roneesh

Yeah, most won't really become devs, but they'll gain some newfound technical literacy and some respect for what devs do full-time.

It's important in these situations to look outside of the context and just see what's actually happening: people are learning. And that has more positives than negatives I'm sure.

Look, you can construct whatever narrative you want about power, people and the ebb and flow of capital, but it's pointless.

People like nice things. There I said it. Most people like nice cedar lined floors, expensive drinks and well cut clothes. And when you have those things, it's marvelous how quickly your disdain for the 'institution' evaporates.

Most of us aren't really hackers in that nostalgic sense. We're normal people, yuppies, kids, nerds, dorks, that one dude really into Aphex Twin in your office (everyone has one). We just happen to be good with computers.

The gas robo snake was retired after it caused a massive fire.

Hey, free electricity at least.

The single minded focus on taxes to recruit businesses strikes me as severely misguided. Sure, found a business here in Kansas where you save on paying high taxes on your business. Pay it all back when your child makes the mistake of enrolling in the University of Kansas system. Perhaps this isn't the specific case in Kansas, maybe the Kansas system has lowered costs, but I have a feeling you pay it back in some form when you finally, in some way start to imbibe on a now underfunded public entity.

I think that kind of thinking is really suitable for the JS world of a few years back. If you're just using vanilla JS + DOM API, it can be pretty messy to include HTML in your JS. However React's setState handles DOM changes and rendering, so it's less of a pain. So in answer to your question of why people don't, I think it's because they're not viewing this as a problem anymore.

I view these as a good litmus test for the company too. If they won't answer a question about the problem, or think it's very self explanatory, it might mean they're not the best at communicating.

I recently did a clojure problem where in the gist itself I asked for feedback and showed my thought process, but crickets until a month later when I followed up and they said they had moved on. I think it was for the best.

A good preventative measure might be agreeing beforehand on a time to discuss the solution. I know I certainly will next time.

Also hiring managers need to ACTUALLY read code. There have even been times I've asked if they've read my code before doing a lengthy drive, they've said yes, only to realize upon getting there they haven't. If you won't take some time to assess the code I've written and put my name on, I don't think I should be expected to drive 3 hours to meet you.

I appreciate the sentiment, that if you look at just gross impact, then a quant/hedge fund/think tank career might actually be more helpful than something more traditionally 'impactful'. But I can't help but feel that in it's quest to say something novel about social impact, it misses the soul of what it means to change the world for the better.

Don't try and ascribe a single reason here. Architecture, urban planning, the rise of the creative class, high-speed internet, remote work and America's burgeoning reckoning with it's awful racial history are all at play here. The life and death of an American city can have no single story, because a city is only a composite of American stories

Funny stuff, but it makes me want to just put my hands over my eyes and say "let a Dev ops guy handle it!"

Thanks for the resource!

Yeah they did kind of just sneak up about a year ago it seems. I remember getting into the field two years ago I didn't hear about them. I suspect the tipping point was the full migration to front-end frameworks instead of just plain JS/jQuery.

Impressive and awesome. This is perfect to catch up on using build tools. I focus on core programming concepts in my own work, and at work most of that stuff is automated to just a few commands, so I appreciate the gulp.js part of your tutorial most. Thanks for the great work.

When I teach HTML/CSS/JS, I tell my students this: "put as much functionality into HTML/CSS as you can, and use JS as a frequent, but last resort". I think that sums up the benefits of this article without carrying along any of the needles anachronisms (use pre-processors, they're great). With animations, transforms and html5 form validations, you can avoid JS for longer than you think.

Rather than another social debate on coding, let's get to the real problem with functional programming: There are not enough good resources for it.

It doesn't matter as much if FP'ers are arrogant if you can just learn it properly without them.

I've read blogs, academic papers, chapters in books and more about FP, but I've really yet to find a clear, concise and mutually agreed upon starting point. The best example so far has been a hard to find essay from Recurse Center. Perhaps one exists, but the fact that my searching didn't yield one (and I have searched) might be a more substantive reason for why more people don't FP.

While I don't have great advice to solve this, I'd like to point out a few things:

1. Don't project your desires on to her. You said she likes to talk on the phone, keeping in touch might be her favorite thing. Whereas something you value like some game/tech/hobby means very little to her. Talk openly with her about what she values in life and that's the best guide to what she can do for enjoyment.

2. People have to want to get out there themselves, they can and should have help, but ultimately it should be their desire. I'd say have a frank talk about her if getting out and meeting people is something she even wants (if she's not too sick to do so). Perhaps she's more interested in deepening her existing relationships.

3. Try various things, maybe it's hiking one week or for some months, maybe after that it's gardening or some classes. Maybe it's caring for a pet, there's just no way to know without trying some things. Finally it might be that a support group for her illness is best, perhaps it takes up most of her mental energy and sharing those concerns would lighten her up.

4. Talk to her. Open frank communication might take time, but I have a feeling it'll get the best results.

In my opinion, most sites should at least maintain a core subset of functionality that can work without JS. Sites existed before JS that let people read news and engage in commerce, there's no reason we should lose all that.

Also, as we now enter a future where billions of people who never used a desktop computer begin mobile banking, being able to conduct business without JS might be one avenue to combat fraud.

Definitely an issue! We try half baked things and they just stick around. On the other end of the spectrum, once something works, it's kept around forever. It's interesting, this industry seems ripe for disruption, but it hasn't happened yet. I think maybe because we think any tool will do, when in reality we need a 10X tool like any other industry. Also, your customers are people who are far less computer savvy than other groups, so UI/UX issues are paramount.

I'll second this, before becoming a programmer I was a mechanical engineer in piping, we have tons of inefficiencies like this still. Partly it's that the people who run these industries are comfortable to keep using fax and e-mail, but another issue is that companies often don't have access to good technical knowledge to pick the right tool or develop better ones. Huge opportunity here.

Shortly after she says she's come to "rely heavily on data", she says "This post, however, is going to be a bit of a departure. Rather than making broad, sweeping conclusions based on a lot of data points, I’m going to narrow in on one story that happened".

I think she did a great job of doing exactly what she set out to do, and since this is just one anecdote, any qualitative or numerical data she presents won't be worth much, all the more reason to omit it and just share the story.

I've actually never compared the two versions to see if one is much better than the other. At the time it was released, it was kind of a fact that the translations lost some/major nuance, however I played them in English and enjoyed them greatly nonetheless. I'd say treat it as translated literature: the translation perhaps isn't enough to do scholarly work on, but for enjoyment's sake it's probably just fine.

Can the author expound upon his encounters with universal basic income and his decisions on how to include it in the piece? I see that it's mentioned in the piece as something that can assuage the financial loss of work, but not the loss of civic cohesion or meaning in people's lives. However I feel that this idea was not an alternative the author seriously investigated, if you're still commenting can you confirm?

Did you encounter any deep exploration of what even a basic $1000/mo. guaranteed income might mean for people lacking work? What guided your thinking in how to approach this aspect of dealing with a post-work future, did it just feel too different, or another topic entirely?

Thanks for commenting here and thanks for the great piece!

I am beyond excited! I never thought Shenmue 3 would be released. I remember when Shenmue 1 came out, it was billed as Yu Suzuki's opus, and at the time the world's most expensive game at 70 million USD. To leave your opus unfinished must be hard, so I'm glad he's getting to finish it up properly (or, given the success, continue it).

For a certain generation of gamer, Shenmue isn't just a game, it's an event. It's a game I've often thought of over the years, to me it felt like a truly adult gaming experience. And to this day I still feel like it's one of the best examples of using gaming as a storytelling medium. I thought I would have to go my whole life not knowing if Ryo Hazuki would get revenge on Lan Di, and now, finally I'll get some closure.

Seems like a lot, but if you consider cost of translation, studio time, voice actors, etc, I can see it being 100k, especially if you want to pay the translators and actors fairly.

I sort of agree, I can see virtues, but I've never seen good examples. From all my full-stack work, it's hard for me to imagine really pure isomorphic examples. Definitely we'll have similar patterns and such, and small snippets that work in both contexts, but large functionality line for line code that works in the context of a server and a client, well I've yet to see good examples (anyone feel free to point me to some!). Perhaps that's not the goal of isomorphic code, but if it's just re-using small lines here and there, I can translate from one language to another pretty well.

I'll go on record as saying I think the slider is a good idea. It's the subtle difference between picking from a pre-defined list at once versus exploring your feelings sequentially that makes it valuable. If as the weeks go on they change the wording so you don't always remember the answers it can be a way to consider each option without a bias towards another choice. If you see all options at once, you immediately compare them, if you view them sequentially you consider each one more independently. Perhaps this is a pointless distinction for some (and for some personalities I'm sure it is), but to me it's valuable to take time and process and explore my feelings, rather than choose as quickly as possible.

I really love the slider, the fact that you can't see all options at once makes your reflection less automatic, you consider each one as you slide up and down.

'Old code' !== 'Bad Code'

I would say that's an assumption we as developers need to teach society, but we should really work on teaching it to ourselves first. I can't tell you how many times I've heard "We should just start over" rather than try and understand what we have.

I think you're taking their conceit of a VP audience too seriously. To me that just feels like a fun narrative choice, and the article is just intended for any adult dealing with and slightly bewildered by code.

A lot of people find themselves in this role, people who specialize in other fields but still need to interact with developers because software is eating the world, but more quickly it's eating their role.

I never considered this! But it's fun to think about!

I'm a bit naive about the environments languages have to run in... but if we have a web app framework in Swift, Servers in swift (as mentioned in comments above), and iOS in swift, doesn't that make Swift a JS replacement too?

Very interesting! How exactly does writing about interviews get you the income? Is it ads, affiliate links, etc?