southpawgirl

A thing of beauty ️

"there's not some massive conspiracy here - go ahead, use React/Ember" I wish it were the case; whilst for my own projects I certainly follow such advice, I've found that in industrial settings Angular is seen like a framework that delivers quickly and "if you don't like it probably you don't understand it", and therefore trying to oppose its choice raises eyebrows ("ah you want to bill us more days", or "duh! our consultant wants us to make exotic||obsolete choices"), more than it triggers any objective discussion.

After ~1 yr of experience with Angular, I have to say I fully agree. Debugging is a pain, for a start, and so is delving into the source code. Plus, it's incredibly complex and opinionated and still it leaves it really easy to slip into really poor practices and untestable code (observe the complexity and verbosity of this best practice guide: https://github.com/mgechev/angularjs-style-guide). The real deal breaker is, however, performance in complex pages.

I much prefer to write my own controllers and models and use Reactjs for the views.

I agree with the idea of 'sensitivity training'. Sometimes empathy is only latent and needs to be showed the way to express itself. Harsh punishment is of no use in this.

I don't like summary condemnations of people "to set the example". The guy has been uncouth and rude but it was just a (drunken? Tourette-like?) outburst.

As a women in tech I am more worried that, if we don't use with other people the same open-mindedness and fair play we ask for, we'll end up being dreaded or hated more than (maybe begrudgingly) accepted. I see nothing wrong in firing someone who promotes discrimination but hey, this was just a guy being a troll. One could as well have used magnanimity in dealing with it. Just my 2 cents.

Ouch! Thanks a lot.

Agree! Indeed, the comparaison with portals springs to the mind. While the amount of items (links, people, services, cultural niches) available increases, the need for more specialised and fragmented avenues of consumption increases. It's not difficult to imagine a scenario when one can pick and mix completely their online experience and still find their their social connections across different platforms, with the use of some meta tool, like an OpenId that also exposes the patterns of activities of one's friends.

As a purely empirical, nonrepresentative sample, I can see that most of my friends on Facebook are fairly quiet nowadays and my own account is virtually dead. It's still quite useful to have a FB a/c in order to authenticate on other apps; maybe FB will transforms itself into the aforementioned meta-tool...? Until it's superseded by a more specialised one...

Sexism is a reality in the tech industry. Something has to be done. I agree with the intention, 100% -- I am much less sure about the means. Self-segregation is only reinforcing a us-vs-them attitude. Sexism starts with a cultural attitude that ignore the issue of micro-iniquity: it starts as a mental construction based on conscious or unconscious value wrongly bestowed to the members of some broad cultural category: it's this fallacy that needs to be removed. Self-ghettoisation is, at best, a remedial plaster on a wound, at worst it makes things worse. Not to mention that us girls often partake in broad categorisations, prejudices and stereotypes, sometimes against our own 'kind' (see the women attitude described in http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/09/14/1211286109.full...)

Today the problem is women, tomorrow (and, well, today too) black people, LGBT... is it really the shortest way towards the elimination of unfair handicaps and perceptions, to tackle one 'category' at a time?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality

I don't "get" SF, not as a place to live in (e.g. one that should satisfy all my needs, practical and intellectual). To me, SF is the mum in the Woody Allen sketch that keeps saying "Do your homework! Brooklyn is not expanding!" -- aka, no time for introspection or philosophical pursuits. I've found there, on top of social inequality, a curious brand of intellectual pragmatism, something like: if you cannot market it, then it's not interesting. But maybe it's a distorted perception?

This post is brilliant. It puts into words an unspoken but pervasive sensation I had in the small town I grew up in, before leaving for greener pastures: it didn't ask me (or anyone else) to be anyone or anything better than I already was. I hated it for its leniency, for its forgiveness that ended up being suffocating. It makes sense to choose to live in a demanding place.

I handed in my notice recently. My situation was somewhat similar to the one of the poster: project really not that interesting, unglamorous company, so-so salary, but casual atmosphere and not much to do, and I got to keep a lot of energy available to study and pursue my own coding projects. Then there was a change in management and pressure went up tenfolds, so I resigned.

First, I recognise now that it's potentially a bad idea to keep a job just because it does allow you to coast. There's a depressing quality in such choice; work representing the most part of our day, underperforming by choice, by remaining in an undemanding job, can even lower our self-esteem. I didn't do me much good, in any case.

Secondly, I am leaving because the market allows me to do it, because I know I am likely to find something better in a reasonable time. I could have handled the pressure, I could have remained and try to make that place a better place, but it's simply not in my best interest and it did more sense to just quit.

The position of the poster baffles me a bit: he recognises that conditions have changed and instead of adapting or refusing the new state of things, he dumps his responsibility to his own happiness to someone else: his manager. Indeed having good developers, in the current state of the market, is a privilege. In five years or ten years it might not be the case. Why making a case of us vs them? Isn't simpler to just take advantage of the bull dev market and leave?

It's naive, but widespread, from the part of managers to believe that by increasing the pressure they will get more bang for their buck. Let's them learn the hard way, until we can afford it. To moan and not budge is almost suspicious - maybe the poster is not so sure of himself after all? - and counterproductive for every party involved.

Or make jobs paying Walmart-style salaries pay somewhat more... ? Although I disagree with the conclusions of the article (it doesn't take lots of complexities into account, education level, family issues, disability, etc), the logic behind choosing welfare over a dismally paying, soul-crushing menial job is totally sound.

That's fine, no embarrassment needed... I understand the act of the moderator but I also believe in taking the mystique out of random socialisation over the internet, which is an enlightening and innocuous pastime.

I spent only one week in SF: I found the vibe horrendous. The existence of a caste system based on ethnicity and culture is incredibly evident just by taking a stroll in the city -- it was disturbing, and it made me feel unsafe (please note that normally I live in a rough London area, I am no shrinking violet).

I agree with the author of the post that successful entrepreneurs have a social responsibility towards the territory; otherwise they are just exacerbating the tension between 'classes'.

> so you're trying to copy one array into another, but sometimes you have an empty value and you want the output to be contiguous.

This made me giggle. Thank you Sir.

> and six months (and $8 million) later a fantastic solution was delivered

In real life the solution applied wouldn't be this one, nor the cheap fan, but some dude being paid peanuts to shake each box by hand.

True, and as I said, it does seem ridiculous to me. At the same time, I understand that progress has often broader implications that might appear as a price too high to pay for the society. So, I just abstain from casting stones in that case; even if on the whole I am quite happy I am not in France anymore.

In some Italian cities the situation is no different: taxi licenses are issued only on a fixed, limited number and are sometimes inherited from father to child, often sold for mind-boggling amounts (comparable to the price of a house). The service as a result is quite crap: long waits, high prices per km and all the most contrived surcharges you can think of (5 additional Euros for the airport and some tourist destinations, etc). Each time a deregulation is proposed (and it does happen) there are immense backlashes from a small category that would be not only stripped of a privilege, but actually, properly ruined: some cabbies have to take 10 yrs mortgages to buy a license. It's a legacy state of affairs that carries on only because it's difficult to remove, not because it's of actual advantage to anyone.

Last October, France passed a bill against heavy discounting on books. They have this thing, to protect the existing market order against the disruption caused by new channels.

My first reaction is always to think that it's ridiculous; but then again maybe all those measures are only meant to minimize the casualties of progress, more than just being an obstacle to progress.

Can't stand Disney tbh. Also, sanitisation is always accompanied by a drop in quality. I am rather flabbergasted by the suggestion of an LGBT filter, but then again, the whole of the available categories is a religious fundamentalist's wet dream, and not a representation of the mainstream. I wonder why this clumsy heavy-handedness...

I don't think there's a full-fledged conspiracy at play - it's more like a progressive process of disneyfication of the internet: apps and not websites (easier to control and monetize), progressively more bland content, soon preferential allocation of the band for the majors, and so on. This is what happens when a resource becomes economically appetising: the stakeholders try to enlarge the user base as much as possible by means that include the sanitisation of the image of the media (cinema too, for example, was considered dangerous when it was young).

Soon enough they will be able to sell 'the internet' to people like my mother ('omg, you work "on the internet"? but there are pedophiles "on the internet!"' 'Mum, am thirty' [sic])

We knew the internet while it was the Far West. It was (allegedly) dangerous to some extent, it was fun, and very much free. I hope it will stay such (well, it still isn't that much anymore, but still) to the maximum possible extent but I don't feel very optimistic, bar for some marginalised areas like IRC.

It's totally possible. I think comorbidity it's called 'malignant narcissism'.

The detail of the highest-ranking therapist, plus others -the need for validation, the fact that the writer declares to be keen on interpersonal connections, the general air of self-involvement, plus the simple act of dishing personal stuff in public - makes me think more of narcissism than psychopathy.

(IANA psychiatrist, needless to say)

In fact, I suspect that most people who flaunt their psychopathy on the internet are in fact narcissists. The two psychos I've met in my life couldn't have cared less for attention from the public at large or validation of their struggles. I can't really imagine them writing an open letter about their condition, an act that doesn't provide tangible control, or money, nor damages an enemy. On the other hand, narcissists needs validation and attention and writing an open letter is attention-seeking behaviour (which we are involuntarily feeding).

Undoware, all very well explained; I couldn't agree more.

> I'm still amazed at how effective it is at garnering empathy from the reader and cultivating a sense that the author is an impressive individual who has triumphed over adversity after a great struggle.

You might be right, but you seem to accuse the writer of a hidden agenda because he tries to gain the sympathy of the reader. If he didn't try at all, would you see callousness and cold detachment (and therefore a psychopathic trait) in this? What would constitute for you a honest, non-manipulative account of the same facts described in the post? How should it have been written to be consistent with the 'psycho no more' scenario?

Quoting from Wikipedia: 'Additionally, studies suggest inverse relationships between psychopathy and intelligence, including with regards to verbal IQ' (but later it's stated that such correlation is not unanimously accepted).

I think we mostly are in agreement; I think the impulsive and antisocial tendencies of the psychopath are often self defeating and only the very intelligent navigate life successfully. We end up having a selection bias because we are likely to cross paths only with the latter subtype, so we end up believing that all psychopaths are superintelligent and verbally dazzling, while probably the majority of them is badly dull.

> I suspect if it's one thing that scares a psychopath, it's being found out

No, that's a narcissist. Afaik psychos aren't attaching that much emotional involvement to their public persona. They might be annoyed if sussed out, but that's about it.

Agree. It's a rocky ride to attempt closer contact with a psychopath: there's nobody home, and you discover eventually that you were relating to a 3-D, Technicolour magnified mirror more than to another human being. And, at the same time, the mirror is almost painfully alive. I never saw so well my own strengths and flaws, never had to doubt even the most basic assumptions like when in a 'friendship' with such people.

Those tho, were high functioning, highly educated people. I don't think that psychopathy tells the whole story about anyone - there's more to one's personality than psychopathy or absence of, and that one shouldn't be tempted to generalise such experiences.

Programmers (me included) are intrigued with psychopathy: we like the idea of pure thought, unencumbered by guilt, untainted by emotions, conventions and niceties. But paradoxically we overromanticise it in the process: I am pretty sure that living day-to-day with such condition kinda sucks, and that it seldom leads to notableness or notoriousness, let alone self-improvement or any kind of refinement. A serial offender petty criminal is probably more representative of the 'average' psychopath than the author of this post, I am afraid.

I've been Angry Gal too, but only for about two weeks - then I recognised the poor 'cultural fit' that I was being (my bad, I should have never taken the job in the first place) and I left for greener and more congenial pastures.

The conditions of the market may not allow such radical choices in every single case; but I don't have a problem with acknowledging that despite being right in my anger towards the bullshit I was seeing, I was actually being disruptive and damaging to that particular (horrid) environment. Not everyone is suited to every company - it seems a very basic truth to me.