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oldprogrammer2

518 karma · joined June 16, 2014

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oldprogrammer2··on NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
Iran is on the tariffs list because of Trump's maximum pressure policy (an official National Security Memorandum) against Iran. This is coupled with Trump's willingness to get Russia to cooperate in the ceasefire.

I'm not claiming his administration's logic is 100% sound, only that there is an explanation that doesn't assume the rather farfetched theory that Trump is an agent for Russia.

I'm not particularly well-versed in this area, but searching for the topic on Google easily found this information on sites such as Wikipedia, WSJ, Newsweek, and whitehouse.gov.

oldprogrammer2··on NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
In my opinion, this was decades in the making. Most Americans are sick of the two party system that can't seem to get anything done, as well as with a political system owned by the elite. As odd and bizarre as it is, Trump was able to channel that disgruntlement into a voting bloc. And it certainly doesn't help that the Democratic party has been unable to put forth a charismatic candidate since President Obama.
oldprogrammer2··on NSF faces shake-up as officials abolish its 37 divisions
The US has trade sanctions with those countries.
oldprogrammer2··on How the U.S. became a science superpower
Systems don’t remain constant, though, and every system gets “gamed” once the incentives are well understood. I’m 100% for investment in scientific research, but I’m skeptical that the current system is efficient at allocating the funds. We’ve seen so many reports of celebrity scientists committing fraud at our most elite institutions, and a publish or perish model that encourages that bad behavior as well as junk science that will have minimal impact on their fields. We pay taxes to fund science so that universities or corporations can claim ownership and make us pay for the results.
oldprogrammer2··on Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
People are reflexive. In a different context, driven by someone else, many of the people currently defending Harvard would instead be pointing out that Harvard and the other elite institutions are part of "the problem". In general this year, it's been interesting to me to see Republicans become protectionists and Democrats become neoliberal free traders, both parties flipping their talking points to either align or disagree with Trump.
oldprogrammer2··on Harvard's response to federal government letter demanding changes
Yeah, his reasoning is suspect to a lot of folks, but I’m not sure why everyone is so comfortable with the consolidation of wealth at these elite institutions.
oldprogrammer2··on Ask HN: Why is .NET never talked about as an option for solo/small team dev?
I've led startups running Rails and Python/Flask, but I do all my side projects in dotnet. And I haven't had a Windows machine in years, fwiw.

Deployment and Cost: For solo projects, I do 1-click deploys to a load-balanced Azure App Service. I was using GitHub Actions for a while, but it was slow and I kept pushing up against the need for a paid plan. I keep things local.

Dotnet is dramatically more scalable than Rails or Django, which means much simpler infrastructure for a lot longer. Poor performance leads to the need for more complexity. More servers, caching, queueing, etc. Then you need things like docker and k8s to manage all that infrastructure. For me, I can scale up or out by changing a single flag, and entire apps are just single dotnet apps (aside from the DB), so there's no need for docker.

Batteries Included: My team that ran Rails was burned by the magic, repeatedly. Over the years, developers made decisions that turned into maintainability nightmares. With Python/Flask, the lack of structure was like a Wild West after several years of rotating contractors. In some of my older solo-dev work with Flask, it was nearly impossible to come back to because all the disparate dependencies wouldn't play nicely any longer. And in both Ruby and Python, the lack of static typing was also a source of inscrutability (so please use type annotations in your Ruby and Python projects - your future self will thank you).

As for why people don't use it more, I think it's largely due to "resume driven development". It's the same reason every startup thinks they need k8s or they need to be using React. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Choosing dotnet is definitely not going to lead to job opportunities in the startup world. But, in my opinion, any startup that chooses dotnet will have a competitive advantage over those that choose Rails, Node.js, or Python because of simplicity and maintainability.

As for the argument that "time to market is faster with rails or python", I disagree. The biggest factor will be using what you know. The second will be the complexity of your infrastructure, which will be much simpler on dotnet. Avoid analysis paralysis as much as possible.

Other folks may have very different opinions, but as someone who has worked on several major platforms, each for years at a time, I have found dotnet to be the best option. However, no choice will be perfect, and dotnet has many warts. My recommendation if you do choose dotnet, is to go with MVC + HTMX. It's not sexy, but it's stable and mature. I don't recommend Blazor, yet. I think it needs another version. Last note: I've never bought any third party libraries/controls to do anything in my dotnet projects.

oldprogrammer2··on Show HN: Selectable – mobile-friendly Postgres client
This looks great. There have certainly been times in my life where all I had was my phone, and I needed to check on a few things. I could see having an app like this handy "just in case" (assuming secure connectivity, of course). Good luck!
oldprogrammer2··on How America's universities became debt factories
But it’s not the same as K-12. I can’t send my kids to an expensive private boarding school and expect taxes to pay for it.
oldprogrammer2··on Reclaim the Stack
The amount of complexity people are introducing into their infrastructure is insane. At the end of the day, we're still just building the same CRUD web apps we were building 20 years ago. We have 50x the computation power, much faster disk, much more RAM, and much faster internet.

A pair of load-balanced web servers and a managed database, with Cloudflare out front, will get you really, really far.

oldprogrammer2··on Reclaim the Stack
Even worse, this feels like the goal was actually about reclaiming their resumes, not the stack. I expect these two guys to jump ship within a year, leaving the rest of the team trying to take care of an entire ecosystem they didn't build.
oldprogrammer2··on Ask HN: Where are the part-time remote coding jobs?
Because you just inadvertently labeled yourself as a potential flight risk. Bad managers don’t know how to handle that, and will assume you’re going to leave if you don’t get what you want. The “firing” probably won’t be immediate, but bad managers will passive aggressively manage you out.
oldprogrammer2··on I hate Stripe, so I'm going to build my own payment processor
They have raised at least $6.5 Billion.
oldprogrammer2··on Congress Should Make Universities Pay for Handing Out Useless Degrees
Determining need in the context of disability isn't the same argument, though. That's a cost specific to the individual.

I'm all for public/state schools providing even more assistance to those in need, but I couldn't be more opposed to private institutions being free to charge $500k/year or $1mil/year, and then we as taxpayers just pay it because someone decided they liked the dorm rooms better. That doesn't make sense at all.

oldprogrammer2··on Congress Should Make Universities Pay for Handing Out Useless Degrees
If one student chooses to get their degree from a state school at a cost of $10k/year, and another student chooses to go to a private school at $50k/year, why should taxpayers reward the second student, for making a poor financial choice, with 5x the funds?

If there’s going to be student loan debt forgiveness, at least max it out at that person’s average in-state public tuition rate.

When students and universities are both just spending other people’s money, there’s no thought toward financial viability, and the prices will only keep escalating.

oldprogrammer2··on Ask HN: Do we need to pay billions in fees to Stripe, Block, PayPal and Visa/MC?
Stripe, Block, and PayPal each solved a massive pain point.

PayPal provided a way to pay people and vendors without giving away your credit card number.

Square made it easy to accept payment in person on a phone, without an extensive upfront underwriting experience and without expensive fixed monthly fees.

Stripe did the same as Square, but for accepting online payments.

Fraud and Risk come in many forms, and these providers, even with their UX innovations, sit on top of those same rails to reduce fraud. Without those rails, buyers can’t trust sellers and sellers can’t trust buyers.

In my opinion, you need to find a way to solve that problem before you can eliminate the fees being captured by these providers.

oldprogrammer2··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (August 2024)
SEEKING WORK | US Remote or Dallas Local

Looking for part-time work, 10-30 hours/week, as I'm chasing a couple projects of my own.

I have 10 years of experience as a software engineer, and another 10 years at the VP/CTO level. I'm a polyglot, quick learner who can jump in and start working.

Particular technical strengths: Python/Flask, C#, and SQL.

Particular managerial strengths: recruiting, strategy, and security/compliance.

So I could give a team more bandwidth by working on query optimization, ETL, SQL-based reports, technical screens for candidates, looking for gaps in security, or writing technical documentation.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/donald-hughes-24601/

oldprogrammer2··on The NSA advises you to turn your phone off and back on once a week
As someone who lives in Texas, the push alerts for dangerous weather has been very helpful. Not just tornadoes, but violent storms with damaging winds or hail also happen 10-20 times per year. As previously said, these storms are very localized and often materialize with only 10-30 minutes of notice. That notice can be used to relocate everyone to a safe place away from windows, in the case of a tornado warning, or protect outside pets/livestock, vehicles, etc in the case of a violent storm.
oldprogrammer2··on Migrating Uber's ledger data from DynamoDB to LedgerStore
The homepage could benefit from more tangible examples, because right now I can't discern where it fits into my current stack. For most companies, it would be replacing something in a specific context.

Like a side-by-side example. Doing "work" on BigTable (show code examples) versus doing the same "work" on Haystack. Then show the specific metrics on how Haystack is cheaper/faster/better.

oldprogrammer2··on Tim Cook is running out of ideas
Innovation doesn't always mean new products, sometimes it means making the current ones better. In the case of laptops, tablets, phones, and smart watches: thinner, lighter, more power, and longer battery life are the innovations most people want. In support of that, Apple Silicon was an incredibly important innovation that was not even mentioned once in the article.
oldprogrammer2··on The Naz.API Credential Stuffing List
It is 37 GB (I downloaded it yesterday).
oldprogrammer2··on OWASP Top API Security Risks – 2023
My experience aligns with your intuition. I would go further, though, and suggest that the rise of SPA itself has exacerbated this problem (Rest or GraphQL). Unless a company has detailed security reviews, it’s very easy for client side developers to reach for an endpoint that exposes more data than they need. Because they don’t explicitly use some of that data, they forget they have exposed it.

This is certainly a protection that we’ve lost as we moved away from server rendered architecture, where no APIs are exposed and only explicitly needed data is sent to the client. Not passing judgment, but there is a higher risk profile in multiple ways for a SPA.

oldprogrammer2··on Ask HN: Best way to version control your notes or documents?
Years ago I ran a custom script to add/commit/push on a folder once a day. So, nightly/automatically like a system backup, but in git.
oldprogrammer2··on Academia’s culture of overwork almost broke me, so I’m working to undo it
But wasn't he working at a patent office? I was under the impression that working on a PhD at that time and place would not have been considered "in academia", in that he was not teaching or assisting.
oldprogrammer2··on The dark side of Shopify
It may fix this particular problem, on one side of the transaction, but it creates new ones. What if I, as a purchaser, want to dispute my purchase? What if I was ripped off? What if the product was broken, not as advertised, etc. I like knowing there is recourse through chargebacks.

For example, I rented a vacation home last year, on VRBO, and the highly unusual contract (that was not shared until after the purchase) made me very uncomfortable. As an aside, I was also surprised that I was billed directly by the rental company via Stripe, rather than through VRBO. I requested a refund within an hour of booking.

For two weeks, I attempted to contact the rental company. I never received a single acknowledgement from them, and VRBO provided zero support. The only way I was able to get my money back was with a chargeback, showing my request for a refund within the cancellation window.

I am 100% confident that if this had been a bitcoin transaction I would have lost that money. I would also expect a rise in bad actors abusing that lack of recourse if bitcoin did increase in popularity for payment. In my mind, that is the challenge that crypto needs to solve before it can become widely adopted as a payment option.

oldprogrammer2··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2022)
Ellevest | Remote - USA only | Full Time | Senior Engineers

As a Senior Software Engineer at Ellevest, you will work to design, build, and support many of the core systems powering Ellevest’s software and user experience. From our web and mobile applications to our financial computation engine, our Engineering team is at the heart of our organization, ensuring a best-in-class experience for our clients. We follow agile methodologies and on a day-to-day basis, leverage Ruby on Rails, React, and React Native. Our systems run on a modern AWS stack, and our entire team works in a highly collaborative, flexible structure to build towards high-impact client facing outcomes. We're hiring for multiple positions on multiple teams, that range from heavy frontend/UX work to backend financial integrations.

We’re looking for:

- At least 5 years professional software engineering experience. - Solid understanding of Ruby on Rails or Javascript fundamentals, and good command of object-oriented and functional programming. - Experience supporting and scaling consumer-facing web and mobile applications and familiarity working with third party APIs. - Good command of SQL and knowledge of proper database design and performance optimization. - Strong attention to detail and a passion for learning and sharing knowledge. - Familiarity working with third party APIs. - Interest in working in a fast-paced, dynamic, and cross-functional work environment. This includes working independently and on a team.

About Ellevest:

Ellevest is a fast-growing, venture-backed financial services start-up built by women, for women. Our mission is to get more money in the hands of women, no matter where they’re starting or how far they’ve come. We started by building the only gender-aware online investing platform that takes totally un-ignorable realities (like pay gaps, different salary curves, and women’s longer lifespans) into account. Then we added banking, learning, and money and career coaching services for Ellevest members, plus a full-service private wealth management service that helps high net worth people, families, and institutions align their financial power with their values.

Ellevest was co-founded by Wall Street veteran Sallie Krawcheck after she realized that the financial services industry was built by men, for men, systemically leaving women behind. During her Wall Street days, she served as CEO of Smith Barney, CEO of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, and CFO of Citi. Ellevest has raised $145 million from investors including Rethink Impact, Pivotal Ventures, Valerie Jarrett, Salesforce Ventures, PayPal Ventures, MasterCard, Khosla Ventures, Morningstar, and Venus Williams.

oldprogrammer2··on James Gosling Interview
I would guess he might be talking about how integers are objects in python, and stored in heap, rather than being stored as values directly on the stack. I haven’t looked, but it could also be in python that all numeric types are stored according to IEEE 754 before being unboxed to the indicated type.
oldprogrammer2··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2021)
Service Fusion|Engineering Manager|Remote (US)|Full Time https://servicefusion.com

Service Fusion provides an All-In-One Field Service Management SaaS application.

I'm looking for Software Engineering Manager to run a team of 6, and double the size of their team over the next 6 months. You will work alongside another engineering manager, and together will be running 4 squads of engineers by the end of the year. Our company is growing, people are nice, we ship weekly, and we would rather do it right than do it fast.

Mention "Hacker News June 2021" on your resume to help me find you in Workday.

View the full JD and apply here: https://evercommerce.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EverCommerc...

oldprogrammer2··on A no-beef diet is great – but only if you don’t replace it with chicken
I'm really not one to proseletyze (I promise). Ten years ago I could barely understand how someone could be vegetarian (much less vegan), but I started cutting meat out of my diet a few years ago, as well as most dairy. I still occasionally eat beef or chicken, maybe a handful of times in a year. And it's hard for me to completely avoid dairy, but I switched to coconut and soy milks as a daily choice.

My point is that "giving up meat" doesn't feel like I've given up anything. I don't miss it like I thought I would. There's no craving for it. What's been interesting is that attempting to be vegan has led us to eat a much larger variety of foods. Thai and Indian, of course, but also more diverse choices that are traditionally meat-based but with tofu or bean substitutions.

Beyond the carbon footprint argument presented in this article, there's also the water footprint to consider, where industrial animal farming plays a large role in that shortage through usage and pollution (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0483-z.epdf).

oldprogrammer2··on Ask HN: Are you satisfied with Elixir or do you regret choosing Elixir?
My biggest hurdle was being too impatient to learn how to code with immutable data. I banged my head on the desk for two days to get through what I felt was a trivial problem (something with updating files in S3), which I eventually rewrote in python in less than an hour.

Immutability (and the resulting maintainability and predictability) is really appealing to me, though. When I try it again, I think I'll focus on educating myself around the language upfront and not just learning as I go.

Everything else about the language, Phoenix, and the tooling was really nice.

For the same reasons as others have said, I would not pick Elixir for a business, though.

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