michaelpb

Ah yes... "Project Ginger" was promised to fully revolutionize society, bigger than the Internet, etc. People do seem to forget how old the tech-hype circus is, and with a lot of the same promises, always "too early yet" with the promised benefits lying just around the corner.

There's a social media trick where you make some really obvious mistake (eg pronounce "Mario" as "mah-RYE-oh" in a video) and then rely on people's "well akshully" in the comments causing you to go viral. Regardless if it's intentional or not, it's probably working since this already has 18 comments after only being posted a half hour ago hahah

kickstcondor has a cool art style, but from my understanding it isn't exactly a personal site, given it's run by multiple people pretending to be a single person, who actually are doing this for work at Meta / Facebook: https://usesthis.com/interviews/kicks.condor/

I hadn't heard of some of these other ones, and they look cool, thanks for sharing!

Yeah, I TDD / TFD as much as I can, much simpler. Even just stubbing out a few simple smoke tests that I red/green/refactor saves so much time. For me, I think I spend less time writing code as well, since it forces me to be clear to myself about requirements early on (even if the story/ticket wasn't clear enough), and keeps a "check" on my natural tendency to go down rabbit-holes before properly speccing out non-essential features or tempting optimizations. I ask myself: Does this help me pass the tests and complete the feature? If no, then I need to sit on my hands and not get all code-cowboy trigger-happy :)

Are you asking for writing tips? I'm not OP, but for one "someone who isn't deaf" is 4 words and has a complex structure while "hearing person" is 2 words and has a simple structure, and thus is more effective writing.

It seems strange to me to suggest more complicated structures to replace simpler ones! Is there another reason to use the more complicated structure?

The goal of research like this is to motivate exactly that (changing the companies)

Oh, I don't know about the state of the art, I was just speculating. I'd imagine this technique would only useful if you want to support a MongoDB app at the same time as building new features with Postgres, and then gradually phase out the MongoDB interface (e.g. gradually transitioning between a v1 prototype and a v2 rewrite)

If it's not much data (eg ~100k or something), and you don't need any sort of gradual transition, then I'd do something really KISS like dump into a CSV or something and then re-import with whatever the new database management system has for importing files

Yeah, I think the person we are replying to is taking this a lot more negatively than I intended. I always sort of thought it was kind of an "open secret" that this stuff went on, at least here in SV / Bay Area. Perhaps elsewhere, where engineers don't hop around jobs every year or two, this sounds more like an insult or accusation?

Huh, so if we are trotting out experience credentials, I have also worked with thousands of developers (I guess?) over the last ~20 years as well. My first programming language was Apple BASIC on an Apple II, and I haven't stopped learning since!

I think we use this term differently, perhaps? This term is not intended to be an attack, but rather just an acknowledgment of a common type of technical debt that results from people getting influenced by marketing teams and choosing tech based on how "trendy" it seems. Sometimes this might be done explicitly since they are intending to jump ship anyway... I've had conversations at the bar out of earshot of "the suits" where this exact topic was discussed! Most of the time it's not intentional or explicit, but just novice engineers directed by poor management to greenfield apps, and then falling for marketing claims and choosing based on how "trendy" the marketing claims it is vs real, observed needs. MongoDB is still getting taught at many bootcamps and coding curriculums as an "SQL, but better for beginners since you don't need that annoying schema thing!"

Hm, well, I never said that ANYONE who uses MongoDB is guilty of resume driven development. I specifically only indicated the ones that WERE chosen via resume driven development. Unless you were replying to the wrong comment?

Oh wow, I had no idea! I've never heard of this. Thanks for letting me know.

I only knew it as the name of "Planet Mongo", the main planet in the Flash Gordon universe, an old science fiction comic that has been rebooted many times (which also had loads of extremely racist anti-Chinese elements)

Could be that! Another terrible name hahah. Although in their defense I get the "cockroach" analogy, while "gimp" is just an offensive insult and/or a very NSFW BDSM term, and has no other meaning, which makes conversations even more awkward.

Yeah, I could imagine this being a useful step to migrate away from MongoDB. I suspect there are plenty of "resume-driven development" MongoDB installations out there that could use something like this.

GIMP?

If that's what you're referring to, then yup #1 worst-named FOSS ever.

For Linux, many GNOME-based distros shipped with Pidgin (an open source communication program) well-integrated with the desktop environment, really early on compared to other OS's. I'm hesitant to say "Linux did it first", but it was definitely an early adopter.

That said, it's hard to compare the two given Pidgin is a general purpose communication tool without vendor lock-in (e.g. it's also an IRC client, has peer-to-peer mode, etc), and most Linux installers let you opt-out of these sorts of bundled software.

I think the real issue is some might find MS Teams to be obnoxious software (I suppose, I barely have used it)

Yeah, I was really confused by this, since I very clearly recall seeing ads on fresh Windows computers, along with guides etc on how to disable them.

I know back when I used Windows I had an entire routine to disable all the annoying stuff, so I suspect they disabled all the annoying stuff and totally forgot.

I really don't get the need to "defend" Windows, however. It's an OS being sold by a large, for-profit company, that has pros and cons like any other OS. No need to fight MS's fights for them... and given it's 75% desktop marketshare (and like ~95% for gaming), I think they are doing pretty dang well by themselves.

Also, technical skill aside, Linux users are used to dev <-> consumer relationship being more symmetrical and more of a "two way street". The few non-coder Linux users I know prefer it for this aspect --- similar to why people might shop at a local neighborhood co-op instead of Walmart/Target/Microsoft/Apple

No wonder the email space is so behind. I'm already working on the next problem, NRTOIATFUSSP

(No, Really, This One Is Actually The Final Ultimate Solution to the Spam Problem)

Yeah, I will agree with you that there can be some smaller-scale systems that work fine. That said, in these cases in my experience it's always few key "hero" mods who are just very committed to volunteering to keep things cleaned up.

Without actually hiring people, it's hard to get that level of commitment, and just as you are saying, as soon as the work gets hard enough (eg clever trolls that turn users against each other, or paranoid political crusaders who think the mods are in league with unseen forces), even the best volunteers end up quitting at the worst times.

In the long run I think the solution is just hiring moderators. It costs money, but if you want a job done well and consistently ya gotta pay.

Not at all theoretical, this happens all the time. There are tools like StegoShare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StegoShare

I googled and one of the top articles was this (I didn't read it): https://www.deccanchronicle.com/technology/in-other-news/070...

I couldn't find the article I had read a few years back, but I remember this sort of thing being used to host content on Facebook, Wikipedia, Reddit, etc, before they cracked down on it.

Yeah, there's an entire category of "idea guys" who don't get this. They repeatedly try to crack the code on a truly moderation-free or purely crowd-moderated platform, and it never, ever, ever works.

It almost always boils down to a poor understanding of how humans work (usually some sort of "homo economicus") or how computers work (usually some sort of "AI magic wand").

I generally agree with you here, and don't think this article is particularly well researched or argued. I'm no fan of Matty's argumentation in any of his articles in fact... I don't think he "merits" the popularity he has ;)

That said, I don't really think there is any sort of useful distinction between "necessarily wrong" and "impossible to define". That is, I believe many meritocracy-enthusiasts to be "necessarily wrong" since they often imply or casually argue for achieving a meritocratic society, while, as you put it, "a stable, shared view of merit doesn’t really exist". So, seeking something that doesn't exist (like the tooth fairy, or a profitable MLM scam) is necessarily 100% wrong... not 20% wrong, or 50% wrong. All we got is this boring cave :(

So, I guess I welcome any "meritocracy considered harmful" posts, despite who wrote it and how it's written.

What? Are you actually saying that this is just Matty's sour grapes? I personally disagree with most of his positions in general, but it's silly to imply he's anything but very successful and credentialed in his field [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Yglesias

Sure, maybe not all types of jobs, but to be fair he does say "in the political realm" at one point in the article, and it did occur to me that many people often take the opposite as an a priori assumption, that "meritocracy is good thing for all types of jobs" (myself, sometimes, included!). I'm not a fan of this author, but I did find this little polemic a needed "push-back"

(That said, I also think the article could be much improved in terms of argumentation, it seems pretty off-the-cuff.)

If it makes you feel any better about the public, according to a poll shortly after[1] ~40% of people voting Yes on Prop 22 self-reported that they thought they were voting for the option that would classify drivers with more benefits. This means a majority of people voting intended to give or maintain more regulations and benefits. However, Uber/Lyft ran the most expensive campaign in California history, burning through 200+ million dollars to confuse the issue, and causing many voters (23%) to vote Yes instead of No.

This is a clear corporate-money-dictating-politics thing. I used to joke that if the self-driving car thing doesn't pan out, there's a always a consultancy pivot ready for Uber. "Don't like a law? Have some taxes due? No sweat, for $20/vote we can make those pesky taxes disappear!"

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/17/uber-ly... - Anecdotally confirmed to me with some canvassing last year as well, many (easily more than 23%) were going to vote "Yes" since they misinterpreted the question to be the exact opposite

> Even the historic concept of "collapse" is ill-defined. It's widely accepted today that the Western Roman Empire (probably the most written-about "collapse" event) didn't really collapse at once as much as it slowly changed from within and without. Is this "linear collapse"? I mean maybe, but it may just be the process of change itself.

I love to point out how the symbolism of many modern governments is the result of a sort of cargo cult of Roman Republican culture. Government buildings to this day copy the dull gray ruins of Roman buildings, just as many 18th/19th century governments declared popular authority from a Latin-imitating "Senate", filled to the brim with Roman symbolism.

With that in mind, it's not surprising that many today believe the 18th/19th century's "fall of Rome" and "barbarian invasion" myths as a sort of predictive weak-spot of modernity. If you view civilization as a linear path, a story of how the intrinsically superior empires of the Greek/Macedonians and Romans successively lifted the world out of its natural, primitive barbarian state, and the shifting power centers of the 3rd-8th century as a "turning back of time to the Dark Ages" or linear regression along the same path, then the "collapse" narrative is as plain as day. This view on history is pure fantasy, of course, which is why the collapse narratives set in modern days seem so fantastic as well.

I'm totally with you here. Like, ideally you should be able to clone, install packages, and then do ``npm run start'' or ``python manage.py runserver'' or whatever, and the result should be a mostly functioning web app running locally. If it needs certain attached services, they should be 1) as standard/boring as possible (eg SQL, so you can have mocked versions of them for tests), 2) and added sparingly in only well-motivated situations (eg do you really need to have that caching DB, before you even have profiled real traffic?)

IMO investing time to keep applications "normal" like this pays off in the long run. It keeps development closer to "greenfield", which causes a general multiplying effect. Tutorials are slightly more likely to work, 3rd party packages will be quicker to integrate, etc etc.

(Note that this is separate from dev/prod parity, which is also good.)

First off, thanks for the great reply! My point isn't that it's not useful as much as that it's very preference-based. The good news is though that apparently both Linux (GNOME + KDE) and macOS support this feature, despite my not using it much on any platform, so it's what we're discussing is not even a difference between mac/lin at this point, but just an abstract consideration.

> Being able to check the date or bottom line on a received PDF invoice, without opening it.

I tried double-clicking on a 43-page PDF, and it took less than a second to open on my under-powered Acer (about ~$200, mfg 4 years ago), running stock Ubuntu 20.04. This seems really fast, as it was basically instantaneous from releasing the mouse. Obviously opening up a PSD would be slower, but then again I can always just zoom in on the thumbnail in that case (Ctrl+Scroll zooms in on icons in Linux).

This is making me think perhaps the real difference is that the default programs that open are too slow, eg if Photoshop is the default associated application for all images, or Adobe Acrobat for all PDFs, then I totally would see the need to have a previewer as well, since last time I used those they were realllllly slow.

I dunno, that said, it's all really not important. Then again, what is HN but for getting grumpy about unimportant things? :p

> I always feel like I'm in a different plane from the rest of the universe when discussing these things.

Exactly! It really feels like there's this massive disconnect in these conversations that I can't explain.

Whenever I have to use macOS, I'm a complete mess, and to me like it's missing basic features and doesn't support my workflow without lots of 3rd party add-ons, etc. That said, I probably am using it wrong, so I don't go around saying that macOS desktop is obviously garbage. I know that other people prefer this style, so that's A-OK.

> Though the whole thing, while useful in practice, feels like essentially a workaround for unnecessarily heavy and app-centric UIs.

Right, I'm sometimes puzzled by how people approach their personal "deal-breakers" that prevent Mac->Lin (or Win->Lin) switch. Many of the issues are presented as though they are bugs or clear-cut missing features, but are in fact subjective preference statements.

In this case the "spacebar to preview" feature might be a must-have for some, but to others it might not be important, and maybe even to some be perceived as an anti-feature. I personally see this particular feature as redundant (given there is already thumbnailing and a means to open files) and unintuitive, and thus just more clutter. But I also don't care too much, since I could always disable it if it came pre-enabled.

The worst cases of this is when some insist that not only is their particular preference the The One Way, but that stubborn Linux DE developers are somehow at fault for not implementing The One Way, and that's why Linux will never be popular. There are plenty of things that might keep "normies" from switching, but random obscure DE features are not them. People tolerate FAR worse UX disasters than any major Linux DE.