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rohanprabhu

150 karma · joined February 20, 2011

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/rohanprabhu; my proof: https://keybase.io/rohanprabhu/sigs/yQzqbbgDlUiml15lM4oHjc9HRBSUeI2FmbvwbScq-o4 ]
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rohanprabhu··on Workday to acquire Pipedream
Try out https://composio.dev/ (disclosure - I work here)
rohanprabhu··on Misbrands
ferris.svg - The rust mascot crab (called "ferris") with the face and color of Gopher (the golang mascot)

github.svg - GitHub in a Gitlab styled logo

javascript.svg - JavaScript written in a Java-styled font + the Java logo (Sun/Oracle)

pip.svg - Pip (the python package manager) styled in the npm logo style (node.js package manager)

rails.svg - Ruby on Rails with pretty much the rails logo, but in the color of WordPress. Also the "RubyOn Rails" text theming is in the style of the WordPress logo typography

react.svg - ReactJS in a the Angular logo, including the font style

rust.svg - (this one was truly painful, personally :P) "Rust" (the language) displayed in the node.js logo font styling, including colors

ubuntu.svg - "Ubunutu" styled in the debian (linux distribution) font styling, along with the debian logo. This one specifically, is where the hybrid feels the most accurate since Ubuntu is a debian-based linux distro, but I do believe the communities don't get along very well (or at least that's the running joke)

vscode.svg - VS Code (Visual Studio Code, the IDE/Text Editor) displayed in the "Vim" logo font styling and the logo with the stylized "V"

rohanprabhu··on One man, eight years, nearly 20k cat videos, and not a single viral hit
Don't know if it is the HN effect or what, but the article says that the channel has 100 subscribers whereas at the moment of writing this comment, the number is around 12.2K.
rohanprabhu··on Show HN: I'm 12, learning JS, and wrote Wolfram's cellular automaton in Node
spring break
rohanprabhu··on Artificial Intelligence Still Isn’t All That Smart
Not OP, but I think they are referring to the basic premise of evolution. We still don't have a concrete theory on what causes mutation to occur, only one about which mutations end up surviving and sustaining across generations.

As such the evolution of human intelligence is largely an enormous chain of favorable mutations having been coupled and survived over billions of years. And each mutation that did occur was owing to nothing more than chance.

rohanprabhu··on What was it like to self-learn programming before Stack Overflow? (2016)
I think that is what it is meant to be. Mostly an exchange of opinions and discussions. Stackoverflow happens to be much more formal and precise. So, while a question like "How do I use RxJava primitives with Spring MVC" is better suited for StackOverflow, a question like "Do you believe reactive programming is highly misplaced in most situations" is more quora-ish... or at least that's the way I think of them.
rohanprabhu··on Google Spreadsheets and Python
Back at my previous company, which was a travel startup, there was a list of curated vacation packages that were created for every weekend. So, the itineraries team used to spend 5 days designing the packages and getting vendors on board, and then they used to fill up a google sheet with the details in it and the devs used to run a script, which used to populate this rows in the database and make any other updates required and it used to show up on the website. The reasons why this worked so well for us:

1. There were at the most 30-40 rows. Google Spreadsheets works amazing for small table sizes (although not as small as 30-40, I'd assume upto 1500-5000 should be fine as well).

2. All non-dev teams were EXTREMELY comfortable with Google Spreadsheets. For people with non-engineering backgrounds, a spreadsheet is an amazing, low-barrier entry to structured data which I believe is what made this solution amazing.

3. The dev team was completely removed as a dependency, and we had staging environments where they would run it first to ensure it was working properly, so a dev could be engaged only if their spreadsheet run wasn't working as expected or due to some other issue. The previous method was a huge email sent out to the devs, who would handcraft it into a JSON, which would then be passed to a script and then written to the database. This required every run to be effectively final.. there were only so many times one could engage a dev.

4. While we had to engage a dev to execute the script, it actually is very easy to integrate a menu option within the google sheets interface itself (if you are using Google Apps) for your domain, which would say something like 'Deploy to Staging', although we never got around to actually building this.

For startups where product turnaround time is required to be short, this works as an amazing solution as it makes so easy for non-tech guys to input data into the system. While there is no doubt that a fully developed panel for these operations would be the best solution, one doesn't always have the luxury of time.

rohanprabhu··on Ask HN: What “new” programming languages will you be using in 2017
Definitely Kotlin. I had a meeting with my team and talked about the advantages of Kotlin and why I believe we should start writing a proportion of the new modules in Kotlin and have asked for their input. This is one of the cases where it needs to be unanimous decision, but so far everyone seems in favour of it and looks like we'll be writing a good amount of Kotlin in the coming months.

The reason why I believe Kotlin is a great way ahead is - Great java interop, removes a huge amount of boilerplate, results in very readable code and extremely easy to learn (one of the reasons we could not switch to Scala was the steep learning curve which would be a big problem for new developers joining us).

rohanprabhu··on Amazon launches Prime Air, its own dedicated cargo planes to speed delivery
I worked NA logistics back when I was with Amazon, and was with the team behind the LA fresh and the team which works with intermediate FCs (they don't stock goods, but do store-and-forward at crucial locations in the logistics pipeline). And you are right, Amazon does an incredible amount of stuff when it comes to logistics. There is an entire building that houses trans & metrics team, and the hyderabad center in India is mostly just the transportation team.

Amazon is way ahead in the logistics game, even further than some of your flagship logistics companies.

rohanprabhu··on Predicting one of 2 characters you will randomly press
So, I tried a simple python one-liner:

[os.urandom(1)[0] < 128 for x in xrange(0, 100)]

and typed 'd' for True and 'f' for False in the array, bringing the accuracy of the predictor down to 53%. Theoretically, I'm guessing doing it for large enough numbers should make it exactly 50%.

rohanprabhu··on GitLab Partners with DigitalOcean to make CI more affordable
Just my 2 cents, but how gitlab has constantly improved over all other features, I would really love to see issues get the same treatment. The current issues system is simple, easy to use and works fine but we really didn't find it to be scalable when moving to bigger teams. Labels as a primitive method of categorization is fine, but it very soon becomes unmanageable. Getting to a feature set like JIRA is too much to ask I guess, but a middle ground would really help keep everything in gitlab.
rohanprabhu··on GitLab Partners with DigitalOcean to make CI more affordable
Kind of off-topic, but the work GitLab is putting in and the things they come up with every other day is crazily impressive. We moved from Github to GitLab sometime ago and we believed that to be a trade-off for moving to our own infrastructure. It always seemed like GitLab wasn't "quite there". Today, however it is a whole different story. We pretty much cannot go back to Github at all because of how well-integrated, stable and beautiful this product is.
rohanprabhu··on Java for Everything (2014)
Huge fan of Java, and at my company we actually do end up using Java for everything, but we are very cognizant of the fact that it is very specific to us, our deployment and runtime infrastructure. This article feels extremely opinionated and myopic to me. For instance,

> (python is) the wrong tool for code of any size written for pay, because you’re doing your employer a disservice

rohanprabhu··on The Single Piece of JavaScript on HN
Not just you. I don't see why this warrants a 12 minute video.
rohanprabhu··on Mern: Build JavaScript apps using React and Redux
Not sanitizing input, by either scrubbing out any <script> tags, or escaping those characterst to html entities.
rohanprabhu··on Show HN: Intuitive nutrition information
Not that it matters if it is added, I can see the rationale behind this. Generally when people are following a program, depending on the program and the cycle (bulking or cutting), there is a set amount of proteins one should consume (1.5g/lb of body weight, 1g/lb of body weight etc.) and the remaining calories are to be attained from carbs/fats in some ratio (which in some cases might not even be defined, but left to preference).
rohanprabhu··on Exercise alone doesn't make you lose weight
Because people who follow their advocacy generally don't understand this.
rohanprabhu··on Google's Corporate Login
It is the MOMA login page :) From my time at google (around 6 months ago), you can access this page for a lot of services, but some of them will be accessible only from the intranet (or if you login to a VPN from the internet). What has changed is the number of services that are now accessible from the internet.

Also, when I was working there, I could not remote into my desktop from my company laptop from my home without signing onto VPN. Not sure of that has changed, but they wished to phase out VPN completely.

rohanprabhu··on [dead]
Shouldn't the title be 'Why it's called i18n'?
rohanprabhu··on Ask HN: Salary in Stockholm?
In the link that you provided, it asks if I am a member of the Swedish church? Can you please shed some light on how that affects taxation?
rohanprabhu··on Pianist asks Washington Post to remove review under 'right to be forgotten'
Most of the times when someone prominent uses the right to be forgotten, they go from 'a slight chance to be forgotten' to 'celebrity level remembrance'
rohanprabhu··on Ask HN: Key-Value Store Database with Historical Lookup?
Glad to help. Feel free if you need any more pointers from my experience with this solution!
rohanprabhu··on Ask HN: Key-Value Store Database with Historical Lookup?
I don't know of any dedicated package that does this, but at my previous company, we had a similar requirement, for which we used DynamoDB with a Range key, where the range key was the timestamp. So, if the value of a key 'x' was 'y' at time '4', then you could do get(x, 4) to get the value at 4 or even get(x, <5), get(x, <6) to get the value at times where a specific entry wasn't there and it will return the latest value entered at a particular time. Plus sortation by time was a plus :)
rohanprabhu··on No, I’ll tell you the answer
I am going to be a part of a startup in the near future (really the "near" future.. 1-2 weeks to say) and the numbers although haven't deterred me, but I will admit, I am a bit scared. So, I am just going to finally ask this. What percentage of startups fail? I know that it is more likely I will fail rather than succeed, but I would really like to know the odds.
rohanprabhu··on Show HN: Browser plugin that turns 'disrupt' into 'bullshit'
It is so unfortunate that bullshitive is not a word...
rohanprabhu··on How to Measure the Speed of a Blender
From the comments: Use a twine, interleave it around the blades and let it run for a second or two. With a long enough twine, the number of knots divided by the number of seconds gives you the RPS :) Like the thought, but at around 380 RPS, I don't think I will find a twine long enough.. plus the twine will offer a very high resistance to the blade after only a few knots..
rohanprabhu··on Online JSON editor
Poe's law is in action here, so I am not sure if you're serious. In case you are, you were not blacklisted for abuse, but the service you were using (the JSON editor) was blacklisted for abuse by the service that was hosting it (rawgit.com)
rohanprabhu··on Original Stitch Offers 1 Billion Computerized Design Combinations
Hi. Apologize for the late reply and kudos for following up on the feedback. I am not denying in any way that you have solved a problem. My only point was that the '1 billion' number is quite misleading, because I will dispute you on the "unleashing people's imagination" part. The problem I see in your argument is that you are comparing yourself with a local store that sells readymade shirts. You need to compare yourself with a local tailor instead. I am not in US, so I don't know what the market there is, but if I were to walk in any store in my country I still have more than 200 different patterns to choose from (http://raymondindia.com). Also, I am not sure if getting a tailor offline is expensive or not in US. Also, one of the great factors I see is convenience. You are totally selling me your idea when you say "in a few clicks" and not when you say "unleash your imagination". Your pricing also seems extremely reasonable and that is another selling point for me.

Everything aside, I really think your app is great and I would definitely give it a try when I visit US next time (I hope you deliver it in 1-2 weeks, because that is generally how long my trips are) :)

rohanprabhu··on Why I'm sending back Google Glass
This is off-topic, but the sensibility of EU provisions always amazes me. In other countries, it is pretty much up to the companies to offer such relief to the consumer as a response to competition, but there really is no such requirement, which makes monopolistic industries much worse.
rohanprabhu··on Original Stitch Offers 1 Billion Computerized Design Combinations
I personally believe that the title is quite misleading. Although factually correct, it kind of makes it sound like a much bigger deal than it actually is. If I give you 10 fabrics to choose from and 10 button styles, I am offering you a 100 different shirts that way. The problem is that other than 1 or 2 button styles, others would look way too ugly. So, even though this is highly subjective, for the most part of it, looks like almost all of the combinations, from within a billion are not really feasible, and you really won't count 2 shirts with a slightly different inner cuff fabric as two different shirts. Right now, they have two pocket styles. If they were to add 3 more pocket styles (triangle cut, round cut, with or without button), then they have jacked up their shirt collection to 3 billion.

I am not just nitpicking on the number. The problem is that the customization isn't any great than what you would get a local shop. When I saw the title, I thought I would be able to design the fabric itself via combinations. That is what would result in really unique shirts for me, at least to the extent to what is implied by the title.

What the title really needs to imply is "customizable shirts" and that is something that is still amazing to me, and is great and something I would pay for.

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