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philaquilinaon Catalyst: a new front-end developer training program

I'm also a Dev Bootcamp graduate and I work at Hipmunk now as a software engineer. Something like 93% of my class (summer) got hired so I'd say there's _some_ empirical evidence. What kind of engineers we'll be in a year's time will be even better evidence and from my own personal experience, I think the results will be positive.

philaquilinaon Tossing Out IRB for Pry

Good eye! I am indeed half maltese. Although atheist, I've always subscribed to the (secular) symbolism of the the 8 points on the cross, so I thought it a good symbol for the site.

philaquilinaon Tossing Out IRB for Pry

Ha yea, there's a typo there. The gist is cached by the wordpress plugin. Going to fix it at lunch.

Should look like this: [20] (pry) main: 0>

philaquilinaon Startups Court Dev Bootcamp’s Ruby Grads, 88% Have Offers At Average Of $79K

As an incoming student for the next round, who just quit his mech engineering job to do this, I can't tell you how nervous I was about signing up a few months back. Before I decided to take the plunge, I talked to Shereef, audited the class, emailed then-current students, and followed their blogs, and I can tell you it quickly became obvious this was going to be very successful.

With less than month before the next cohort begins, the incoming students are already prepping themselves, going to study groups, going to meetups together if they're in the area, asking questions through a facebook group. And the mentors are already helping in any way they can. I love learning but the level of camaraderie and community I feel truly gets me excited for my 10 weeks there. This is teaching done right.

philaquilinaon Evernote CEO to entrepreneurs: "don't do it"

I think you are thinking of "change the world" in the "topple bad governments, empower the meek, help make this world a utopia" type of way. Evernote is changing the world.

If you make 30 million people's lives just a tad bit easier, then yes, you've changed the world. If you've caused other companies to take note and copy your business strategy/idea and THEY make people's lives easier, then yes you've changed the world.

Yes, he's rich, but I think he's saying that was a side effect of purer motivations. If you're in it to be rich, then you're in it for the wrong reasons. If you're in it create an amazing product and be impactful on a stranger's life, then you're in it for the right reasons.

Just my take. Could be wrong.

philaquilinaon Wisdom I picked up from Eloquent Ruby, Chapters 1-9

Some programmers would argue that using self.method_name helps clear up ambiguity to humans who read the code, even if it is equivalent to method_name

This is the reason I highlighted it. I had heard both sides of the argument from peers and was a little conflicted myself. Russ is simply the highest authority I've encountered to have an opinion on it.

philaquilinaon Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting

Whoa, no kidding. The majority of people are not going to stop on those two letters and consciously differentiate "virus" from "PC virus."

philaquilinaon Flashback trojan reportedly controls half a million Macs and counting

As someone who used to sell Mac computers, I used to get asked the question "Is it true macs never get viruses?", to which I replied "No that's not true." (It was just an apple reseller store afterall so I was never compelled to bend the facts.) I'd try to explain the caveats a bit: a smaller market share and the unix based operating system requiring more permissions, yada yada, being "prohibitive" to an attack but still vulnerable. Still, for 3 years that question came up a few times a week, even as apple started taking off (2006-2009 ish) and grabbing more and more of the market.

I guess it was just amazing to me how disinformation like that flows so freely. It probably started out with the caveats but eventually got boiled down to "Macs never get viruses". And what computer company is going to publicly correct that statement?

philaquilinaon EMC Buys Pivotal Labs

I was very surprised by this too. It sounds like EMC is trying to establish some kind of legitimacy in the startup world.

I feel like Pivotal gets a lot of respect from the hacker community. I wonder what kind of fallout this will have there.

philaquilinaon I'm moving to Silicon Valley and living in my car

While I won't argue with the fact that you should donate, I never felt any pressure to donate while I was taking classes there. I didn't even know there was a donation bin on-site until you mentioned it. To me, that was the cool thing about the place and made me want to donate more.

I admittedly haven't been there in about 9 months though and I never noticed a homeless problem while I was there. Everyone seemed to be a contributor. Have things changed?

philaquilinaon I'm moving to Silicon Valley and living in my car

One suggestion on working spaces if you're traveling up to the city. There's a place called Noisebridge in the Mission that is more or less a free hacker lounge with a lot of creative folk in. The only caveat is that it tends to be noisy and sometimes it feels a little too hipster for my tastes.