HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

borgopants

26 karma · joined April 19, 2012

submissionscomments
borgopants··on Techies Are the New Puritans
As a software engineer, this problem has been prevalent in my mind lately. My main question is this: how can we, as members of the technology industry, use our skills to help solve the homelessness problem?

I've seen a lot of people suggesting that learning to code is a solution, which feels like a very disconnected kind of response. If you're trying to stay warm and survive from day to day, buying a computer is surely the lowest priority. Another solution is raising awareness via the web. In the social media era though, this has the negative of making people feel like they've done something by sharing a link or upvoting a story without actually making an actual difference, so I don't feel like this, by itself, is a great solution.

The disparity between people in the technology industry and the homeless is so huge, and noticeable, in areas like San Francisco that I feel it is our responsibility to give back and try and make a difference somehow. What are some ways that this could be achieved?

borgopants··on How the Internet Archive is having a great time with Bitcoin
Not in the slightest. Look up what MtGox actually means.
borgopants··on Easy Growth Hacking Wins
Haha, I was equating it more to job postings that look for "rockstar ninja solo hackers". Childish was the wrong choice of word, and I failed to explain myself clearer. :)
borgopants··on Easy Growth Hacking Wins
So you would place growth hacking in the same league as SEO?
borgopants··on Seven Deadly Sins of Modern Objective-C
Cocoa is pretty good, but like all frameworks, it definitely has its downsides. Point #1, unfortunately, seems to be something that the author has a hangup about.

I find that using a single XIB for a view controller at a time works the best for me, and maintains some semblance of MVC. I work on a relatively large app, with more screens than usual, and I never find it hard to figure out view controller transitions or anything like that.

borgopants··on Easy Growth Hacking Wins
I'm interested in what you think distinguishes it from marketing and better UX.

From what I can tell, it seems to be a term predominantly used by startups who want someone both technical and interested in the marketing side of things, likely since they don't have the budget to hire more than one person.

I think HN seems to have a negative view of the term, most likely because it seems like such an empty buzzword. And the use of "hacker" seems to play to a childish mentality of software engineering. (EDIT: I'm thinking in terms of use like "rockstar ninja hackers" job postings)

borgopants··on Show HN: Wavo.me - A social network for music to take on Spotify and iTunes.
No problem. As I said, looks like a really interesting service and I've saved it so that I'll check it out once you guys add separate account options.

Great UI on the homepage though! Keep up the good work.

borgopants··on Show HN: Wavo.me - A social network for music to take on Spotify and iTunes.
This looks really interesting, but to be completely honest, I lost all interest once I saw that there was no other option but to sign up with Facebook.

As a developer, I understand the business and UX need for it, but it still manages to turn me away from really interesting services. It looks like you're looking to improve on this pain-point, so I'll definitely check this out later. :)

I'd also love it if the About page was on your own site as well. Linking to the Facebook app page feels like you were a little rushed.

borgopants··on How to allow direct file uploads from JavaScript to Amazon S3 signed by Python
Too true about your problems with Filepicker. It put me off using them for even small scale projects.
borgopants··on NUI: style your iOS app with style sheets
A really interesting project which I feel might make web developers more comfortable with iOS development.

As an iOS developer however, I find that using Interface Builder or pure code is much more flexible and simpler to use than a CSS stylesheet.

borgopants··on Ways To Get People To Do Things They Don’t Want To Do
A little off-topic, but is anyone else really dumbfounded by the amount of websites lately that use a top notification header that pushes content down? It's really jarring and annoying.
borgopants··on Get Started Writing iOS Apps With RubyMotion
Biggest issue with this is the lag time between iOS SDK releases and whenever they update their SDK. Overall interesting, but not something I'd seriously consider writing an app with, knowing Objective-C already. This is more for Rubyists who'd like to dip their toes into the iOS ecosphere, but go in knowing that it's always better to just learn ObjC eventually.
borgopants··on Git-flow with a GUI
I've been using SourceTree as my main Git gui for a while and was ecstatic when they added this. It works really well.