bartonfink

It's nested, but it's real (albeit not at $65k). See, for example, http://www.galvanize.it/gschool-boulder

In a linguistics course in college, this tribe was used as an example of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Supposedly, members who were taught English and spoke it well still had trouble with relative direction because their original language (and culture) didn't have the concept. I always liked the example even if I thought it was dubious. Very cool to hear that someone else can corroborate that and make it at least a shared anecdote.

Something like that was tried before, with limited success. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocket_mail

I've heard it said "money doesn't buy happiness, but it does buy options."

That's a hell of a sales tactic in a market where social ties matter. Kudos to you for figuring it out.

It would help decouple your application code and structure from Apache configuration and the need to be familiar with Apache configuration syntax and nuance. Your Apache config would just need to route all requests to your app root to one routing file, which is pretty simple, and then the routing file can process from there. You'd also have the benefits of more configurable routing, if you needed that (e.g. routing based on specific parameters in a POST instead of just based on the request url and method).

Because of closing tags, XML is approximately twice as noisy as JSON encoding. If response sizes and the network traffic they entail are a concern, JSON is worth considering. If response sizes + validation are necessary, something like Protocol Buffers or Thrift may also fit, as they are widely supported as well.

At my last job, we used Scala/Play to essentially generate a complex single-page app composed of dozens of partial templates. It was a technology mismatch and proved to be a controversial decision among the developers.

I cannot recommend Javascript: The Good Parts highly enough if you're trying to learn JS. It's probably the single best programming book I've ever read, in that you could very well read that and a very basic introduction (on the level of syntax) and legitimately claim to know the language.

I know a guy who bought AAPL at about $8 a share a while back and still holds a lot of shares, was part of the initial Dell IPO and also recently complained about only making 10x his Tesla shares so far. He's quite well set for a guy who invests as a hobby.

Logic.

I've just started back with PHP as well, and nice things I've seen that didn't exist when I last did PHP in 2006 are:

Composer - a dependency manager that's a lot like Bundler.

Pimple - a dependency injection framework.

Klein - a routing library that's much nicer than handling routes in Apache or working with requests directly.

As for an editor, I've just been using Eclipse with the PHP development tools. I'm sure there is a better tool out there, this was just the first thing I grabbed.

"Deserve's got nothing to do with it."

William Munny

Read "How To Win Friends And Influence People". It's by far the best book I've ever read on the subject, and its suggestions are both powerful and very easy to implement in common interactions (people respond well when you use their names so use their names often, courtesy is cheap so be courteous, etc).

I have a Dell XPS15, running Linux Mint (never even booted the stock Windows OS) and have had nothing but good things to say thus far. It's light, it runs quickly (playing a good bit of Kerbal Space Program with my daughter) and it was relatively cheap (I got mine for $1100 last year). I'd recommend it to absolutely anyone.

Newegg link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834300...

I believe Joel Spolsky coined those terms in an essay about hiring. The reference is to American grading - letter grades are A (best), B, C, D and F.

He didn't, that I recall, define where the difference between an A and a B player was, so it's kind of a difficult metaphor to apply. It's really got nothing to do with any American sport that I know of - those terms would be more like "bench player", "starter" or "utility player".

I'm quite interested in suicide prevention, having lost several friends to suicide over the years. I'd do it pro bono. If you're interested, let me know - my e-mail is in my profile.

Buying drinks/snacks on planes in the U.S. It's not universal, but probably 50% of the domestic flights I take specify that they only accept debit/credit cards for payment. On a recent flight that did accept cash, I overheard a passenger ask why this flight took cash and others did not, and the flight attendant said that their particular plane hadn't been fitted with some system that would allow credit card checks in flight, but it was on their maintenance schedule.

I'm playing devil's advocate here, but a full-time front-end designer might care deeply about such things. I would not, for example, take a J2EE job even though I know Java because I know they are not "just the same." I could see a designer caring about the stylesheets they'd be working with even though it's all fundamentally CSS.

MapQuest is hiring. We're working on a variety of things besides getting people directions from A to B, and we are trying to do that with a minimum of drama and a maximum of excitement. Our headquarters is in downtown Denver, CO, but we have people working in NYC, Pennsylvania, Washington, DC and even England as well. We're #2 in the maps and directions industry behind Google, and are amidst a pivot out of maps and directions and into travel. We try to combine a startup's level of passion and creativity with bigco backing and an audience of 40M UV's monthly. You can see products we've released recently at http://discover.mapquest.com and http://travelblogs.mapquest.com, and there is more coming soon.

We have open reqs for Javascript developers, Rails developers and Mobile developers (Android, iOS and Windows). While experienced engineers are certainly welcome, we have a strong pairing culture in Denver and have had outstanding success with entry-level engineers over the past six months. If you've got some talent with web development, have a github profile and don't mind booger jokes, we'd love to talk. We have an online coding test at http://www.interviewzen.com/apply/3QPLHn that shouldn't take much more than 10 minutes.

I could post the official reqs here, but essentially, we're looking for people who are smart and comfortable doing a variety of things. We have web-based products written in Scala, Node.js, Rails, Java and even some C out there, and while we don't expect anyone to be fluent in all of them, we look for people who are willing to be flexible and excited at the chance to stretch themselves.

If you're interested, please give me a buzz - my e-mail is in my profile. I'd love to chat.

Javascript - null vs. undefined. What's better than one keyword for a nebulous concept? How about two!

SQL - you SELECT fields before you specify what table they come from, so tooling is virtually impossible.

Went to Wake Forest from 2001-2005 and stuck around until my wife graduated from Salem College. I can't say I share your enthusiasm (I live in Denver now and couldn't be happier), but I am glad that you enjoy the place! Please feel free to hit me up with any ?'s you may have - I spent close to 8 years there in various phases of life.

Winston Salem, per chance?

If you think about it, that analogy doesn't really work. The rooms that guests stay in are almost all along the outside because guests are paying customers. The janitor's storage rooms, room service kitchens, elevator shafts, mechanical access corridors and other such workspaces are located on the inside in the less valuable parts of the building. Not every room has an outside window - only the rooms for VIP's, which is oddly similar to the situation in most office buildings.

The dangers of petrol are a total non sequitur in this case, and have no bearing whatsoever on the well-documented and well understood dangers of hydrogen gas. Cholesterol is likewise highly dangerous, but saying "far more people die of heart disease than hydrogen gas accidents" has very little import in a discussion on airships and helium.

There are good reasons we don't use hydrogen anymore in airships and use helium instead. There are other good reasons not to use helium, but those reasons don't trump the dangers of hydrogen, unless you knew of specific development which would mitigate the dangers that pressurized hydrogen gas presents, which I'm guessing you do not.

False safety issues with hydrogen? That's a pretty extraordinary claim in the light of ample chemical and historical evidence of the dangers of hydrogen gas.

One approach I've seen that works well for untangling gnarly SQL is to refactor those mega-queries into smaller, component queries that are pieced together by application code. This keeps the processing on the DB server but avoids the pain that comes with programming in SQL. I rather like SQL, but it doesn't handle complexity well at all (e.g. maintaining a "variable" to be used in different parts of the query).

For example, I once worked on a Foursquare clone originally written by a hardcore PostgreSQL nut. This system had a query that, if memory serves, returned a list of places of a certain type within a geographic area along with user activity on those places (votes, comments, etc). This was around a 75 line SQL query that actually wasn't that fast (response times from the DB were roughly 1 second even with every join indexed). We rewrote that query into 4 smaller queries (place ID's within that area, place ID's within that category, hydrating those places from the filtered ID's and then getting the user info), and that cut our DB response by about 70% in addition to making the system easier to work with. This required roughly 10 lines of Java code and a variable - a list of ID's that we got first and passed into each other query. It also freed us up to do other things - for instance, if performance were still a problem, queries 2-4 could have been done asynchronously behind a latch. By lifting the "glue" out of SQL and into a better language, it freed us to do new things, and it freed the database from having to juggle unnecessary complexity while planning and executing its queries.

When I was younger, I went to a birthday party where some presumably wealthy parents had shelled out to keep a waterpark open a day after it closed for the season, and we had the park to ourselves. Not every ride was open, but there were basically no lines, and it was pretty cool.

Zapier is absolutely not a replacement for Rails. It is, however, all Matchist seems to pitch. I'm sure that they get a lot of clients asking for that sort of work, and that their projects are representative of that particular market. My point is, that's a market I have little interest in entering right now. Think of the difference between e.g. Pivotal Labs and the local "computer store" that advertises web development below networking and VOIP. I want someone to help push me towards the Pivotal Labs end of the spectrum. I don't need the opportunity to compete with other developers for low-value, low-skill work. I would like to pay for the opportunity to work on challenging, career-furthering projects that aren't the coding equivalent of "wham, bam, thank you RAM." That opportunity could take the shape of an agent.

I have two counterpoints in favor of the agent idea. Let's say I sign up with Al the Agent. Al's responsibilities can be roughly described as business development for an individual - i.e. me. I'd like it if Al could talk to me periodically, find out what I do and what I'd like to do, and keep putting opportunities for appropriate contract work in front of me. That's MVP. There's lots of room for improvement and other services, but MVP is literally someone else pounding the pavement. Now, to my counterpoints.

First, I don't care if Al has multiple developers. I only care that he can keep my pipeline full when I need it. Sports, film, television, music - all these other fields use agents, and those agents represent multiple clients in controlled ways. I don't care if Al represents 10 other developers, and in a way, I hope he does - it raises his profile (and, implicitly, mine). As long as he's still able to adequately meet my needs, I'm happy. If he starts pitching low-value WordPress theming (something I have no interest in), I'll sever the agreement. Even if this agency did turn into a Matchist-type service (which it needn't), that would not be a bad thing. As long as it doesn't turn into another boss, I'm happy.

Second, constant communication isn't really necessary. I can just talk to Al on a weekly basis, tell him what's going on, what I'd like to do, when I'll need more work, when I'm going to be on vacation, etc. That's not a taxing amount of communication, especially since I'm willing to make the economics work with a large percentage cut. I have a very limited amount of time I can put towards moonlighting (roughly 20 hours a week). If someone can help me do more profitable things (e.g. coding for money) with those hours, I'm happy to share the spoils. The common wisdom on HN is that a good developer can command somewhere around $100/hr for freelance work, which doesn't seem exaggerated since SV salaries can easily push $70/hr before benefits. If Al can get me 20 hours of work a week at $100/hr, I'm happy to cut him a big slice of that pie if he's willing to do that sort of communication.

I've been with Matchist for about a year, but have been pretty disappointed with the projects thus far: I've been contacted for about 10 ill-specified integrations with their Zapier partner, and a couple of Salesforce projects. I haven't gotten a single lead that has anything to do with my advertised skills (web development in a variety of platforms). One way to look at the projects I'm getting matched to is as a sign of the market as a whole and that I should give up my experience with Rails, Node and other modern technologies in favor of Zapier. That seems like a questionable conclusion to draw from limited evidence.

I think Matchist and other sites like it fill a real need - matching developers with contracts and doing some preliminary vetting on both sides of the table. I wish them well. I've said many times on here I would gladly pay a sizeable cut for an agent to keep my pipeline full of suitable work (web development I can do on nights and weekends), but I have yet to find anything that really works.