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maynmanon Ask HN: Share your personal site

This is my blog, mostly about programming. https://mitchum.blog/

I started it with three goals in mind: 1. Remember more of the things I learn about complex topics. 2. Improve my writing skills. 3. Learn about driving traffic to a website.

The most noteworthy and popular section are the game tutorials: https://github.com/mmaynar1/games

maynmanon Ask HN: Share your side project

Thanks! I like those ideas. Definitely been pondering better ways to filter the links and ensure the most relevant ones rise in prominence.

maynmanon Ask HN: Share your side project

I've been working on a little website to pull out links from the comments on the "Ask HN" page. Often there is some great advice in there, and it seemed in the spirit of Hacker News to automate that.

https://www.askhnwisdom.com/

maynmanon Green vs. Brown Programming Languages

If you're using Java, definitely give IntelliJ a try. I think it makes writing Java a pretty enjoyable experience.

maynmanon Ask HN: Games that made you better at your work?

This game is a pretty fun way to improve your CSS Flexbox skills: https://mastery.games/flexboxzombies/

maynmanon Don’t use environment variables for configuration

If you're a heathen like me, you sometimes store JSON configuration in environment variables https://mitchum.blog/how-to-store-json-in-an-environment-var...

maynmanon Ask HN: What technology made your jaw drop the first time you used it?

I definitely agree about VR. The first time I played "Robo Recall" on the Oculus Rift I couldn't believe how responsive and immersive it was.

maynmanon Graphics for JVM

For sure. In the case of IntelliJ resource usage, you get what you pay for.

maynmanon Graphics for JVM

I use IntelliJ for work every day and I agree, so many of its features make work so much better.

maynmanon Type in the exact number of machines to proceed

I do the same thing. I also keep auto commit off and make sure the rows updated looks correct before committing the change.

maynmanon The Problem of Legacy IT Systems

One definition I've heard before (and like) is "code without tests". I don't think that's the only factor, but it's a pretty common indicator.

maynmanon Ask HN: What books do you recommend?

Code Complete https://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Cons...

maynmanon Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

Agreed. It's hard to consider a newspaper "centrist" that basically forces Bari Weiss out of a job.

maynmanon Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)

Reminds me of Ecclesiastes. "There is nothing new under the sun".

maynmanon Building a Crossword Puzzle Generator with JavaScript

That sounds pretty cool. I also found it difficult to optimize for both performance and word density with the approach I took. Maxing out on one seemed to negatively affect the other. I'm sure there have to be some better algorithms out there to do this sort of thing.

maynmanon Building a Crossword Puzzle Generator with JavaScript

I had fun making it. I'm glad you've found it valuable :)

maynmanon Ask HN: What is your blog and why should I read it?

https://mitchum.blog/

I make JavaScript game tutorials to help people learn programming and have fun doing it. I also write about programming in general and random other stuff I find interesting.

You can find the game tutorials here: https://mitchum.blog/game-tutorials/

maynmanon Ask HN: Good game tutorials for kids programming

Shameless plug, but I've written a few simple game tutorials on my blog. Minesweeper, Snake, Tic Tac Toe, Hangman, etc.

https://mitchum.blog/game-tutorials/

maynmanon Ask HN: What are your x questions to figure out the quality of a software team?

How is the on-call rotation handled?

maynmanon Ask HN: Show your own blog/vlog

https://mitchum.blog/ I write mostly about programming, but also about whatever I happen to be interested in at the moment.

maynmanon Three Years of Misery Inside Google, the Happiest Company in Tech

It's worth a watch if you haven't seen Joe Rogan's podcast with James Damore. I think it adds some much needed context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQ1JeII0eGo

maynmanon My experience using Spring boot for website development

One suggestion I have is to try using Intellij as your IDE. It has some built in integrations that make spinning up a new spring boot project a lot simpler.

Or, if you really like using an IDE that doesn't offer these integrations, then another option is to make use of this page: https://start.spring.io/

It makes the initial setup easier.

maynmanon Ask HN: Any guidelines on what's cool or not cool to “Show HN”?

Here are the guidelines for Show HN posts: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

maynmanon How to Build Minesweeper with JavaScript

That's a fair point. I guess the main argument in favor of single return statements in modern programming languages is ease of debugging and logging. Like most things in programming, you have to consider the trade-offs. A few return statements isn't the end of the world, but after too many you might just want to make some more functions.

maynmanon How to Build Minesweeper with JavaScript

Yep, that's why I chose to implement it that way. I generally prefer single return statements. Plus my day job enforces it as part of the coding convention, so force of habit too haha.

maynmanon How to Build Minesweeper with JavaScript

Thanks for the kind words, and thanks for sharing! That is a cool pattern. I definitely have a little too much nesting going on in that function, and it could use some refactoring.

I've always felt funny about multiple return statements though, which is probably one reason why a pattern like this doesn't usually come to my mind when considering how to refactor code. I've always liked having one exit point at the end of functions because programmers naturally expect a function to return at the very end. I think minimizing the number of return statements is generally a good thing, but perhaps I have been too strict about applying that rule.

maynmanon How to Build Minesweeper with JavaScript

Good call! I agree, I think that would be better. Unfortunately the WordPress theme I'm using wouldn't let me do that by default. I'll have to do some research to see if there is a good plugin for that :)

maynmanon Ask HN: Why are successful open source projects usually developed by small teams

I think this observation applies to software development generally, not just open source projects. In "The Mythical Man Month", Fred Brooks talks about the concept of "the surgical team". One thing he stresses is the idea of having a single, overarching vision of what the architecture should look like. This becomes harder to achieve as more people are added to a project. More opinions are tossed around and debated. Lots of people have lots of good ideas, but not all good ideas are compatible with each other.