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cgoreon I need to make samples. Is there a list of fake products and images somewhere?

Usually they remove/obscure branding for stock photography.

cgoreon I need to make samples. Is there a list of fake products and images somewhere?

Maybe you want stock photography? There's lots of those out there.

More seriously: yes, you should name functions/variables/etc. reasonably. And often if you write a comment, you will find you are actually explaining away a wart. But often you need to document business logic, code that needs to be written in a less than clear way for performance reasons, explanations of why you chose approach A instead of what would seem like another perfectly reasonable approach B, URL links for standard doc PDFs, and a million other little things.

There are comments that aren't necessary if you write your code better, but there's others that are needed even if you write your code perfectly.

cgoreon Stop Commenting Your Code

I could ... but I'd rather not comment too much :D

cgoreon What if other professions hired like software development?

I've met people who are passionate about finance, usually they are traders though. I've never met a truly passionate accountant. But then I don't know many. I don't know how you would do accounting in your spare time. Maybe volunteer work?

cgoreon What if other professions hired like software development?

Is this my only hobby? Nope. But, would you write code if you had a billion dollars? I would. Mind you, I wouldn't go into a big corporate shop Monday-Friday 9:00am-5:00pm and write random crap that some middle manager thinks he needs by the end of the month, but I'd gladly write code. At it's finest, it's an art.

Let's use photographers as another example. Any good photographer would still spend a lot of their time in photography even if they had a billion dollars. They probably wouldn't take the exact same wedding photos every Weekend though.

You really can't be a REALLY good programmer without side projects where you get to play around with new technologies, with no deadlines, no managers, no infrastructure, just exploration.

I know there's lots of people who are flooding into this field now just because it pays well, which is understandable, and they might even do a good job and even take pride in their work, but if it's just a job then they aren't ever going to do as well as someone who actually wants to do this for fun. And working with people who are doing it as "just a job" kind of sucks the joy out of the work itself.

cgoreon Stop Commenting Your Code

No.

cgoreon What if other professions hired like software development?

Thanks for your interest in Bueller and Co. accounting. We love to hire the most passionate accountant rock stars in the industry. In advance of the interview, please send us links to some of the side accounting projects you’ve done for fun in your spare time.

But the difference is, good programmers actually LIKE to code. Even in our spare time. For fun. A better analogy is a graphic artist. "Show us some of your oil paintings/charcoal sketches/etc." They won't be doing any oil paintings at work, but they probably paint/sketch/etc. for fun. At least the good ones.

cgoreon Ask HN: If you could, how would you set up Airbnb's servers from scratch

I'm not sure what you're doing that's making each and every listing 50MB, that seems like a lot, are they posting lots of high-resolution images or something?

cgoreon Ask HN: Do You Ever Sign 'Exclusive Representation' Agreements with Recruiters?

I've NEVER seen something like this. If you have any skill, don't sign it.

cgoreon This Is How You Can Short Bitcoin

Biggest bull market in recorded history.

Yeah, sure, let's short it. What could possibly go wrong?

cgoreon Rails 5.2

Active Storage looks nice, and perfect timing for me, I'm looking to add generic file blobs to my toy project in Rails pretty soon.

cgoreon Apple Power Macintosh G5: Flame On

I use a Microsoft Natural Keyboard on my MacBook Pro, but then I'm typically at my desk.

cgoreon Meet the GOP Senate Candidate Taking on Google

The massive privacy violations Google and Facebook have done all in the name of advertising really piss me off. What's sad is that they are both so entrenched in everyday life, they're very difficult to work without for me. I have their stuff mostly off of my phone at least.

cgoreon 'Textualism' could muzzle employees

Where internal reporting works is when you have a rather large organization and it's some mid-level person in the wrong. Some Multi-Billion-Dollar corporation for example, and some mid-level VP doing something worth reporting. Often they'll have an official part of their legal team that's isolated from any repercussions of the mid-level VP that can deal with them and clean up the situation quietly, which is good for the company and good for the whistleblower, and bad for the mid-level VP.

cgoreon Light pollution is getting worse

This is one of the nicest things about backpacking as a hobby. You can get to places way out in the darkness, especially if you have the skill to go off-trail.

cgoreon As Silicon Valley Gets ‘Crazy,’ Midwest Beckons Tech Investors

I write Clojure mostly (also Python when I'm unlucky.) I'm working in Creve Coeur.

cgoreon As Silicon Valley Gets ‘Crazy,’ Midwest Beckons Tech Investors

The other thing that's really starting to change things is remote work. There's no reason most developers need to be anywhere as long as they can get high speed internet.

cgoreon Twitter says it will judge verified users’ offline behavior

Yup. "Freedom of Speech" is something you have. "The First Amendment" is a bit of governance that says the US Federal Government has to at least pretend to give a shit about it. If the US Federal Government can't restrict my speech, why should your average butcher, baker, or candlestick maker be able to?

cgoreon Our Love Affair with Digital Is Over

I'd like to get into medium format one of these days. I don't think I'll even really want to do the development myself though.

cgoreon As Silicon Valley Gets ‘Crazy,’ Midwest Beckons Tech Investors

The cost of living is a lot lower too though. I'm in Saint Louis, I have a 15-minute commute to work from a neighborhood where 2x my salary gets a 3,000-sqft+ McMansion with a big yard in a good school district.

cgoreon As Silicon Valley Gets ‘Crazy,’ Midwest Beckons Tech Investors

It's mostly the political atmosphere for me.

cgoreon Apple Takes Aim at Trump in Australian Interview

They are just mad because he tweets from a Samsung instead of an iPhone.

cgoreon “I helped create the GOP tax myth. Trump is wrong: Tax cuts don’t equal growth.” [pdf]

You mean a market where vast and large percentages of your property are taken at the threat of force against your will? I think I can imagine such a situation.

cgoreon Announcing the New AWS Secret Region

atlantis-east-1 :-)

cgoreon “I helped create the GOP tax myth. Trump is wrong: Tax cuts don’t equal growth.” [pdf]

The Government is just naturally less efficient in allocating resources than a free market in most cases. So the more of the economic power controlled by the Government, the less efficient it will be. And an inefficient economy leads to lower productivity.

cgoreon Solar System’s First Interstellar Visitor Dazzles Scientists

I'm really surprised this is the first one we've observed, I would have assumed that it would be a regular occurrence, but then I guess space is pretty big after all.

cgoreon Ask HN: Most useful courses for self-taught programmers?

I've got an MS in computer science, and the thing I've noticed missing the most when I've worked with people without a degree is not their programming/software engineering/etc. ability (they seem to pick that up naturally just by doing), but their theoretical computer science instead. Mind you, a lot of crappy schools don't teach that either, but it's really useful on occasion.

I'd say go through Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming in your spare time, it's got one of the widest coverages of that sort of stuff, and it's actually a lot more approachable and better written than a lot of the other similar textbooks out there. Assume it'll take you a while though.

cgoreon If you tax the rich, they won't leave

The rich are the most capable of leaving. Even if they don't leave, they can have their money leave by playing silly games with corporate structuring or whatever, which they are the most capable of doing.

cgoreon Our Love Affair with Digital Is Over

I do digital photography for most normal stuff, and have a decent camera for that (not just my iPhone), but 35mm film is what I use when I'm actually trying to be creative. There's something oddly relaxing about shooting film that's not really there with digital. I think some of it is that, with $11 to develop a $5-10 roll of film with 24 or 36 shots, I'm forced to slow down, relax, think, and actually be creative. I can't check if I screwed up the shot, once I've pressed the shutter release it's done. And that makes it more enjoyable and relaxing. Even if I can get technically better photos with digital.

The other thing is, working as a programmer, I can only stand so much computer time, and it's all gone by the time I'm done with work. So sometimes the last thing I want to do is carry around a graphics-focused computer with a really good lens so I can capture digital sensor data to alter in Lightroom or Photoshop. It's the same reason I spend so little time playing video games these days, it has to be an unusually good video game to warrant my spare time sitting in front of a computer screen even longer.