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pcestrada

1,035 karma · joined May 15, 2008

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pcestrada··on Trying the software factory pattern
Have you produced anything shippable AND maintainable?
pcestrada··on OpenAI's Misalignment Framework: A Tactical Bid to Preempt Global AI Governance
OpenAI and Anthropic should be nationalized. I find it difficult to trust Sam Altman or Dario Amodei.
pcestrada··on German Rheinmetall open-sources its Battlesuite connected weapon system protcol
"The horror, the horror."
pcestrada··on Ask HN: How to approach first days on a new job as a senior engineer?
Just joined a new team as a senior dev last fall and went through this. I simply worked my ass off the first couple of months and asked a lot of questions and banged out some very high quality initial commits to make a strong first impression. Have a zen mind/open mind, things will be different and you may not care for some of the approaches taken. Play the long game and gradually make suggestions and changes as you get to know the landscape. My initial feedback from management was very positive, so this approach worked for me.
pcestrada··on Simple Physics-based Flight Simulation with C++
This was a wonderful book, it really helped lift the veil on how more complicated things were written in code for me. Also, I remember I was at the mall with my uncle and he offered to buy me a gift. I went straight to the bookstore and picked out this book. He was surprised that I picked out a book on programming, and rewarded me with some extra cash after purchasing the book.
pcestrada··on Game Engine Black Books Update (2019)
Fingers crossed that you tackle a Quake Black Book at some point.
pcestrada··on Ask HN: How to self-learn graphics programming?
This is an excellent book, and real breaks down the math into bite-sized chunks that can be easily consumed.
pcestrada··on The Art of Whaling: Illustrations from the Logbooks of Nantucket Whaleships
Folks might also enjoy the Nantucket PC game on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/621220/Nantucket/
pcestrada··on Biden wins White House, vowing new direction for divided U.S.
he was too inept to start war
pcestrada··on James Gosling: Java, JVM, Emacs, and Computing History [video]
I can attest to many mortgage payments successfully made thanks to Java.
pcestrada··on A guide to learning algorithms through LeetCode
Can you imagine having to learn all this just to make a connection to a database, process some data, and then persist it somewhere?
pcestrada··on An Intro to Compilers (2017)
"Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes"

-Dijkstra

pcestrada··on CDC says U.S. gatherings of over 50 people should be put off
Economic hardship does not kill those under 35. You need to focus on the social good.
pcestrada··on CDC says U.S. gatherings of over 50 people should be put off
Younger people die from the flu too. This is several times more dangerous.
pcestrada··on Russia deploys Avangard hypersonic missile system
This appears to be a destabilizing first strike weapon.
pcestrada··on Far Cry
Fantastic example of fog of war. Nice write-up!
pcestrada··on Life as a cancer patient: ‘it feels like dying from the drugs meant to save me’
My father was diagnosed with lung cancer 4 years ago. He is on his third round of chemo. I recommend reading "The Emperor of all Maladies" for an insightful book on cancer. Even though medicine has made great progress fighting cancer, the scorched earth approach is what most of these treatments come down to.
pcestrada··on Hacker News News Feed for the Mac Touch Bar
Not very useful at all. Few apps take advantage of it. The lack of a physical Escape key is also very annoying.
pcestrada··on Ask HN: How is your standing desk working for you?
Makes my lower back pain worse. I also can't get in the 'zone' as easily. I have a powered standing desk and sit at it 90-95% of the time.
pcestrada··on Ask HN: How do you manage your personal software projects?
I keep a journal using Google Docs. Whenever I make an entry, I have the date and a brief summary of any interesting thoughts related to the project, URL links, etc. I always keep a TODO list of what to work on next. This helps immensely when picking up the project again after a while to figure out what I was working on.
pcestrada··on Ask HN: How do you debug your code?
Log the hell out of the code.
pcestrada··on Ask HN: Where to start on creating AI for games?
I'm currently working my way through this book Artificial Intelligence for Games [1] and am finding it very approachable for someone with no background in AI.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Games-Ian-Mill...

pcestrada··on Using Clojure at MixRadio
How did you convince management to let you use Clojure? Some of the devs where I am are interested, but I suspect management will be quite hesitant to embrace a new language.
pcestrada··on Unreal Engine Marketplace now open
I'd rather program in C# in Unity than C++ for UE4.
pcestrada··on A Rare Peek Inside Amazon’s Massive Wish-Fulfilling Machine
I work at Kiva Systems as a software engineer, located north of Boston. We do a lot of work with robotics and Amazon scale web service development and we are hiring. Check it out at: http://www.kivasystems.com/careers-at-kiva/

Happy to talk about it further. Email me at pestrada AT kivasystems.com

pcestrada··on Association between muscular strength and mortality in men (2008) [pdf]
Use your smart phone to record yourself.
pcestrada··on Smart Guy Productivity Pitfalls
This reminds me of a quote from Richard Hamming's talk "You and your research"

``Knowledge and productivity are like compound interest.'' Given two people of approximately the same ability and one person who works ten percent more than the other, the latter will more than twice outproduce the former. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the opportunity - it is very much like compound interest. I don't want to give you a rate, but it is a very high rate. Given two people with exactly the same ability, the one person who manages day in and day out to get in one more hour of thinking will be tremendously more productive over a lifetime.

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

pcestrada··on Civilized Discourse Construction Kit
Wow... another multi-million user platform has just been born.
pcestrada··on Engineers suck at finding the right jobs
A person's reputation is an important factor in evaluating what they say.
pcestrada··on New Actionscript compiler from Adobe
I have 3 years doing full time Flex development. Have yet to see these problems. We deploy to Windows/Linux and Flash Player has been the closest to write once/run anywhere that we've seen. We have nothing but good things to say about Flex development.
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