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vermasqueon Ask HN: What are your favorite UNIX tools?

pbpaste and pbcopy to read and write to the clipboard and then combine with your favorite grep, sed, tr, cut, etc.

vermasqueon Ask HN: Who's been hired through Hacker News?

Got hired by a startup in 2011 via one of these threads. Hired someone from another thread a few years later. Thanks HN!

vermasqueon Ask HN: What hobbies have you picked up recently?

Bodyweight workout. Gym and equipment not required.

vermasqueon Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found

Sounds a lot like Michael Crichton's Congo

vermasqueon Ask HN: What are long-lasting tech skills?

CS fundamentals like algorithmic complexity. This can also help in interviews where Leetcode-like format seems to be the norm.

Aim to work at places that are flexible on the experience with tools (software, framework, OS, etc.).

vermasqueon Ask HN: Who got hired from HN?

I got hired at a startup posted here in 2011. I also hired someone from HN a few years later.

vermasqueon Ask HN: US-based non-enterprise programming conferences?

https://www.thestrangeloop.com/index.html

vermasqueon Ask HN: Tell me about how you bombed a technical interview

Bombed more than one technical interview but here's one example.

Phone screen interview with Google. Interviewer asked about how I would keep track of the nth highest value in an infinite stream of values. I said I would use a heap. Then interviewer asked to me write the code for that heap in a Google Doc. I can't remember what I wrote, but I'm pretty sure that I barely got started. Boom.

Lesson here is that simply knowing something in general might not be enough. If you think you know something, try implementing it from scratch to be sure.

vermasqueon What are your favorite books on Audible?

https://www.audible.com/pd/Educated-Audiobook/B075F8MBMQ?act...

https://www.audible.com/pd/Bad-Blood-Audiobook/B07C8GVTB5?ac...

https://www.audible.com/pd/Boys-Will-Be-Boys-Audiobook/B002V...

https://www.audible.com/pd/Shoe-Dog-Audiobook/B01CRM17MS?act...

https://www.audible.com/pd/21-Audiobook/B002V8MEZS?action_co...

https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Game-Audiobook/B002V1K17I?act...

https://www.audible.com/pd/Masters-of-Doom-Audiobook/B008K8B...

vermasqueon Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2022?

The 2% Way by Myron Rolle

vermasqueon Ask HN: Inherited the worst code and tech team I have ever seen. How to fix it?

"Have everything in writing, complete with date and signatures"

It is possible that the executives won't take it well to all of the formality here (writing and signatures). How would you convince them that this is necessary?

vermasqueon Ask HN: What do you think of GraphQL?

Compared to REST APIs, I like how it eliminates the coarse-grained vs. fine-grained decision for designing queries in APIs. You can just spec out the model and let the clients decide what they need.

vermasqueon Ask HN: Please recommend a router without need for a cloud account

My Arris modem/router combo didn't need a cloud account.

vermasqueon Ask HN: What are the problems that are willing to pay more than $1000 to solve?

Great question!

Some mechanism to significantly improve intelligence. This could be in any form: book, coaching, game, etc. Some examples of benefits:

- Avoiding making mistakes that cost time among other things (an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure). Programming bugs are on my mind at the moment but could be in other areas as well.

- Make faster decisions with more confidence

- Crush programming interviews

vermasqueon Amazon-backed EV maker Rivian discloses nearly $1B losses in IPO filing

Yup! Also enjoyed the other two docs (Long Way Round and Long Way Down) but those were using non-electric vehicles.

vermasqueon EV startup Rivian announces $2.5B funding round led by Amazon, Ford

Rivians were featured in the Apple TV+ documentary series A Long Way Up which was pretty good for those looking for travel/adventure stuff.

vermasqueon What are top lessons you learned the hard way between age 20 to 30?

- Finding a life partner can be really hard for some (and that some might include you). Ain't going to happen for some of us.

- You'll become more self-aware over time (what you really want out of different parts of life) but can take some time to get there.

- There is a lot to learn, and college will only provide a fraction it. The rest is up to you, and your life will reflect it. How to dress well, cook, stay healthy, establish relationships, think deeply and logically, overcoming your weaknesses, and more.

vermasqueon Ask HN: If your job was remote, which city would you choose to live in?

Can't vouch for this but the podcast TechMeme Ride Home has been promoting weworkremotely.com

vermasqueon I'm a Data Scientist and It's Not My Passion

Yeah, this seems like a more realistic perspective for most people. Find something you can like with tolerable downsides.

vermasqueon Ask HN: Did HN bring a change in your life?

Yes, I got a job from one of the Who's Hiring threads. Beyond that, it is a daily news source. I check it multiple times a day to just get a sense of what smart people are talking about (glance at the comments and almost never read the source material).

vermasqueon From Java to Go, and Back Again (2016)

Interfaces can also provide read-only references of a instance. Consider interface Foo with accessors only and a MutableFoo implementation with accessors and mutators. The creator of the MutableFoo instance can make all sorts of changes to the instance but then pass it around as a Foo that can't be modified. Another option is to simply put all the state in the constructor so that a Foo never needs to be mutated; however, that might not be elegant in some cases state is incrementally accrued.

I do acknowledge that XImpl is kinda ugly as name.

vermasqueon Ask HN: What has HN given you?

A job that I've had for years and 2 people that I hired via the "Who's Hiring?" threads. Beyond that, a sense of what smart techies are talkin' about via the headlines and some comments.

vermasqueon Ask HN: What Podcasts would you recommend for the college students?

Acquired. It's about acquisitions and IPOs.

vermasqueon The Guy in the Glass: a Poem About Being Yourself (1934)

Was made aware of this when listening to the Starbucks episode of the Acquired podcast (http://www.acquired.fm/episodes/2017/4/3/episode-34-starbuck...). Great podcast and great poem. I never read poetry, but this one sounded so right.

vermasqueon Ask HN: I'm 19. Should I leave my education for my startup?

Finishing your education is the better option given a long-term perspective. You can always join a startup after you're done with school. At least you'll have something valuable even if the startup fails.

vermasqueon Ask HN: What to do in L.A.?

TMZ Tour

vermasqueon How to Think

Analyzing for a fixed duration and then going with your gut is what I've tried. However, I still get that nagging feeling sometimes that I'm not sure about a decision. In these cases, I either ask someone for their opinion or simply defer the decision, hoping I'll think of the right answer in the shower. Of course, I still need to work on discipline. It's very easy to spend a while on a decision because you can't get away from it until you feel you have a right answer.

vermasqueon Ask HN: Were you ever scared of pushing to production?

More so recently because I'm working with more complexity now: an inexperienced team on top of a code base being shared among 2 teams. Ultimately, you have to counter your fear with preparation to reduce the risk of something going wrong. We use Jenkins CI for running unit tests and doing deploys to a sandbox environment similar to production. However, I have to additionally review my team's diffs to catch problems that were missed by automated tests not being written or by requirements / design being wrongly interpreted.

So I guess the goal is to improve the preparation of a production push.

vermasqueon Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2013?

I've listened to a few books this year (Audible saves me time), but I read/listened to a book that actually changed my life in the summer of 2012 (close enough). I had wanted to become an entrepreneur, but then I read The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco. He described some of the things that I really don't want to do deal with: hiring non-engineer employees, using the services of lawyers, marketing, and other business responsibilities. It wasn't that I hadn't heard these themes before, but he said it in a way that made me recognize what I don't want. I just want to be a great engineer. I didn't give up on a dream; I found a better one.

vermasqueon Ask HN: I want to take a vacation and code; where should I go?

Thanks for this recommendation. I was looking at Los Angeles to do something like this because I wanted to see some stand-up comics on the side at places like the Laugh Factory.