tmorton

That's progress. Normal day-to-day ops used to include sewing clothes, churning butter, and building furniture.

It sounds like your real contribution isn't solving high-leverage problems, it's identifying high-leverage problems. This is a rare skill, no matter how obvious they seem to you.

I don't have any research, just a rule of thumb: refactor when it hurts. In my experience, it's easy to go too far in the other direction, trying to craft perfectly generic code on the first pass. That doesn't work very well.

It's important to have a meta-awareness while programming - how firm is your grasp on the code? How confident are you that your changes will do what you expect? At some point, you feel that grasp slipping, and then it's time to refactor.

Seriously? The "useful proposals" are spelled out in the next-to-last section.

TLDR version: conference organizers need to stop tolerating this sort of thing. Everyone involved should "admit you screwed up, apologize, and tell me how you’ll prevent this in the future."

Wow. A post about etiquette that calls someone out by name, with an insulting headline?

Face-to-face is the right channel for this sort of pointed criticism. Failing that, email might work. To pass the lesson along to the larger community, leave the specific names out of it - talk about "a big name in the community" who behaved badly. People who were there will know who you're talking about, but it doesn't become part of the internet paper trail.

Let me clarify what I think you're saying. It's not about testing class X, it's about testing code that uses class X. As long as X is a class, then we can create a mock version and pass around instances of it. If our "X functionality" is stored somewhere else (ie a bare function), then that gets harder.

Of course, the "buy home computer" step was a lot harder back in those days.

This is exactly the wrong sort of visualization. It provides no information other than "big number is big, lol."

The US debt is a big number. So big that people have a hard time wrapping their head around it. They need a point of comparison. So what's a good point of comparison for the US debt? Hmm... we could use the federal budget, or GDP, or the world GDP, or the debt of other large nations. Or we could break it down per capita, and compare it to other per-capita things, like income or tax burden. Or... I know! We can convert the thing to hundred dollar bills, and put it next to the statue of liberty! That's a meaningful comparison!

That's a more accurate metaphor, but it's not usually better. There's two reasons to employ the "technical debt" metaphor - to get programmers to think about the issue, and to explain to external stakeholders why you need time for technical issues.

As a quick shorthand, "technical debt" works better than "technical unhedged call options" - and if you need to go back and explain what the hell is a call option, then you've lost your audience. Everyone understands the concept of debt already.

Despite the title, this post is a great thing for meetup. It sounds like they took the classic advice - they launched early with a minimalist feature. Now this post tells them exactly how to improve it.

Of course, thousands(?) of potential advertisers are reading a "very unhappy" review, but I think that's overstated. The review is clearly positive on the idea, and on meetup in general. With a few tweaks, this sounds like a useful platform.

The recruiters in this article are hiring for "top law firms, consulting agencies and investment banks." In those jobs, your number one priority is selling to the wealthy and/or powerful, so this sort of selection makes perfect sense. The recruiters are looking for a set of social skills and connections, not hard skills.

This has been going on forever, and there really isn't any way to "fix the problem." People - including the wealthy - are simply more comfortable with others who share a cultural background. Sales jobs have always sought people with preexisting connections to potential clients.

You've got a point, but you're going way overboard. Blind naturalism is a good first approximation for health advice, though it's obviously not an end point.

Men can conceive children into their 70s, so evolution does favor long life in some cases. We still have "modern afflictions" because evolution isn't perfect, and it isn't finished, and because there are tradeoffs in the biological design. For example, resistance to malaria comes with a propensity for sickle-cell disease (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle-cell_disease)

Nothing, including capping Medicare, will "work" if you mean "provide all possible health care to seniors."

Medical science is wonderful, but it's moving faster than the overall economy - the things we can do are advancing faster than our ability to pay. There will simply be too many old people, with too many health problems, to provide top-flight treatment to everyone. Someone will have to tell them "sorry, you don't get that procedure." The only remaining question is: will that decision maker be a health insurance company, a government official, or the health provider refusing to work without payment.

Seniors, and their children, will loudly demand that the government pay their health bills, no matter what the economic wreckage. That's why we need to lay the political groundwork now. Pundits, economists, and anyone else who can understand the situation should be repeating loudly and repeatedly: Health care is not a right, because it can't be. All of us will die, eventually. Most of us will die even though a treatment exists that could have extended our lives a bit. We need to get used to that fact.

What's your advantage against shopify - http://www.shopify.com/ ?

Agriculture (and the associated civilization) has one big advantage over hunting and gathering: It can support more people per acre, even if the lifestyle is worse. As a result, agricultural civilizations can overwhelm hunter-gatherers with sheer force of numbers.

Source: Jared Diamond covers this in "Guns, Germs and Steel". Excellent book.

Whenever is awesome.

(incidentally, check your pull requests :)

"How do I pick a deadbolt lock, disable an alarm system, and arrange transportation for a big TV? I'm just wondering! This is theoretical! Stop lawyering!"

In other words - you might be doing something legitimate, but it sounds fishy. You can't expect people to help you without further explanation.

"wikileaks video" works. Malice, incompetence, etc?

In pure financial terms, you're right. However, "people losing their homes" is perfectly accurate for some people. A home isn't just a house or an "out-of-the-money home purchase option", it's where you've put down roots and built up memories.

Some people made bad gambles, and are losing their "options." Others made bad decisions or were unlucky, and are losing their homes. Even if they're partially to blame, it's still a terrible situation.

Please don't link directly to exe downloads.

The problem here isn't the "brandjacking", it's the "curate this page" option. As a customer, this sort of site is only useful if it's uncensored and focused - I want to read about the Kindle DRM problems along side the fawning reviews.

Basically, "curated" pages become useless. Non-curated pages might be useful, but I'm not going to trust a site whose business model depends on "pay us to take down negative reviews."

This isn't an ethical issue, it's just a big gaping hole in the business model.

On professionalism: Giles and Martin are using different definitions of professionalism. Martin was explicit about his definition: adherence to quality standards, even under external pressure. Giles uses that to rant about suits, which is completely beside the point.

Of course programming doesn't need more "professionalism" in the sense of suits and firm handshakes. It does need more professionalism in the sense of "I'm sorry Mr Sales Guy, but your deadline is unrealistic. Let's discuss the features we can cut to make that deadline, or the schedule revisions that we need to complete the project."