shortsightedsid

The only thing we want is to beat you at cricket.

- India.

My 10 year daughter loves legos but complained the other day it seems only boys play legos. I would argue that legos and building things for fun is STEM, and it's curious why girls aren't encouraged to play with legos as much as boys in the U.S. This is despite things like lego friends that are targeting younger girls. Once they hit around 10-11, then all the legos seem to be engineering oriented (robotics etc..), which she loves but can't understand why other girls don't get it.

Note: Am Indian and can totally see the same problem you noted.

The original software engineering study about the performance of some programmers being higher (28 times as per the paper) was in 1968 - https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=362858. After that there really haven't been any real studies to show that some programmers are an order of magnitude better than others. The reason why the original study is not longer relevant - it was done at a time when programming meant loading punch cards. I really want to see an evidence based study about the 10x progammer than something anecdotal.

Text Editor in College

It's funny that the tech industry is so insistent on side projects. I mean - would you hire a marketing person based on their 'side projects' or a corporate lawyer purely based on their pro-bono work? Likewise, who on earth asks a building contractor if they have any side projects? You would ask for references or find a contractor via someone you know. What about recruiters themselves? How does one judge if a person is going to be good recruiter or not? What about sales guys? Does anyone ask them - do you sell stuff on the side - Y'know maybe you just do door-to-door selling as a hobby. Or what about other engineering disciplines? Does one really ask a Mechanical Engineer or a Civil Engineer about their side projects?

If you want to learn Smalltalk, there is a MOOC that’s just started. http://files.pharo.org/mooc/. Also Pharo by example is a good book.

When FB and social media is used in a way that results in a "favorable" change its called the Arab Spring. When the result is "unfavorable" its called Russian interference.

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, With conquering limbs astride from land to land; Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name MOTHER OF EXILES. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Someone's old data from 2012 to build a core-image-sato using Yocto is just over an hour - http://www.burtonini.com/blog/2012/11/15/yocto-build-times/.

That said, core-image-sato used to be just a simple demo image. In my old build system, we would build the Arago Project for a TI SoC every night and it would take a few hours but that included a lot of the DSP code as well which was really slow too. So a couple of hours on average is my guess.

Oh, absolutely. The most familiar to software engineers is the AVR used in Arduino but there are so many 8 Bit micros out there (literally 10's of thousands different device) and new ones are coming out every month. So plenty of new development going on.

Nope. In an ideal situation the quality of my work and its impact is more important than the means and effort to achieve it. So live streaming won't work for me.

I really meant circuit/physical design rather than high level design i.e pre-tapeout. Also PCBs are visually designed though I learnt about using python above and need to check that out.

Interesting. I have not tried SKiDL. All my designs are in Cadence or Eagle. Thanks! I will try itout

While I don't disagree with your comment, it's a little ironic that hardware is designed visually. Instead of writing a netlist by hand, it's drawn as a schematic. The same applies to mechanical, construction or any traditional engineering fields. LabView targets engineers in those fields rather than those in software.

So, you are right that visual programming doesn't represent how a computer software works.. But it's exactly how computer hardware works.

It's a form of propaganda. Release just enough information to pip curiosity and speculation. Then call the rest of it classified. For all you know it could be having a dummy payload but call it classified and the bad guys would think that it has some advanced technology.

It's also means that they are looking not for tech talent but for skilled labor. Highly skilled labor assumes no re-education for the current job but does not account for future work. If you are a master carpenter or a master mechanic then you probably have invested on tools, educating yourself on your own time. You are also probably specialized.

E.g. you are highly qualified at fixing/tuning Ferraris but Toyotas are n't your thing. So you go to a Ferrari tune up shop where you can spend the $500,000 salary. /s

IMHO, Tech talent on the other hand works completely differently. They are more about talent (i.e designing stuff, critical thinking, analysis skills) rather than rolling into a specific shop to fix a specific issue.

That's where there seems to be this problem with "run a business, not a school" that they have.

Not really the right term IMHO. Instead of calling a return which implies ROI, it's a discount. If you did sell it at the higher price and notwithstanding taxes, overhead of inventory management, other costs and your make 27% then it's ROI.

Isn't that how it always works at Costco? If you buy in bulk - you save.

Your personal problems (and health and family) should always come first before work. Any reasonable manager should be able to recognize that and help you out. Worst case take a day or two off to solve your problem. Long run - day or two won't make a difference.

Not just Germany but I found the same problem in Amsterdam when I tried to set up Internet for my apartment. It took 2 weeks for it to be enabled and it was really surprising since it takes about a day or two to get it setup in AZ.

It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.

- Grace Hopper

It would be more interesting if the code was tied with parenscript instead of generating the raw HTML directly. That way you could generate the Javascript needed to manipulate the real DOM. Otherwise, this isn't a virtual DOM, it's only a minimal template engine.

Having sufficient factors. The only change I would do (if I could) is to make the metric system use Base-12. That would be something truly better because one-third would now be 4; quarter would be 3; half would 6; three-fourths would be 9. Compare that to 3.3333; 2.5; 5 and 7.5 of something.

Just like who hexadecimal is very natural in 8/16/32/64 bit computing, the "real life" usage of measures would be much easier if it was in Base-12.

You are right. I completely forgot about ADA and representative clauses. I remember reading that representative clauses mapping to register fields. And to be fair, basic and pascal also can be used for bare metal stuff.

I'm a embedded software dev and write code all day in C. Sure enough forth comes up in conversations once in a while as does other ideas like Python, JS, Lua etc..

Of all the alternatives to C, Forth is the only one which groks hardware. This is particularly important for embedded development. Any realistic alternative to C must understand interrupts, memory mapped registers etc.. Forth is the only one in which this is possible. Every other example I've seen always uses C for "low-level" access or a libraries. If you need to do that, then you won't win over embedded devs like me. It's much easier to write good embedded C code (no mallocs etc) than having to debug FFI.

Having said all that, my mind doesn't understand Forth. I'm too used to seeing code in C or even assembly to fully understand Forth. Nevertheless things like https://github.com/jeelabs/mecrisp-stellaris are really cool and are a realistic alternative to C.

Plans are nothing; planning is everything. - Eisenhower

No, but there are other parallels - Madoff, Skillings, Ebbers.

I think the problem is going to more in closing the startup. I don't know much about labor laws but it seems to me that it's easier to hire/fire people in the US. Startups by definition are very risky and therefore, it's likely you might scale people quickly and reduce if there is no market.

I'm in Amsterdam right now as well.

> Brakes don't work? Here, put this duct tape on the brake pads, now they work.

That's something which I have not seen. Not duct tape but brakes. I must be one of the few who don't have coaster brakes. Then again, expats don't really count.

> Somewhat uniquely, American bike enthusiasts are insane about safety. "You could DIE with an improperly maintained bike!", "Not wearing a helmet is like not wearing a seatbelt!" and "Walmart bikes are death traps" are things I've heard recently. But somehow, when the front of my $20 bike falls off (which has happened twice now) all I get is a minor scrape to my hands.

I think this applies to lots of things in the US comparatively. I can't imagine anywhere in the US having Canals and no guard rails; Jaywalking like you born to; Firecrackers in the middle of street for NYE. I think the US has too much of a "fear" attitude that's probably due to frivolous lawsuits, whereas in Amsterdam at least, it's more laissez faire. That translates to $1000 cycles for recreation vs $20 cycles for transport.

I recently moved for an year's assignment to Amsterdam. Intercompany transfer.

The process has been interesting. The main thing which took time was getting my Birth certificate legalized under The Hague convention a.k.a apostilled. After that it's documentation work which my company lawyer handled. Once I got here it's taken time to get used to the differences but thoroughly enjoy it.

Highly recommend it, if you can. The best route has been this - inter company transfer.

I was on the same boat given that I have used IRC for since the 90s. The one thing that Slack does solves is IT. It makes IRC "enterprisy" which means that IT can do account management, tie it with authentication etc..

The second thing it solves is management buyin. At my company we used Lync and I tried to introduce Hipchat, but nothing worked until the company President explicitly bought in to the idea of Slack. Not sure who or what convinced him but he made it clear that it's the tool he wants to use. Pronto, all 500 employees (baring some of us older guys), clicked their heels and marched.

IRC works great as technology and I love it. But Slack solves management issues and as a company I think that's their biggest advantage.