remixff2400

Yep, same experience. We were a company of largely bootcamp grads with past experience in the product area. Most people had tenures of 5+ years and everyone had great rapport. Made it to unicorn status and then some. Then, for whatever reason, the C-suite decided to let go of most of the senior engineering team (rumor was cost-cutting measures at the behest of investor(s)).

Went from IPO hopeful to struggling to position to sell the company now that it was obviously down-trending. Everyone else worth their salt left within a year. Biggest takeaway was how effective everyone was despite not having a traditionally strong engineering background, just because everything traveled so fast because everyone knew everything about the product and everyone was happy and eager to talk to one another, and how quickly that disappeared.

This is just a poor strawman/false dilemma: you don't have to be 100% or 0% for something to be effective or true. You're not addressing the actual claim (_why_ climate change is controversial, and particularly why the current structure makes it particularly controversial to corporations, etc.), you're just making a non-sequitur that everyone is affected by it.

It's like someone saying "tax fraud by billionaires is a massive issue" and responding "well, did you declare every single dollar on your tax forms hmm?": they're both issues, but the former is obviously a much more impactful, structural and relevant one. You're trying to nullify their argument by attacking the "purity" of the person, but that doesn't negate the truth of their point. This is like a greatest-hits of common logical/debate fallacies (strawman, false dilemma, non-sequitur).

I'd wager the main difference between "many decades ago" and mid 2000s onwards is the perceived stakes of college. My time in college (around that time) was perceived by most as "make or break": either you did well in college, or you were doomed to a sub-standard lifestyle (not to mention the debt of college tuition).

Obviously, whether this was true or not is a whole discussion, but the attitude did lead to a lot more cheating (due to desperation) than I'd imagine past generations had.

A midterm being worth 25-33% of a grade, plus some classes only being offered in fall or spring semesters meant a bad test could roughly cost you tens of thousands of dollars, since the next time you could retake the class would be in a year, and it often was a prerequisite for another class. It just leads to an environment that encourages desperate "survival" behavior.

Flow was a type checker (used to be Typescript vs. Flow debates early on before Typescript ended up with more support), Flux was the unidirectional data flow architecture.

From the guidelines:

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

because... they don't have as many examples, documentation, textbooks, or public example projects to base generation off of, perhaps. There may be a future where documentation/servers are more formally integrated with LLMs/AI systems in a way that makes up for the relative lack of literature by plugging into a source of information that can be used to generate code/projects.

I just started with it, so still getting my feet wet, but it's been better than any other tool at really grokking my codebase and understanding my intent. The workflow feels better than a strict IDE integration, but it does get pricey really quickly, and you pretty much need at least the $100 Max subscription.

Luckily, it should be coming with the regular $20 Pro subscription in the near future, so it should be easier to demo and get a feel for it without having to jump in all the way.

1. <- I think this is a good thing to focus on, and even lightly touched on in the video. The idea should be that you don't _need_ to be sophisticated to enjoy the sport. The NFL does well in this regard because it's pretty easy to understand that moving the ball forward is good, losing the ball is bad.

Where basketball misses there is that the "get the ball in the hoop" portion of that is _really_ boring now. I'd wager that people don't want to be concerned with some 3rd man setting a screen on the other side of the court allowing some 2nd man to set up behind a pick from a 4th man to get passed the ball from the 1st man to shoot a three... and then clank it off the rim. Then, rinse and repeat on both ends. The end result is that the "get the ball in the hoop" part just feels like a back-and-forth 3-point shootaround, even though the actual sequence is far more complex.

Seconding this: you don't try and fix things after the damage has been done, you try and anticipate _where_ and _when_ the damage could be done. In this case, giving a foreign _adversarial_ (<- emphasis) government significant leverage over citizen sentiment is a massive security hole.

Hard disagree: your own government at least has the incentive to make the country better (or at least appear so) to seek reelection. A foreign adversarial government has the incentive to limit the growth and power of the other country, in so far as it affects their own country.

Should you care about what your own government does with your data? Absolutely, 100%, no doubt, big ticket issue, fly the banners as visibly as possible. But more than an adversary? Not even close.

End users just won't care about the algorithm. Try talking to a niece or nephew, especially one who makes money on the platform about The Algorithm and you'll get blank stares, or, at best, a "yeah I know, but...".

If you've had better luck, let me know (actually).

As for "being China", every country has protections on what goes in or out of the country including media. A lot of countries won't let you own a newspaper or news broadcast channel, so this is the next extension of that sort of idea.

It's the same idea as not allowing a company from the USSR to run a news channel during the Cold War, although obviously the lines are fuzzier and still being discovered with apps and algorithms.

My read on the situation is that this is the beginning of clamping down on _all_ (or most) of this. Also important to note the difference between racism and national security. The notion isn't "wacky chinese people ooh so mysterious so sneky", it's that the government isn't the US's ally and has (valid) reasons to want to reduce the US's grip on the global stage.

It's not (just) that it poses an economic threat to one of the biggest US companies (which as you said, I'm sure plays a big part in why it's suddenly relevant), but that it allows a government-influenced foreign media channel to influence policy indirectly by means of mass dissemination.

As for why now and not before, it's because of how apparent the possible effects are now that there's a very direct and widely spread channel that can pump OUT information, which is vastly more effective and obvious than passive surveillance through cameras or other hardware. (Also cybersecurity people have been calling out this sort of stuff for hardware since time immemorial)

I mean, book banning isn't a federal level thing (at least not at any remotely broad level) and typically happens either on one side of the political spectrum (same deal with LGBT stuff), or at the level of individual school systems. e.g. you won't find that book at the school library at most, but the bookstore down the street will have it.

Vast difference from the typical notion of book burnings and such.

"Objective" media exists (NPR, PBS(?), CSPAN) but just isn't as popular because biased media attracts more attention through confirmation bias and flashiness.

The difference is that citizens can influence those companies, or influence the politicians that can influence those companies. Also, there's no direct incentive to have broad negative impacts on citizen consumers at a global politics level (not that it doesn't do so at other levels).

If you're another country consuming Meta, etc. then you should probably be wary about dependence on a foreign platform's influence. The biggest difference however is how close the platform is to the government. In the US, it's getting closer, but still has some separation; in China it's rather close to one-and-the-same due to the pressure that the govt can exert on companies to do their bidding.

Not my area of expertise per se, but the counterargument that I've seen is that the states (e.g. Oregon) that tried it never got the backstops in place to help soften and support the transition (i.e. rehab centers, support programs, social programs). Instead, it was just a hard switch that went expectedly bad.

There's at least a theory that people believe will work that hasn't been correctly implemented yet, but whether or not it's feasible to implement at all, I'm not holding my breath.

Implementation has been a big part https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36976670 (one of many discussions if you search for previous Hacker News articles)

Especially earlier on, web components were implemented without incorporating some of the major feedback from developers. What resulted was a low-level tool with some really awkward warts and APIs that was more-or-less unusable. (hence, one of the reasons why when web components discussions come up, lit is always mentioned since it needs that extra layer to paper over some of the warts)

TL;DR: it replaces some of the bad parts of Angular/React/etc. with its own set of bad parts that become more obvious only once you get deeper in.

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. > Eschew flamebait. (Hacker News guidelines)

There's a perfectly fine topic for debate here, but you'd do much better to word it in a less inflammatory way.

The internet has a lot of material, but kids also learn a lot from being around their peers. Lots of families have both parents that work and can't watch their kids at home, or take them to extracurricular activities. Also, depending on what area you're in, many teachers that I know have Master's degrees and do in fact know what they're doing, but are hamstrung in other ways.

That's the thing: we're _only_ 8 billion and amongst that we only have so many researchers and people who have the knowledge to do anything like that. We have limited capital to pursue any major initiative, so wasting it on unfeasible and non-beneficial initiatives like starting a Mars colony just wastes time we could do doing something more useful i.e. reforming deserts, stabilizing ecosystems, developing cheaper materials for various industries, etc.

I'm not sure how dangerous "de-extinguishing" a species would be, but we've had numerous faux paus with destabilizing ecosystems by introducing non-native species (i.e. lionfish, as an invasive species). These cause extensive environmental damage and can be irreversible if not contained in time. The worst thing that could happen is losing control over the population of de-extinct species and damaging an ecosystem(s).

That all being said, I'd be stumped if we somehow lost sight of a woolly mammoth... and I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to see one myself, so...

Isn't that the whole point of the article? Microbiome research is hard? In this case, we're just left with trying to extrapolate loosely based off of trends.

There's nothing to suggest that these things are bad for your health (as far as I'm aware) and there's a hypothesis (not a theory) that these might've contributed to gut microbiomes in the past. But, rather than conclusive proof, it might just be something low-stakes that people can try until more hard research or data is found that has a more conclusive direction, even if it disproves previous hypotheses.

Until then, we're left making best-guess efforts with no conclusive proof. But, suggesting that these have no benefit is also incorrect until we have conclusive data to suggest otherwise. Hence, the point of the article: figuring out stuff about the microbiome is hard.

I think your point makes sense, but the comparison of programming to swimming loses the thread of thought a bit. Swimming is not my forte, but there are books by professional marathoners on how to train for marathons, for example, that are valuable to read for forming proper training plans as opposed to "just figuring it out".

I think your opinion on OSS/large codebases makes sense, but I don't think it's an either/or situation: reading should _support_ actual coding, similar to how studying a grammar textbook for a foreign language is there to support actually speaking/listening/communicating in that language.

I think that some of the advice hasn't aged well into modern language features and computer power, similar to the GoF Design Patterns book. Rather than an entry level book, this would be better for a budding intermediate who can parse what is good and bad about it.

But, even then, other resources are better IMO. (Metz, Ousterhout, Kay, PragProg, language-specific design patterns books, etc.)

The experience of doing things wrong is valuable, but I think you also don't want to get quagmired there. It just depends on how voraciously/quickly you read and seek out better patterns.

(Also, elephant in the room, Uncle Bob has been very vocal and opinionated on the internet about various things and it hasn't endeared many to him because of it)

I think the argument isn't "engineer" vs. "farmer", but rather engineer (or doctor, interpreter, commercial farmer/farm manager, industrial project manager, any other specialization that realistically requires years of training) vs. lower-skilled labor like farmhand, non-management/unspecialized construction worker, stuff that can be taught and learned relatively quickly.

I wouldn't call "low-skilled" workers _unproductive_ per se, and personally think they're incredibly valuable, but economically, the cost/difficulty of replacing a "low-skilled" worker is relatively low: it's a lot easier to find a replacement farmhand than it is a replacement farmer that manages the farm itself.

Not as sure about electricians, but plumbers at least pay for it with their body. Even though PPE can reduce the strain, there's still a reason why these trades haven't just shot through the roof. Bad knees, bad backs, respiratory dangers, etc.

Trades in general are fraught with physical perils for the unaware.

The unfortunate part of this is that a large percentage of that small percentage is library maintainers, so it matters a lot more overall because of their role in the React space, even if users aren't necessarily using those features.

Spinning up DB instances is a lot faster now than it used to be in the past. There are even modules for in-memory instances of certain databases. The speed of a unit test vs. that of one that uses an actual database is small enough for it to be a real consideration.

That being said, of course, "it depends" on your use case. But I've found setting up this sort of test environment quite a bit easier now than writing database mocks, a lot less time-and-maintenance intensive, and relatively quick to run in any environment.

(Also, in a decade, I'm pretty confident this gap will get even smaller, while the time to maintain mocks will stay constant)