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thejbf

95 karma · joined August 22, 2009

Codes, hacks and writes. I have a programming blog on http://rakyll.org
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thejbf··on “Please let me know if I should stop developing apps for Google Products”
I'm a DevRel person working for Google's Apps APIs, please contact me.
thejbf··on Php-ist: Istanbul PHP Conferance
> In British/International English air quotes are often used to emphasise something.

It's not entirely true that quotation marks used to be used to indicate emphasis outside the US. It's a wrongly practiced habit to have double quotes instead of using italics for phrases that requires bolder emphasis, and usually leads to misunderstandings.

thejbf··on About a Month at Yahoo
Directly reports to a VP and comments about the flatness of the company... Hmm... I see hundreds and hundreds of VPs...
thejbf··on What is Happening in Istanbul?
During the marathons, both ways are closed to the traffic. In the photo, it looks like they occupied the Europe to Asia lane.
thejbf··on Thousands of Istanbul citizens walking to protest government
More fascinating photos from several contributors: http://occupygezipics.tumblr.com
thejbf··on Istanbul Isiklarius traffic lights
Is it necessary to mention Saudi Arabia here? Atheists dont drive better in Istanbul. Istanbul is an old, huge and unorginized jungle. Most of the bridges and connections are not designed to handle today's traffic volume. I remember spending 3hrs just to arrive work and get back at home (And there are only 10km btw the two -- avg I spend at least 2 hrs). There is not a proper railway or metro system. Even though sea transportation is fair enough, most people drive and they drive alone. Population is estimated to be 20M with tourists. There are tens of thousands cars crossing the bridges that are making the Europe-Asia connection with only 7 lines in total.

Given these circumstances, just imagine the stress on the drivers.

But the best part: I live in Asia and work in Europe. My 2hrs is an intercontinental journey.

thejbf··on Istanbul Isiklarius traffic lights
It would be reasonable, no one seems to care about traffic lights in Istanbul.
thejbf··on Excelbook is launced, a Facebook UI looks like Excel
Unlimited Facebook time for Excel people. Nice way to kill time for PMs at corporations.
thejbf··on Why I Didn't Get A Real Job
Shipping software is the trivial part. Communication, leadership, connections, understanding how businesses work were not trivial for me since I've spent all of my life in a technical chair.
thejbf··on Why I Didn't Get A Real Job
Took the same path, founded a "real" company (not a magazine, a software company sells b2b software) and grew the team up to 3 and made the company profitable. But one year later, I've flopped. Now I've been working as an employee for 4 years and at this stage this is where I should be. Of course, I'll start companies in the future but you have to know the low end-side of your the job and gain experience.
thejbf··on Why to Join a Startup After Graduating
It's more valuable to start with a huge corporation and then move to a start-up according to my personal experience.

At a large software/Internet company, you can learn best practices, how organizations work, politics, real team work and real challenges in large scale. And can make more connections that will help you for future opportunities and company name might be a great reference.

But 1-2 years later, you have to move on. Because clearly, you'll see that you've started almost nothing, never practiced some fundamental architecture patterns (since your large scale cant scale with them), shipped less code. You are living in a comfort zone that you obviously cant even take a tiny risk.

thejbf··on [dead]
>> Why do you need more than one dimension for time coordinates to express time dilation Because in theory, there is no absolute time we can take as reference. 1 year for an object on moon is not 1 year for an object on Jupiter. So time dimension may include other factors that defines itself.

>> How is time an outcome of gravity?!? "General relativity shows that gravity is really not a force, but rather a consequence of the fact that space-time is curved due to the distribution of mass and energy." More on http://www.ram.org/ramblings/science/time_is_relative.html

thejbf··on [dead]
Time is better implied as a consequence.
thejbf··on [dead]
According to Einstein, time is relative. If I move really fast time is passing slower for me. So time and its effects vary, there should be more than 1 dimension for time in the existing model. Or time should be separated from spatial + other dimensions just because its an outcome of gravity (and other factors) that we cant override and change. This is what Einstein quote is claiming I suppose.
thejbf··on Why I sold to Google
>> What are you going to do inside Google? "I am still figuring that out."

This clearly states that I sold for money and reputation. But the bad thing is selling to Google is not like selling to Google in 2005.

thejbf··on Laid Off or Lonely, You May Be Lucky
Getting laid off/being unemployed or being depressed by the status quo (your existing job) are all the same. Once you are so desperate, you can take any risk because any risk is better than the bottom line.
thejbf··on C'mon, stop writing Java for Android
>> But the functional part gives no guarantees of referential transparency or immutable state, so the killer value of FP is lost.

Well, forcing objects to immutable on Dalvik VM will be a performance crime. Scala has no practical sense on Android since Dalvik is not made for it.

thejbf··on Why Mobile Apps Will Soon be Dead
Have you ever heard of PhoneGap? http://www.phonegap.com
thejbf··on Understanding the code inside Tornado, the asynchronous web server
Yes, but I can still spawn thousands of event-based Scala actors on the same machine. The actual problem with author: He believes running long and costly operations on an HTTP request is OK which is never and ever right. If you need to wait 5 seconds to perform a task, make it asynchronous.
thejbf··on [dead]
This is a very hard topic to compare to Kyle's experience. First of all, Kyle is already given an audience and the success is evaluated by some metrics about his psychical performance. While marketing, you have to create an audience first. Once you're visible, you can choose be silent or keep making noise. But, usually, this is not the case with startups.
thejbf··on Simon Schubert creates complex scenes in paper using creases
He would be using tools like solid rulers to press them against paper. And he most probably use water and heat to shape 3d ovals.
thejbf··on Voyager Set to Enter Interstellar Space
No, not exactly. We still dont know if we are able to give healthy births with no or less gravitation.
thejbf··on Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures
This dictionary looks like it's the index of The Algorithm Design Manual by Skiena: http://www.amazon.com/Algorithm-Design-Manual-Steve-Skiena/d...
thejbf··on Eating Healthily for $3 a Day
Our body is what we eat. I would move to a more suburban neighborhood or go out less but never lower the quality the food.
thejbf··on Why I, Jeff Bezos, Keep Spending Billions On Amazon R&D
There is a balance between shipping a good product with good technology. If you are constantly pushed by deadlines and make things just work, it breaks stuff in the future. Any engineer that is continuously working under pressure of tight deadlines cant ship anything creative, solid, simple and open to change.

Good engineers also have to be good analysts. What often makes a programmer better is his/her opinion to say yes and no to products people/designers. But yet again there is a balance. haberman mentioned Google but I personally don't like the over-engineered Google culture. It's too left-wing, if tight deadlines are too right.

thejbf··on Building a Web Application that makes $500 a Month – Part II
Absolutely, these are giving me inspiration to launch my side projects as products and start my small scale business. Income is small but the amount of diverse stuff you have to deal with is definitely hard to experience if you're not working for a very small startup.
thejbf··on I don't like Python. Does that make me a bad person?
Languages fit you if your tasks are fitting to those languages. As far as I can see as a C/C++ programmer you should have been involved more lower-level issues rather than writing software standing on several frameworks. Java is not a toy language but it handles the stuff you were used to deal with almost automatically so it feels like it is.

So what kind of programmer are you? What do you develop? These questions are essential before making any advise.