costan

216 karma · joined May 7, 2009

Victor Costan got infected with a passion for coding at the age of 10, and proceeded to earn a M.Eng in Computer science from MIT. Victor also holds a B.S. in Management that he pursued as he fell prey to the belief that great software requires legions of developers manipulating bloated code bases in repetitive ways.

Thanks to Paul Graham's essays, Ruby, and Rails, he re-discovered the joy of coding, and came back from the dark ways of management. Nowadays, Victor is still crazy about building software that he can impress his friends with, but he also dreams of contributing to making coding even more enjoyable. Victor likes developing mobile and Web 2.0 applications, and occasionally enjoys building some distributed systems behind the apps.

When he is not coding, you will most likely find him reading up on some new programming language or software development technique. At times, Victor likes to pretend he's mentally sane, and can be seen catching up with friends, watching a movie, or exploring Boston.

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/pwnall; my proof: https://keybase.io/pwnall/sigs/I1Vine_PdNepU6Sn-s9TOSooWaVBmAzUVlm_OVuOM0A ]

costanon The Not-So-Golden State of California

Is there any good source of data about the best place to start a company?

costanon How I Hacked Hacker News (with arc security advisory)

Thanks for posting that. I'll keep it around.

costanon Dear News.YC: please review my Mac app, Evom

The conversion is useful so the videos take up less space on iPhones / iPods. I use TubeTV, and I definitely appreciate the feature, because most of my iPhone's memory is taken up by music videos off of YouTube right now.

costanon Ask HN: What software do you install on a clean windows install

I use Windows to build Ruby gems, for a smart-card simulator, and to see my sites in IE.

Therefore I install the following: disable anti-virus warning, disable firewall + warnings, all updates, Firefox, Safari (also gets me Bonjour), One-click Ruby, Eclipse, Aptana Studio, Git (the msys port), Visual Studio 6 SP6.

Caveat: my latest Windows (XP) installs are in a VirtualBox VM.

costanon Ask HN: Is Google really slow right now? (or is it just for me?)

http://maps.live.com/

Please don't slaughter me for mentioning the evil empire.

costanon The 75% answer

Thanks so much for posting this! Now I know how to answer non-questions, and avoid endless pointless debates.

costanon Which iPhone app(s) did you make?

I wrote StockPlay, a stock trading simulation. I open-sourced the foundation code, take a look if you're interested in developing your own application.

Engine: http://github.com/costan/zergsupport/ Game: http://istockplay.com

costanon Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage

I was about to add a new comment quoting this exact phrase (programming doesn't require math). Thanks for expressing my thoughts in a better way than I would have.