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focusauruson Charter Houses (2022)

If you are curious and sincerely interested in this general concept, check out what we are doing at https://focusretreatcenter.com and ping me if you want to set up a prototype trial run scenario for your group/concept. We already did the "buy a giant house for cheap" part and are still experimenting on exactly what to do with it.

focusauruson Ask HN: Could you share your personal blog here?

https://peterlyons.com/problog/

focusauruson Hacking Your Keyboard with Karabiner

Yes. Plus you get layers and other more advanced features in the style of qmk.

focusauruson Squeezebox Keyboard

I can transcribe audio from meetings in almost real time. It doesn't actually require blazing fast WPM to do that. I get plenty done. And no, the first working squeezebox prototype is not my daily driver. Second version I hope but it's more about the process and I wouldn't be surprised if it is just the next entry in a fairly long line of keebs to challenge my original ergodox full-hand and walk away leaving the ergodox as king of the hill.

focusauruson Squeezebox Keyboard

LOL I funded that one and they never shipped anything.

focusauruson Squeezebox Keyboard

v2105 is nearly done and the top row angle is larger and it's definitely more comfortable. The version in the post kind of ended up that way due to testing from positions other than really at my desk with everything really set up.

focusauruson Ask HN: What discontinued company/product do you wish was still around?

Palm and the Palm Pilot. UI responded instantly to every input. 2 AAA batteries lasted a month. With years of heavy usage I never encountered a single bug.

focusauruson Closure Compiler in JavaScript

So "Closure" is a real comp sci word used to describe variable scope lifetimes in languages includes JavaScript and others. So when google named their project, they basically took a word from JavaScript/CompSci that starts with the same letter as "Compiler" (plus other similar sounds). I don't think there's much more to it than that.

"Clojure" is a programming language again based on the regular word "closure" but with some twists: The "j" is a tip of the hat to Java and the JVM where clojure is designed to run. This also has the nice property that the "zh" sound of the "s" in closure is also used with "j" sometimes (I think due to French). Thirdly I believe the "CL" letters of clojure are a tip to Common Lisp.

I'm not familiar with "Clozure CL" but the history is here: http://ccl.clozure.com/history.html

focusauruson Infrastructure as a database

There's a huge set of enterprise software applications promising a "Configuration Management Database" (CMDB). It's hard to implement in reality, but not for lack of vendors trying. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Configuration_management_datab...

focusauruson The Software Engineer’s Guide to Negotiating a Raise

Here's my similar long-form article based on advancing in a large enterprise software organization.

http://peterlyons.com/leveling_up

focusauruson Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (June 2015)

SEEKING WORK - Remote (Colorado)

node.js expert doing full-stack web applications and devops automation.

http://peterlyons.com

keywords: node.js, expressjs, APIs, ansible, mongodb, postgresql, angularjs, linux

focusauruson Ask HN: Best practices for OS X dev environments

I don't think you will find multiple OSX user accounts viable/enjoyable. OSX puts a lot of important preferences (keyboard/mouse settings for example) within the user account, so you will end up having a nightmare keeping things in sync and sane. You won't be able to rely on a lot of important tools like dropbox or 1password easily. Just stick with 1 user. Use docker or virtualbox/vagrant for stuff you don't want to run as your OSX user.

Here are some of my tools and tips.

- homebrew is great - homebrew cask is helpful, too - 1password or similar - virtualbox can give you clean playgrounds and test environments that match your servers - boot2docker is handy for quickly starting and running services like databases without polluting your mac directly too much - I also get a lot of use out of vagrant but YMMV - I've lately started using project-specific instances of chrome (created with the chrome SSB script). This lets me keep lots of tabs separate and easily pause work and resume later - The chrome Tabs Outliner plugin is also really key

Here's my recent blog post with more details: http://peterlyons.com/problog/2015/02/osx-development-setup

focusauruson Work Practices and Challenges in Pull-Based Development [pdf]

Would love to see a TL;DR summary. Long academic PDFs are frustrating to read.

focusauruson Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (May 2014)

SEEKING WORK - Remote (US, CO)

http://peterlyons.com

node.js web application development

full stack, angularjs, devops

focusauruson Show HN: Freelancy – an easy way to track your time and earned money

The invoices that http://invoiceable.co generates work well for me. But that tool doesn't handle the actual time tracking, just the invoices.

focusauruson Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (March 2014)

SEEKING WORK - remote

Full-stack web development specializing in node.js, cloud, devops, early-phase startup MVPs.

http://peterlyons.com

focusauruson ToffeeScript – CoffeeScript with async syntax and some additional features

http://callbackhell.com/

That explains the many ways to structure your async code in pure JavaScript (no helper libraries or transpilers) so you don't create callback hell code.

focusauruson Ask HN: How do you store and organize your startup ideas?

WorkFlowy. Super die-hard fanboy all the way elevenzes. Totally perfect combination of primary hierarchy plus tags and notes and the instantly-responding UI and search that make it pure gold. Good keyboard shortcuts as well.

focusauruson Airpair's fast growing pair programming community

It's set up as a marketplace where experts can have ballpark hourly rates and clients can also offer a specific rate for a given request. Then a mutually agreed upon amount (could be zero on up through top-dollar market rates) can be negotiated. As an expert you can decide "I always want $X/hour" if you like or you can do it case-by-case. Same thing as a client, you can specify in the request an amount you are offering and let experts take it or leave it.

focusauruson Musings about Debian and Python

My post on this topic, which is in agreement with this post. http://peterlyons.com/problog/2012/09/managing-per-project-i...

focusauruson Github: CoffeeScript cracks the top 10 languages

Other factors probably at play: Obj-C MUCH older. CoffeeScript designed to be simple and have fewer "bad parts" thus fewer questions. Many problems faced while coding CoffeeScript are actually javascript or DOM or Web questions so you don't tag them with CoffeeScript. StackOverflow isn't overly loving of CoffeeScript, so I often ask my questions using JavaScript even if my source is really CoffeeScript (and again the questions aren't really about CoffeeScript but usually about JavaScript).

focusauruson On Counter Offers

So here's a question. If one was satisfied/interested/liked/whatever their current job, but thought they were truly earning significantly more than their salary, is there any good tactic to start the discussion with management (or drop hints or whatever) without dropping the "I've taken another job" bomb, which as many point out is pretty much the end of the relationship right there?

In my own experience, I've gotten a large "retention bonus" after many of my peers quit. However, this was just dropped on me without any request or action on my part. It was a preemptive "oh God please stay at least until date X", but I didn't have anything to do with causing it directly. It was just smart/panicked managers buying insurance. And it worked. I happily stayed as I wasn't quite to the point of being ready to leave yet, so I stayed till that date and then through the next end of year bonus and then gave notice Jan 2.

focusauruson CoffeeScript and Progress

I think programmer productivity is also linked to happiness given one's own tools. My experience thus far is I'm happier when working with CoffeeScript. Not "OMG P0nies" happier, but significantly happier. I think the amount of boilerplate CS removes is significant, but indeed whether it is worthwhile depends on many factors in any given situation.

Given how CS maps to JS, I'm not too worried about leaky abstractions.

focusauruson CoffeeScript and Progress

So let me clarify that my general take on the state of programming languages today is that they are all pretty terrible and we don't have a good track record of fixing known flaws with them. With tend to just live with them. Given that, most new languages offer a shining chance at progress toward something better. They indicate someone is thinking about the problem and trying to help. Thus by default I like new programming languages per say. But yes, each does add to the total body of stuff out there, which has a cost.

focusauruson CoffeeScript and Progress

Fair enough. I don't need line numbers specifically when I have a full-on in-browser graphical debugger so I can debug exactly what is being interpreted. There's work underway to handle mapping back to source files, and when that arrives, it will be "nice". However, listening to NodeUp podcasts, people think that line numbers not lining up is an absolute deal-breaker, which I just don't find to be the case at all in my personal experience.

focusauruson CoffeeScript and Progress

Right, array elements separated by new lines works, but CS requires commas between elements in 1-line arrays. I would like to see CS remove commas between array elements but most folks like commas there, it seems. And yes, I guess there's a syntax ambiguity with function arguments that is not easily resolved. I love omitting parens for calling a single function, but doing it more than once per line should be avoided I think.

focusauruson Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (February 2012)

SEEKING WORK - Remote or Boulder, CO area

http://peterlyons.com http://peterlyons.com/career (Resume)

* node.js * coffeescript/javascript * Ruby on Rails * Backbone, jQuery * DevOps

focusauruson Puppet vs Chef, Fight

While javascript engines are generally not shipped with OSes these days, it's moot because chef bundles its own ruby and ignores the ancient one in the OS. I suspect that's the case with python-based packages as well. I know HP Server Automation bundles its own python. It's easier to support a consistent python version across umpteen platforms than to debug your code in all the varying versions across so many distros and distro releases. Maybe Fabric can use the OS's python, but that's about the only example I know.

focusauruson Ask HN: Is their any large scale, real life Node.js app?

This links to an in-progress book and many online tutorials.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/04/6-free-e-books-on-n...

focusauruson [2008] On The Flight to Old Text Editors

I used jEdit for many years on linux and windows, but development has been stalled for a long time. Presumably moment dropped off quickly after the author Slava moved on to other projects. It's a shame. I'm trying http://www.vicoapp.com/ instead these days. Not as good as jEdit, but at least people are actively maintaining the code.