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nimblegorilla

502 karma · joined August 17, 2010

Email: nate@nimblegorilla.com
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nimblegorilla··on Ask HN: How to approach first days on a new job as a senior engineer?
> My point is that I rarely don't regret (for my careers sake) jumping in and delivering (obvious to me heh heh) value right away because I see the code I see where it ought to be and the new boss is really eager to see somethin, but I'm steamrolling toes and throwing elbows in eyes that I was entirely unaware of. I guarantee the people you will work with do not see you as a senior for some time, any misstep is a case against your status,

This is the best advice. And truly senior level people have been around long enough to see a lot of mid-level "senior" developers shoot themselves in the foot. I've also been on a lot of projects where bad practices aren't so bad because the team has strengths in other areas, and also best practices which collapse because the team has other deficiencies holding them back.

nimblegorilla··on Ask HN: Tools or frameworks to build music theory games
It's not really a framework, but I've been having a lot of fun live coding music in Sonic Pi: https://sonic-pi.net/

It has built-in functions for chords and scales and is pretty easy to make catchy loops.

nimblegorilla··on Show HN: Yami – An Open Source Music Player with Spotdl Integration
> Just because someone is confident about their own weird interpretation of something on the Internet does not make it true.

You seem confident about your interpretation...

Does that help you understand?

nimblegorilla··on Show HN: Yami – An Open Source Music Player with Spotdl Integration
I don't know the original comment's intent, but adding "..." at the end of your message is now considered by some as rude:

https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/149145/is-the-...

nimblegorilla··on Everyone is wrong about that Slack flowchart
From my perspective simple boolean means a single known value stored in one variable. I suspect the underlying code performs a number of calculations for each one of the flow chart "booleans". Of course, maybe that points to a design flaw and there should be a single policy instance that aggregates all of the variables into one place.
nimblegorilla··on Dad died in 2022. Since 2023, things he selfhosted have slowly begun breaking
I pay for an email address connected to a domain that I own. It's fairly inexpensive and I could switch email providers relatively easily.
nimblegorilla··on "Coding" was never the source of value
If AI makes junior developers "better" than senior developers then what stops senior developers from adopting the tools and becoming once again better than the juniors?
nimblegorilla··on Automated Unit Test Improvement Using Large Language Models at Meta
> Coverage as a whole I think is useful only if you have an engineering organization that doesn't see the point in tests - which is going to be its own uphill battle.

I think coverage stats are always useful as they help find the edge cases that people forgot to test. A common culprit I've seen is error handling code where a bunch of tests target the happy path, but nothing tests the error logging when something breaks.

nimblegorilla··on Apple Vision Pro review
I think it's a more important feature than just a cosmetic color. Imagine if you bought a truck to haul cargo, but were then told it can only transport one type of cargo at a time. That would suck.
nimblegorilla··on Brother have gotten to where they are now by not innovating
> it's connected to wifi (and it just happily connects even if it's been off for a month or two), and all devices can just connect to it and print. Never need to reconnect or do anything with it. It's a printer that prints. I love it.

Wifi is the only "innovation" that I cared about when buying a new printer. My old Brother just had USB, which was fine for 12 years. But my newer (10 years old) Brother has wifi and printing from the couch is great!

nimblegorilla··on Amazon corporate workers plan walkout next week over return-to-office policies
> My two cents on this is that he is saying "working from home is morally wrong" - for his companies... but he left out the for his companies part.

If you watch his interview you see him say WFH is morally wrong for almost everyone in the "laptop class" and not just his companies.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-work-from-home-morall... "You're going to make people who make your food that gets delivered [that] can't work from home; the people that come fix your house, they cant work from home, but you can?"

"Does that seem morally right? That's messed up," Musk said.

nimblegorilla··on Tell HN: Beware 'Ungrowth' in Your Job
I sort of agree. Jobs usually have aspects that seem unrewarding. But if you spend most of your time cleaning break rooms then it doesn't let you grow the type of skills needed to land a SWE salary at the next place.
nimblegorilla··on Unity is laying off hundreds of employees
I agree Steam games are a difficult market to break into, but there are other ways to make money. Unity is also a nice platform if you want to produce interactive content for corporate or educational consulting projects.

Also consider the large number of places such as Hobby Lobby, Williams-Sonoma, or Home Depot that cater to hobbyist/amateurs rather than industry professionals.

nimblegorilla··on Object-oriented programming: Some history, and challenges for the next 50 years [pdf]
> Abstract concepts map very well to objects. The problem of mapping a business domain to computing structures isn't unique to OOP.

Yes, I agree in theory. What I meant to say is that many concepts don't map to physical objects.

> In this case, I'm slightly gobsmacked that no-one pointed out that an employee is not their job. The contract of employment is a separate domain concept.

This is what I mean by flamewars. Your solution sounds good, but there are other people on this same thread still arguing that it makes perfect sense for an employee to fire itself.

nimblegorilla··on Object-oriented programming: Some history, and challenges for the next 50 years [pdf]
I think OOP is great, but one weakness is that a lot of abstract concepts don't really map to objects. And then people have flamewars about where to put those concepts.

In the real world most employees would never fire themselves and HR would update things like payroll which the employee isn't allowed to change. Your example makes more sense as a justification for keeping a service layer.

nimblegorilla··on Ask HN: What are the pros / cons of using monorepos?
Thanks for sharing that. It's mind-blowing that Google runs everything from a single repo. Most places that I work with create several repos for just one project.
nimblegorilla··on Fortunately, I don't squash my commits
Seems like a form of thought policing which didn't apply to yourself. Hyperbole that I trashed his career and "not a good look" also appears like an off topic attack.
nimblegorilla··on Fortunately, I don't squash my commits
Point is that `squash` is a useful tool used by many other successful professionals. I'm allowed to disagree with the author's opinion of the root cause of his bug and the factors that made it hard or easy to debug.
nimblegorilla··on Fortunately, I don't squash my commits
Seems like the real bug was in his handling of JwtSecurityTokenHandler.

He claims to be an expert on dependency injection with two decades of automated testing experience. I wonder what was so hard about writing a test to cover this scenario?

nimblegorilla··on “Really successful people say no to almost everything”
> If you're regular Joe (and, yes, that most likely includes YOU reading this) you can't afford to shut down most opportunities or you'll never get anywhere.

Anyone with software development skills gets tons of low quality app ideas from friends and family. And tons of other opportunities from recruiters paying below market.

It's hard walking away from a sort-of-ok opportunity when you don't have anything going on, but I've learned there are always more things coming up.

nimblegorilla··on The Art of Debating for Software Developers
Even more important that LISTENING to someone is actually COMPREHENDING what the other person is saying. Directly from the article:

"In short, try to keep your mind open. You might learn way more by really taking every idea into consideration. Notably if the colleague you argue with is an interested developer you trust."

"Don’t forget: recognizing that you’re wrong make you more humble and show the weak spots in your knowledge. As a result, it’s a good opportunity to learn."

nimblegorilla··on Surgical Reading: How to Read 12 Books at Once
I agree that titles don't describe the exact contents of books, but if I want to learn Python then I'd probably skip a book titled "Intermediate Javascript". If you read the full article you'll know he talked about looking at the index after the title to learn more specifics.

He also directly addresses your other concern regarding dropping a book. His "hacks" seem like a good way to evaluate the merits of finishing a book or just reading parts.

nimblegorilla··on Show HN: Dirigible Freighter: steampunk cargo delivery
Please enjoy this short prototype! I have a few ideas for a richer trading economy in the game.
nimblegorilla··on Why is Japan still a coronavirus outlier?
Try making your own mask: https://smartairfilters.com/en/blog/best-materials-make-diy-...
nimblegorilla··on Stay home except for essential needs
> Can we at least wait til the US body count reaches 3 digits before saying stuff like this?

Looks like your comment was posted around 3 pm Pacific on Monday. https://www.worldometers.info/ says we are at 85 deaths. Unfortunately we'll probably be at triple digits within 24 hours.

nimblegorilla··on Federal Reserve slashes interest rates to zero
Sidestepping the issue of how much a human life is worth you are also missing that the death rate would skyrocket if everyone gets sick and needed treatment at the same time.
nimblegorilla··on Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet
> If you need to retire in the next five years, you should already have started moving out of equities. It's too late to change that now.

This is still a great time to reallocate your money. The SPDR fund that I invest in is still about where it was 1 year ago.

nimblegorilla··on “Just walk out” technology by Amazon
> I wouldn't feel comfortable just walking out without knowing how much I'm going to be charged, so this tech is essentially useless to me.

I'm sure they can make an app for that.

nimblegorilla··on To get good, go after the metagame
Meta is an aspect of strategy, but the terms aren't interchangeable.
nimblegorilla··on Show HN: Automaza – A VR Programming Game
I developed it with a Vive and WMR headsets.

It should work on Oculus with the right setup, but I haven't tested that.

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