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jegea

169 karma · joined June 5, 2015

Long time HN lurker, just turned an active member
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jegea··on 2026 Eclipse Webcams
Free bonus: These areas are generally quite high over sea level (like ~1000m or so) and have very low light contamination, so the night sky is great.

So, if you wait 3-4 hours after the eclipse, you'll be able to enjoy a great moonless sky, with plenty of stars, the Milky Way and, hopefully, some Perseids!!

jegea··on 2026 Eclipse Webcams
A little too late to travel from Barcelona, but anywhere in the province of Teruel or the east part of Guadalajara is inside totality area, will have great weather, clear skies and is endemically underpopulated, so, even with eclipse-chasers coming for the occasion, it will be orders of magnitude less crowded than the coast.

As for myself, I'll be watching it from here: https://theeclipse.app/2026-total/maps/default?lng=-3.562706...

jegea··on Private Jets to Ibiza, Paris Surge as Rich Evade Travel Chaos
Should I have all the money in the world I would most likely spend a good part of the year in Ibiza. I've been to a lot of places in the Mediterranean (and other shores) and Ibiza is one of the most beautiful places in terms of nature, people and generally good vibes.

Equating Ibiza to sex and parties is like saying Amsterdam is nothing but rain or London is always foggy. There's some truth to it, but you'll be missing a whole lot if judging just by that

Edit: typo

jegea··on New Tolkien book, The Fall of Númenor, to be published
Did he not?

After suffering through the Hobbit movies, I would completely disagree.

Adding salt to the injury, these movies destroyed the story in the book that Tolkien apparently wrote specially for his children. Talk about taking care of a legacy.

I guess it was difficult to resist the temptation, with so much money involved. But I don't see any other justification for those 3 movies apart from penny squeezing

jegea··on Usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites
Indeed! That's one of the things I like to review in those "Who's hiring" posts. That's why I'm happy to continue being a Ruby developer!
jegea··on Usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites
The Ruby dev market in Europe is hotter than ever.

Of course, that's in relative terms. It's nowhere near the size of the Java, JS or even Python market size, but demand is strongest than ever and salaries show that, too

jegea··on Usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites
It's clear that legacy has a pretty strong influence, here, with Wordpress and other standard tools inflating PHP's numbers and Shopify doing the same for Ruby.

But, I'm pretty sure there's plenty of new projects being started nowadays in PHP, Ruby, Java, etc, because they're the most effective tool for the job.

It's just that this is not news. News is yet-another-standard-tool-written-in-rust.

jegea··on Usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites
In my case, I was referring to developer productivity. In my experience, this is, by far, the most important limiting factor in any software project
jegea··on Usage statistics of server-side programming languages for websites
I think this shows how much HN is a bubble in itself.

Most discussions here happen around new/exciting/cool/weird technology. And don't get me wrong, I love those discussions! That's why I come here!

But reality outside of this bubble is people building and maintaining web apps as efficiently as possible and PHP hasn't stopped being very efficient. On the contrary, it's getting better with time.

Interestingly enough, Ruby (my personal interest, here) has been steadily gaining share in that chart year over year, despite not being "cool" anymore.

If you ask me, it's good to have a dose a reality from time to time!

jegea··on The evolution of Smalltalk: from Smalltalk-72 through Squeak (2020)
Ruby, the language, is almost as flexible and dynamic as Smalltalk. It's just that it didn't come with an integrated graphical environment like Smalltalk.

For a glimpse of "what is possible", take a look at TkInspect (1), a set of gems that I'm working on that provide some of the goodies of that GUI, like an interactive, graphical console, a live inspector, a class browser or turtle graphics.

At the moment it's not more than a toy, but it does definitely show what can be done.

(1) https://github.com/josepegea/tk_inspect

jegea··on PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available
Sadly true, indeed.

It's a shame we're losing so much useful functionality there.

Security is a worthy goal but getting rid of useful features just because Google wants to handhold Android users so much seems to me like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

jegea··on PinePhone KDE Community Edition is now available
I own the 3GB Manjaro edition of the PinePhone (same hardware as this one, AFAIK) and, while in theory you can do everything that you describe with it, it is hardly something you could use as your only smartphone for the day. (I still love it, though, and love hacking away with it!!)

However, as of today, there's a much better way of achieving what you're describing in an Android phone: Termux (1)

With Termux you can use an amazing number of regular Linux/UNIX tools, interface them with phone specific functionality (like GPS or other sensors) and still enjoy having a modern smartphone in terms of apps available, performance and battery life.

(Shameless plug: you can watch Termux in action in this talk from last year (2). It's centered around Ruby, but Python works just fine, too)

(1) https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Main_Page https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/Termux:API

(2) https://vimeo.com/482309000/1534e97efd

(edit: typo)

jegea··on What was it like to be a software engineer at NeXT?
Personal experience: Around 2005 I was looking for a platform for a new web app, after some years out of development but having worked extensively with NeXTstep and EOF in the 90s.

After watching DHH's video and reading the Rails book, it reminded me so much of my previous experience with NeXT technology that I had no other choice but to go with Rails.

The dynamism of Ruby had a lot in common with ObjC's runtime. And reading about ActiveRecord at that time I also had the feeling that its authors had worked with EOF before.

All in all, NeXT built great stuff. I still own a NeXTstation Color that I got in 1992 (one of these days I should try to turn it on again). And it's a testament to the quality of that software that some pieces that I'm still running today, like Apple Mail, trace back almost directly to tools I started using back then (NeXTMail).

jegea··on How popular media portrays the employability of older software developers
In my experience (I'm 51 myself), the older the guy, the most likely he's aware he doesn't know everything
jegea··on Giorgio Armani didn't accomplish anything until his forties
Of course, there's plenty of people in their 40s experiencing the struggles you describe. But, as a matter of fact, I've met as many of them in the 20s and 30s range with the same problems (maybe not so tired, but troubled and egomaniac nonetheless).

In the context of entrepreneurship, however, I find that those traits are much less prominent, regardless of the age.

In my case, today I just sold my part of the company I founded 10 years ago to my cofounding partner. Not a big, glorious exit, BTW. Just the opportunity to try again, and get better results this time.

Being 46, I do feel much more aware now that I felt 10 years ago. Aware of my strengths and aware of my limits. And aware of my motivations.

However, I must confess that, ten years ago, I had the same image that you describe about fortysomethings. That's why I decided to start my own company then, to avoid becoming one of them.

jegea··on Giorgio Armani didn't accomplish anything until his forties
Most of the commenters focus on a stronger financial position and/or industry knowledge as reasons to be a successful entrepreneur beyond the barrier of 40s.

But the man himself provides reasons which I find much more profound (and that being in midforties myself, I'm glad to relate to:

> Your forties are the moment when you start to become aware. It's just the beginning. I've always believed that to confirm your way of thinking takes time. It takes experimenting. You have to confront different chapters of your life

Touched me deep enough to create an HN account just to comment.