gave in and spruced it up a bit (I mostly commit to private repos not on Github). The argument "If you don't have open repos you don't write code in your free time and are therefore probably not very good at coding" is full of gigantic holes. But, I get that everyone has their little arbitrary things they use to whittle down the herd of candidates.

I'm not doing LinkedIn, though. I'm not.

badman_tingon Programming and thinking the functional way

Yes, I know this is not a "true", in-place quicksort. But those are performance considerations that I don't intend to expose here.

Beware, beware.

badman_tingon The Return of Upcoming.org by Andy Baio

Why the hell did they bother acquiring it, then? I don't get it.

badman_tingon App.net State of the Union

Coming up with things other people should do is easy.

badman_tingon Ack is a grep-like tool, optimised for programmers

Totally, I use it all the time now. Here's a pretty great writeup on git grep that was on HN recently: http://travisjeffery.com/b/2012/02/search-a-git-repo-like-a-...

badman_tingon Working from home

Yes, great advice, and I'm running into this pretty hard as well. For any given event I'd rather just do whatever by myself, but add that up over time and it gets kinda ugly. You have to force yourself to interact with others which sounds weird but is ultimately valuable.

badman_tingon Working from home

I've been doing it for about four years now, and highly prefer it. I agree with everything that's here, I've made most of these discoveries myself. However, while I do have a dedicated office, I found it more comfortable to work in the living room because there's more light and a better view.

But yes, do act like a professional. I guess if you can actually do a full day's work in a bathrobe then good for you, but I find the daily routine provides valuable structure to the day. I also Skype with my coworkers at least once a day so if I look like hell all the time that would probably not look great.

badman_tingon Fred Wilson: By 2020 Apple Won’t Be A Top-3 Tech Company; Google, Facebook Will

Oh, for sure. They're doomed! Everybody knows that.

badman_tingon Target removes CEO in wake of cyber attack

Ever heard the phrase "the buck stops here"?

badman_tingon Why I am excited about Clojure

Man. I know Lispers hate hearing about it, but I was so on board with this until the sample ClojureScript code and all the parens. I just… don't wanna write code like that.

badman_tingon Two Sentences About Getting Older and Working on the Web

I have coworkers who did little hacky stuff on the Web 10-15 years ago and think their knowledge is still relevant, so I respect Frank's honesty in admitting the web dev world has passed him by, or vice versa if you like. I use all the stuff he's talking about, though I believe I am slightly older than he is, so, not a kid.

badman_tingon AngularJS: Factory vs. Service vs. Provider

I can see why we need providers, and either services or factories, but not both. I prefer not to use 'this' in JS where possible, so factory it is.

badman_tingon I would prefer to pay for Twitter

Everpix charged. It's not a guarantee of survival.

badman_tingon Does Google Have A Secret “Translate” Service?

I don't see the connection.

badman_tingon Programming Is a Dead End Job

Yes, it's true. My solution was to find a job programming at an excellent place to work, so that I can make sure I do valuable things and still be done with my day around 1-2pm most days. Take my dog for a walk, read, learn, whatever after that.

If they're not gonna pay you in gold get 'em to pay you in some other way. All the prestige stuff ("a seat at the table", job titles, authority, etc) isn't actually worth much anyway.

badman_tingon Thinking in Types

Honestly, it seems to me like if you don't understand category theory and type theory well, using Haskell will be either hard or impossible. That's what people who are into Haskell are into, and they seem to be a relatively rare breed. (I have a lot of trouble understanding these subjects, though I continue to try. I still don't know what the hell a monad really is.)

badman_tingon Thinking in Types

"A type class defines a set of functions which must be implemented for a type to be considered in that type class. Other functions can then be written which operate not on one specific type, but on any type which is in its given class constraint."

Call me crazy but this just sounds like a Java interface to me.

Edit: On further thought, I guess the difference is that in Java, the interface itself is a type. So all instances of classes which implement IShowable can be said to be of type IShowable. Whereas it seems that in Haskell a typeclass is not, itself, a type.

badman_tingon Comparing Ember and Angular

I kind of can't believe he called Angular easy to learn. One of the most common things you hear about it is the steep learning curve, which is not helped by the docs (the skimpiness of which is another frequent lament). In my experience Angular is learned by Googling problems you have, which are then explained in Stack Overflow posts.

As an aside - this is something I've hardped on before, but I just really think it is not helpful to anyone to use examples whose names are so abstract:

    ng-click="foo = 'bar'; blah(foo + bar + '!!!); shazbot = nanoo && nanoo"

This is meant as an example of something you should not do. But it's nonsense - it's quotes and semicolons separated by meaningless names. Of course that is the point, but in turn that is my point - give a better example, one that models something one may do in the real world but should not, so that the person reading the example actually understands what not to do. Instead of that, something like this:

    ng-click="shoppingCartId = 52; initCart(52); var myShop = new Shop();"

People know what shopping carts are. "shazbot" and "nanoo nanoo" are whimsical references to an old sitcom. Entertaining to the author, perhaps, but not helpful.

badman_tingon “var functionName” vs “function functionName”

JS engines are getting smarter about this, but you can't really rely on it. I suggest naming your functions if don't want them to be anonymous.

badman_tingon The Absurdity of LinkedIn

The sad thing is how many tech-savvy employers still ask for it during the hiring process. I am concerned that not being on LinkedIn is unusual looking from a potential employer's perspective, like maybe I am hiding something. But, if my Github and actual resume aren't enough, they should hire someone else.

badman_tingon “var functionName” vs “function functionName”

I recommend named functions, because a stack trace 12 deep of all anonymous functions is a real bummer.

badman_tingon Test-induced design damage

I really identify with some of the points he's making, they're observations I've made myself so it's nice to see someone with his clout bringing them up.

I wonder about the design thing though - our code is in some ways a document of the circumstances surrounding it. Does it make sense to have it conform to some Platonic ideal, which we corrupt when we alter it to make it more testable? I'm really not sure about this, but I doubt it. Code ultimately needs to work in a given set of ways and that's our primary concern with it. Making the code "pure" (or just "easy to read" if you like) is a service to other developers who come along later. So, the tradeoff is testability for intelligibility. I can imagine a lot of scenarios where that tradeoff is a rational one.

badman_tingon Skype group video calling becomes free

Nice! Paying a premium for this was a bummer, but it does still work better than all of Skype's competitors, in my opinion. The primary problem of Hangouts and whatever else is out there is audio echo. I don't know if that problem is simply unsolvable in Flash or what, but Skype has handled it much better. All you need is one person on your Hangout call who doesn't mute their mic and the experience is a disaster, unfortunately.