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I've also run into this myself in publishing my own blog posts. I had this burning need to add caveats and write very defensibly because the fear in the back of my head of being "well, actually..."d.

In the end, I still pushed them out and they made the rounds with positive feedback, but it definitely took way longer to write than I thought. I know that's probably not a very healthy way of going about it, and a big part of it in my opinion has to do with how it's too easy to issue ego-boosting corrections.

[1] http://longcao.org/2015/06/15/easing-into-functional-error-h...

[2] http://longcao.org/2015/07/09/functional-error-accumulation-...

I was laid off along with most of the engineering staff at the startup I was working at in February due to lack of funding. Since I'm based in NYC and my colleagues were very well connected people, the software community immediately reached out (like sharks smelling blood in the water, but in a good way :D) and most of us landed somewhere within a month or two.

It was quite a shock the way we were all let go and it seemed to catch many of us by surprise. I've been through this kind of event twice now in my career and it sucks, but I recognize that we are still in a really great market for software jobs right now, so there's nothing for me to cry about other than getting to work with that particularly awesome team anymore.

Echoing any recommendations for 'Scala for the Impatient' - it is a fantastic beginner/intermediate book that gets you productive pretty quickly, so much so that I'm planning on having an intern who has no Scala experience go through it this summer.

I agree wholeheartedly with you, to me it's a form of humblebragging. It's definitely a nice thing to be in high demand and 'complaining' about recruiters knocking down the door seems so arrogant and unaware.

The low quality spam I can do without, but it's never anything to whine about, filter and move on if it's a problem.

I've been through a few 'crunch modes' before and while there was a general feeling of "wow, we accomplished that" afterwards. Looking back, however, I now realize how profound of a hangover it produced in me and some of my teammates, and the hard truth is that it permanently takes a toll (e.g. sluggishness, lost trust, reduced motivation) that you may never get back wherever you are, at least in my experience. The fallout, it seems, truly underscores the 'nuclear option' moniker.

I think this is the most reasonable take I've read and encompasses the whole "right tool for the job" mindset that I like.

I've found that when starting a new project I get paralyzed with coming up with the perfect data model that will also scale in the future, so I'd rather punt, take the tradeoffs that come with schemaless DBs, and keep a plan to migrate to something like Postgres in the backlog. Holding on to our tools too tightly is IMO how projects get crippled.

Thank you so much for the hard work. I've been using Skeleton for a personal project even though it hadn't been updated in over 2 years. As a (mostly) backend developer, Skeleton has proven to be the best possible starting point for me to learn on; there's nothing tricky about it.

This is a very nice early Christmas present!

Location: NYC

Remote: open to it

Willing to relocate: no

Technologies: Scala, Play, Akka, MySQL (also in a past life: PHP, Java, Hadoop)

Resume: https://www.linkedin.com/in/longcao

email: longcao at gmail

Can't a man walk down the street without being offered a job?

I've found this to be a problem with reading technical books on my Kindle. I'm constantly flipping back and forth between examples and text and it's really not as good (read: not as fast) as flipping physical pages.

Can you estimate how much faster your processing is now vs. before on MySQL? I find it interesting that your cluster is only 6 nodes - relatively small compared to what I've seen and from what I've read about. It'd be interesting to know the benefits of small-scale usage of big data tech.

Can I just say that I love your attitude? A borderline unhealthy sense of self deprecation and just 'doing it' because you can - qualities I wish more tech people had.

If you're well versed in Clojure and FP principles, the only difference for you would be in picking up Scala syntax, in my opinion.

Which has been superseded by Slick (http://slick.typesafe.com/) and does exactly as the parent says.

He's one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter [1] because of this; he regularly tweets about stuff he's learning, especially new languages. It's quite inspiring and uplifting to see a such a figure in the industry still make time to learn on his own and candidly share his thoughts.

[1]: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack

Your being a big white guy visibly unaffected by soy is strictly anecdotal evidence - perhaps you aren't affected by it.

The plain reality here is that we don't yet know the full effects of a diet high in soy has on the body, so I'd err on the side of letting studies come out with something more conclusive. In any case, shouldn't we be consuming within moderation anyways?

Growing up before I knew anything about computers I always asked my parents if I could play on the home PC, which really equated to MSPaint time.

Others might have started off with tinkering with BASIC and whatnot but I think I'm fortunate enough that it turned out to be my gateway drug into computers anyways.

Somewhat related, there's a great This American Life episode on the same kind of subject called "The Convert":

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/471/t...

I'm somewhat bemused that The Social Network isn't on there somehow, despite the movie's misgivings.

It's not even marketing in my mind but a public obligation. If there is anyone who would be able to provide this service, it's Twilio. Agreed, hats off.

And even if he's not - he should concede this point. There's no winning for EA if they continue to argue this, consumers have already made up their mind about it. They should cut their losses and own up to the SimCity debacle.

I use both ag and ack interchangeably and one thing I wish is that ag would be 100% compatible with ack options. It'd be nice to just do a s/ack/ag and expect things to work.

I've been meaning to try out matcher[0] for usage with CtrlP, I'm not sure how well it works but it's written in C and is purported to speed up search. Not sure if it's still being maintained, however...

[0] https://github.com/burke/matcher

I totally get the theme but I can't help getting nervous goosebumps from the artifacts - I feel like I have to reset the display cable or blow into the cartridge! Well done.

Every Thursday? What was the average age of your team? I would think after a few weeks this kind of habit would be exhausting!

Your willingness to learn new things on your own should help you get your foot in the door as far as interviews. It's a total developer's market right now, so I would encourage you to quit your job and start looking for a position.

I don't know if you could say that the impetus is largely because of the brokenness of the American education system. Online education startups like Coursera, Udacity, etc. have a far reaching effect on the rest of the world too. I'm willing to conjecture that a majority of students on Coursera right now are not US citizens, and that the appeal of (quality) college material to the rest of the world is a big factor. There are huge implications for universities to take advantage of this to spread influence.

That's what a separate thread would be for.

As someone who was a developer in Austin as of a few months ago, I can imagine other Austin area companies salivating at the fresh infusion of developers into the market. They should be okay (or at least I hope so!).

I'm a (mostly) self taught developer but I have taken some software related courses (assembly, C, data structures), so I have some semblance of a foundation. Still, I constantly feel 'behind' in my foundational knowledge compared to my peers because I majored in something other than CS/SWE.

That's why the rise of edtech startups have been of interest to me: online courses like Algorithms: Design and Analysis from Coursera have been a godsend, at least when I have the time and energy to do it. It's not easy playing catchup with a full-time job, but there's even less time (and money) for me to go back and get a degree in CS.