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christensen_emcon Ask HN: What new or hot technology do you recommend learning?

For me, learning Haskell was a supremely educational experience. There is no better way to learn functional programming techniques and you will not regret learning it. That said I can count the number of times I've used Haskell in a non trivial application on one hand.

Elixir lets me use a lot of the stuff I learned with Haskell, and I've already used it building a real time component for an app I'm working on.

Take from that what you will.

christensen_emcon Ask HN: What new or hot technology do you recommend learning?

Elixir!

On one hand it has a simple ruby-ish syntax and a solid MVC framework (Phoenix).

On the other hand it has immutability, concurrency through processes and message passing (which is awesome!) and a bunch of other functional goodies.

I'm not sure how widely applicable it is now, as it's still in its infancy, but it's the first "hipster" language I've used in a while that felt like it had legs.

christensen_emcon RelativeWave Acquired by Google, Giving Its App Design Tool Away for Free

Congrats!

christensen_emcon Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (December 2013)

SEEKING WORK - REMOTE OR TAMPA FLORIDA

My name is Erik Christensen

email me at christensen.em@gmail.com

I can do Rails or Javascript (Angular and Backbone) or Node or Python

Recently graduated college, taking a few months off to decompress and save up some money.

If you have a small project (maximum 6 months) that needs to be done and want someone to flatten it for a very reasonable rate, I'm your guy.

christensen_emcon Why Aaron died

I went through a period of depression two years back. My family and friends were the last people to notice it. I put on a strong face for them and went out of my way not to worry them. The people who did notice were professors and classmates, people who I didn't make much of an effort to "impress". When those close to me started to realize they all began to rationalize it as being the result of drugs or sleep loss or a recent break up. You just aren't the type of person to be depressed they said, it's not like you. Sad as it may be, they knew even less about how I was than random strangers on the bus. I suspect a lot of it had to do with how they viewed depression and the stigma surrounding it.

christensen_emcon Venture Capital's Massive, Terrible Idea For The Future Of College

There are many problems with the current crop of MOOCs, I'll be the first to admit that. In their current state they are not an alternative.

That said, the argument advanced against them in this article and numerous times on this and other boards is elitist and out of touch. "These lectures do not compare to the ones I sat in at UC Berkeley/Stanford/MIT! people watching them are not getting a REAL education!" Not only is it a classic "no true Scotsman", it also neglects to note that increasingly all large courses at large state universities are adopting a model not unlike the MOOC model. Lectures are increasingly posted online, and coursework is now almost always a blackboard quiz. Projects are submitted online, no paper copies are ever even created. Office hours are available, true, but often they are with a TA who is only slightly more than a glorified Tutor. All of these are transparent time and money saving moves on the part of the departments and professors.

Students rarely object as online classes give them more flexibility to work (something rarely mentioned in these kind of articles). Everyone wins on one level and loses on another. The quality of education drops as a consequence, but we're talking second and third tier schools here so it doesn't exactly make the news. All things considered, I might as well be taking MOOC at this point. I personally prefer Coursera to blackboard. More variety and no nagging advisors telling me I don't have the prereq. The tools and ui are better too! And its free!

christensen_emcon A New Look for Facebook

Now this is awesome. No room for ads though, so I doubt anything like it will ever happen.

christensen_emcon What one book could give me a new, useful superpower?

Seconding Mindfulness in Plain English. I am a much healthier person today because of that book.

christensen_emcon Developing Backbone.js Applications

Check out recipes with backbone. I was in a similar place(past to do apps, but not ready for anything substantial) and I found it to be a great help. Truth be told, there is not a lot of good literature on intermediate backbone development and I think that's really hampering its adoption.

christensen_emcon How to start with Backbone.js: A simple skeleton app

http://recipeswithbackbone.com/

Check out this book. It sounds like what you are looking for.

christensen_emcon Want to learn to code? Don't copy and paste, type out other people's code

If I may add to this, I found it really helpful to comment out every line as I went. Even today, when I want to learn new languages or frameworks I pick a repo on github and copy the whole thing line for line, commenting as I go. I found that this helps a lot.

christensen_emcon Ask HN: How do you manage your one-man project?

I'm the same way. I use a txt file that I keep on my desktop. It does the job.

christensen_emcon Some hedge fund managers walk onto an Argentinian navy ship

What they are doing is legal, yeah, but it is pretty much textbook "vulture fund" behavior.

christensen_emcon If Hemingway wrote JavaScript

It seemed like a pretty obvious reference to 2666 to me. The first part of the book has a number of dream sequences where its characters will just list off philosophers and put them into groups and connect them with lines. Definitely took me a few days to get through that book.

christensen_emcon How Apple's Obsession with Google Is Hurting Apple

Didn't Jobs want Apple to work on a car next?

christensen_emcon Google releases standalone Youtube iOS app

The menu behind the content UI Pattern is actually one of the suggested UI patterns in the official Android style guide.

christensen_emcon Show HN: my personal news reader, now public - SkimFeed.com

My biggest gripe with Pulse and similar readers is that clicking on a headline takes me to an article stub with an option to click a link to the full article. Just take me to the article!

christensen_emcon What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

This may work for crude made to measure suits, but bespoke is often more about trial and error than incredibly precise measurement. It also has a lot to do with the preferences of the client, particularly with regards to the shoulders and armholes.

As for automation, a large number of MTM tailors currently email the measurements to a factory in Asia where the suit is cut by a worker getting paid pennies. The cost isnt necessarily in the making of the suit, its more the measuring and interactions between the tailor and the client that can take hours. For this reason alone I dont think we will see tailoring robots anytime soon.

christensen_emcon What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

This may work for the initial fitting, but that is a relatively one. Some of the later fittings, particularly in the shoulder areas are more difficult and more trial/error.

christensen_emcon What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

Do you have a tailor?

I buy cheaper department store clothing and have it tailored. It fits me like a glove. The quality isn't quite the same, but the price come out in my favor.

christensen_emcon What's a $4000 Suit Worth?

It may only be the top 0.01% but there are also only really a handful of established tailors who offer full bespoke. I really doubt there are more than 100, maybe 200 tops. They serve all the oil money playboys, the Chinese new wealth, the business magnates, all of the world's wealthiest customers. Often these customers purchase suits in large quantities too (The measuring process gets significantly less intensive each time you purchase a new suit) and have the ability to fly the tailors to their homes. I think a lot of people here underestimate the sheer quantities of suits these 0.01% purchase. The average person here may have two or three suits, they may have two or three closets of suits.

If anything, bespoke clothing is doing better than it has in almost a century. China's incredible boom has led to a whole new crop of millionaires with an insatiable desire for western luxury goods. Suits, purses, jewelry, wristwatches, everything. LVMH's spectacular profits are a good proof of this.

People have been saying "the suit is dead" for a number of years now. Yeah, maybe it is, maybe we will never go back to Mad Men days of suits in the office and dinner jackets at night, maybe the suit as a consumer good is on its last legs. But the bespoke suit, the suit as a piece of craftsmanship is doing better than ever.

christensen_emcon The Well Dressed Coder

Tropical weight worsted, seersucker, linen, all work pretty well. Tropical worsted in particular is what I steer my friends towards usually as it looks about the same as a normal worsted but is much cooler.

christensen_emcon The Well Dressed Coder

yeah. Its a great resource but a little over the top at times and the repeated questions wear you down.

christensen_emcon JsPlumb

This is awesome! Definitely using it!

christensen_emcon The Well Dressed Coder

If I may expand on this, get everything altered. Seriously, find a tailor you like and can communicate with and let them go to town on your clothes. 50 dollar pants with 30 bucks of tailoring will fit better than 300 dollar pants with no tailoring just about every time.

christensen_emcon The Well Dressed Coder

Land's end canvas isn't bad if you are on a budget. You can pick up fitted oxfords for 20 bucks during some of their sales.

christensen_emcon The Well Dressed Coder

I have worn plenty of well fitted suits. That said, none are true bespoke, so I can't comment there. I love suits, but for comfort's sake, a hoodie or a looser unstructured cotton jacket wins just about every time.

christensen_emcon The Well Dressed Coder

I think the focus on suits does a huge disservice to menswear and this is coming from someone who is something of a menswear fanatic. Suits are uncomfortable and expensive. They are difficult to size correctly. They have some weird connotations. Avoid them unless the dress code requires it. I moderated a men's fashion community for a while and a lot of men would approach the idea, get super psyched, go out and buy a suit (without bothering to size it correctly), wear it in an environment where it was entirely inappropriate, and burn out and go back to cargo shorts and never dress up again.

Men, you can be well dressed without wearing a suit. A nice pair of fitted dark jeans with a nice pair of brown dress shoes or loafers and an white or light blue dress shirt looks really good in a lot of situations, can be surprisingly comfortable, and can be dressed up with a jacket if necessary. You don't have to go full suit, you don't have to wear a tie, and you don't have to become an insufferable "sartorialist".

Its not hard either. Pile of white shirts and three pairs of jeans vs pile of t shirts and three pairs of cargo shorts. not much of a difference.

christensen_emcon Jury in Apple v. Samsung Goofed, Damages Reduced; What's Wrong With this Picture

An American success story of a company led by a recently deceased charismatic visionary entrepreneur vs a faceless Korean mega corporation. It sells itself.

christensen_emcon Toro - a php micro-router with great examples

have you tried SlimPHP? I've been using it for APIs lately and its been great. Very easy to get up and going very quickly.