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papafon No, we won’t have a video call for that

And... informal communication has to be in a video call? It can't be in writing?

On video calls and in meatspace, you get to see peoples facial expressions, their smiles, they can move their hands and make gestures. I much prefer that to text.

As for the human contact, I do recommend having a social life outside work. Distributed or not distributed work.

You are correct but, personally, I think spending 8 hours a day without seeing faces is too much.

papafon No, we won’t have a video call for that

Have you been in that scenario, ever? Video calls are infinitely worse than typed text between non-native speakers. And if the call is not going to be in english… why would the written communication be so?

I am in this scenario every work day as a non-native speaker. I much prefer talking to people than trying to get the text correct.

papafon No, we won’t have a video call for that

I disagree with a lot of this article because it assumes that we are efficient robots that just need things to be searchable and written down. Tools are also a bit lacking -- in theory writing stuff in a wiki is useful but then try finding the information with, say, Confluence search.

The article also assumes every one is a native speaker who can write quickly and clearly in a chat -- in a lot of international projects this is not the case.

I find that there is less chance for misunderstanding and aggression if you disagree over a video call. Also, human contact and informal communication make life and working more enjoyable.

papafon 10 Year Smartphone

A Fairphone is repairable and, using Lineage, has long term software support.

I have a Fairphone 2 as my main phone (released in 2015) and I am running Lineage based on Android 10.

papafon It's tough being an Azure fan

It's like asking why the knife you're using keeps cutting you when you put your finger on the sharp end.

Most cloud providers don't have this billing problem and so the analogy breaks. Its more like, why does this knife keep shooting me in the foot?

papafon How to build a search engine with Ruby on Rails

it routinely eats up close to 4 GB of RAM, which in my case is an entire VPSes worth and costs me about 60 Euros a year

You are absolutely correct that running other peoples Ruby code is expensive. I would argue similarly for Java because of the high RAM requirements.

However, if you are a company developing your own software, if you use a more productive technology and it spares just 1 programmer then you have paid for a few hundred VMs and running costs become insignificant compared to labour costs.

This is an argument in favour for both Rails and the Java monsters.

papafon I ruin developers’ lives with my code reviews and I'm sorry

I have been on several teams that found the following article "Unlearning toxic behaviours in a code review culture" very helpful:

https://medium.com/@sandya.sankarram/unlearning-toxic-behavi...

papafon Not so great experience interviewing at Twitter

Certainly not clarity of written communication.

papafon Canada aims to block Chelsea Manning from entering country

Sometimes I think Canada is more interested in portraying itself as a progressive beacon to the world than actually being one.

Its attitude to seals is not very progressive: https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/about-canadian-seal-...

Or the environment: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/alber...

papafon Nevada cops use civil forfeiture to steal a veterans life savings

The taxi could have been in on it -- its a trick that is normally used in poorer countries but looks like its reached the EU.

papafon Ask HN: What could a modern database do that PostgreSQL and MySQL can't

Two things stick out here that I don't fully understand.

Declarative schemas, and a well-defined update process (that isn't human-written DDL), are essential at any sort of organizational scale.

Isn't this impossible because some schema changes require data migration? A data migration cannot be declaratively automated as far as I know.

Queue support

Why not use a dedicated and feature rich queue such as Rabbit MQ or, if you want to get really fancy, Kafka?

papafon A nasty bit of undefined timezone behavior in Golang

One thing I would recommend when someone blames a bug on you -- without hesitation, always say "yes, I will take a look at it".

This way if you have to push back and say it wasn't you, you have much more impact because you have investigated the problem.

Edit: but I agree, that is no way to treat a colleague.

papafon A grim warning from Israel: Vaccination blunts, but does not defeat Delta

Even if actual flu related deaths reverted to a pre-2020 level, I guarantee it would still be news. People will still be wearing masks, state/local governments will be enforcing mandates, etc.

They were in pre-2020 for bad flu pandemics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_swine_flu_pandemic_in_Mex...

papafon The Rise of Meson

Gstreamer uses it. Those are some smart guys and I trust their choices.

I tried the Meson build of GStreamer last year. It didn't go well and I gave up because of time pressure.

I haven't looked at Meson since because CMake actually works.

papafon Ask HN: Why Bother with All This?

If you need to talk to someone immediately there is the Samaritans:

http://www.samaritansusa.org/contact.php

I have no idea what they are like in the US but they are very helpful in the UK.

papafon Ask HN: Is Spring Boot still the first choice for Java Back end development?

We're still using Spring boot and some JHipster. I feel quite productive in Spring boot and, even though I hate frameworks, its the best framework I have ever used.

papafon Brooks, Wirth and Go

In Go, you solve problems by outputting inhuman amounts of code.

The standard library manages to pack a lot of functionality in little code. Its probably not easy to write simple concise code in Go but it is certainly possible.

papafon Ask HN: Book Recommendations

Some general recommendations (these are not new books):

- The Phoenix Project. An easy read that is a good introduction to modern Dev Ops culture [1].

- Designing Data Intensive Applications. A technical introduction to distributed systems.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17255186-the-phoenix-pro...

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23463279-designing-data-...

papafon Error stack traces in Go with x/xerror

Linters such as golangci[1] which will warn if you ignore the return value. If you ever write Go again I highly recommend you look at golangci -- the security checks have been really helpful to me.

[1] https://golangci-lint.run/

papafon Google says geofence warrants make up one-quarter of all US demands

You can't even leave your mobile at home accidentally - that would trip alarm bells, especially if your contact does it at the same lunch hour.

This is straightforward to spoof. A single programmer could do it if they cared enough. It is possible to change the GPS (GNSS?) HAL to send any information you want [1].

[1] https://www.pathpartnertech.com/all-you-need-to-know-about-g...

papafon Benefits of Not Using an IDE

Is it even possible to do Android development without Android Studio?

Oh yes: https://www.lambdanative.org/

papafon Generics enabled by default in Go tip

Generics in C++ really damage the readability of the code sometimes, maybe the go devs have found a better way.

The culture might help. I think generics in Java are not overused -- partly because they are not so powerful and partly because Java, similar to Go, did not have generics for a long time.

papafon Taliban enter Kabul as Afghan government on brink of collapse

Thanks, that was an interesting read.

I read a book a while ago that was well researched and gave the impression that Afganistan would always belong to the Taliban. It was called "No Good Men Among the Living".

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17454723-no-good-men-amo...

papafon 1Password for Mac Moving to Electron

VS Code is the example that shows that you can create great Electron apps

I am a happy user of VS Code but it feels super slow if you use it shortly after using Qt Creator (QtCreator is written in C++).

papafon Looking into Zig

@ everywhere, for that I would keep using Objective-C

If you are triggered by the AT character, I recommend that you stay away from Slack and Microsoft Teams.

papafon New in Git: switch and restore

How do we allow our culture to be so lazy that people resist using one of the basic tools because "oh its hard I gotta remember 5 commands" and we find it OK? No wonder the plane is burning.

Its probably a rhetorical question but I think its worth answering anyway.

Experienced developers had the luxury of learning git, say, over a 10 year period. I certainly know a lot more git than 10 years ago.

If you are a new developer thrown into your first real project and Intellij handles git for you so that you can concentrate on being productive then learning command line git takes a back seat.

I see this in many aspects of programming. One thing I am struggling with currently, is that JHipster generates applications in a user friendly way. JHipster is highly productive and seems like the future of programming BUT it means that there will be a generation of programmers that do not understand the MB of Spring Java code that is casually puked out by the code generator.

Its depressing to say it, but I think not understanding the tools is only natural and is probably the new normal in this age of complexity.

papafon Thousands of scientists warn climate tipping points ‘imminent’

> What makes this group of scientists and their warning more legitimate than these previous “imminent tipping points”

Better models and more computing power?

papafon Google Offices to Mandate Vaccines

I don't let anyone else run RNA code in my cells

I think that happens every time you catch a cold.

papafon I went to the office for the first time. I fucking hated it

I have hopes for hybrid working but I think that it needs to be targeted.

A team should be in the office together on the same day. This day should have a schedule like a mini conference with talks, pair programming and architecture sessions.

We have done similar things in the past when two teams that are remote from each other come together and it works well. All the activities were optional and we went to a Beer garden at the end.

Simply going back into the office for a day and working as normal is wasting the personal contact time.

papafon Tesla AutoPilot – I give up, it's downright lethal

The same standard is applied to human drivers. I think it is called a "driving test".