work-on-828

I would expect this to be economically viable in Iceland, with their short growing season and cheap geothermal power.

More commonly, driving to a restaurant named X in neighborhood B rather than the restaurant X in neighborhood A, which I have done before.

> more people will live closer to work

Only if cities relax height restrictions on residential construction.

I find that sometimes I am diving into a codebase and wish I had a higher-level map of where things are.

> I was one of the best in that class, but when I asked what we need this stuff for the other people in the class looked at me and said the following: "if you ask this question you're in the wrong class"

I am always so disappointed when I hear people express this. Being able to place an effort in a broader context is so helpful in being able to approach the work well. A few teachers in the Literature department in high school had the same attitude and it was incredibly demoralizing and left me kinda directionless in their classes. I wish things like https://youtube.com/watch?v=suf0Jdt2Hpo had existed back then to give me some idea of what useful and interesting literary analysis looked like and could do.

Google works for more immediate problems, but not for longstanding ones.

Just like a popular uproar couldn't prevent SOPA from passing.

You know, I don't actually know. I guess once I get a job again, probably $20-$35?

I really wish there was a service which would let me gripe about my problems and it would email me 10 Ads a month of products trying to solve those problems.

I read that as a freshman in college. I should probably re-read it though. It seemed kinda like How to Win Friends and Influence People.

An argument in favor of Hillary is that the democrats need to be more cautious so as to make sure a republican doesn't appoint folks to the bench who would reverse the decision in Roe v. Wade If Obama appoints Scalia's successor, then that weakens that argument.

As someone who strongly supports marriage equality and read the full opinion when it came out, I was kinda dismayed to find the dissent a more convincing argument. Did anyone else experience this?

Is it bad that my third thought was about how this will hurt Hillary's chances?

EDIT: It directly counters the argument that Bernie supporters are naive to risk a more leftist candidate who would have a lower chance of being able to appoint justices.

The full text of the clause is "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

"Creative works" is as reasonable shorthand for "useful arts and sciences" as "privacy" is for "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects"

We should have a status quo bias when considering tearing down a certain fence, lest we be gored by Chesterton's bull.

Is it possible to pay extra for explanations that will help me build a better mental model of HTML & CSS layout?

Aside from flexbox[1], I've felt for years that the mental model of layout I gained from reading explanations of the box model, blocks, and inline-blocks never made sense.

[1] Folks should totally check out http://flexboxfroggy.com/

usually when I debug things my method is sort of a mix of linear and binary search where I start at one place, see if the a value is what I expect it to be, then move along to a different part of the code to see if something is wrong there, reducing the search space and repeating as necessary.

Sometimes my method is instead to look at data output at a certain level of abstraction like system calls (which is usually not helpful except for detecting a network hang or a path config whose directory doesn't exist) or database queries or something. That is usually more helpful if I either already suspect I know where the problem is and need to know what model name or file name to `ag` for.

If (Hephaestus be praised) there is actually an automated test framework in place, I'll start by writing a failing test or copy-pasting an existing test and modifying it to fail, then (if it isn't JavaScript), inserting a debugger into a function the test calls.

All of this tends to be pretty successful.

But I've occasionally found myself on a project where I just have a sense that I don't know what is going on or how pieces fit together and I feel a strong temptation to stop and fix that sense of bewilderment. When I resist this urge is when it feels like I am trying things at random.

Well I'm currently on the job hunt due to failure to deliver on projects at my most recent job, so I'm trying to figure out what to both change about my practices and what to look for in the practices at the place where I work next.

> As a general rule, if management expects results without giving you the tools for the job, ask yourself whether you really want to be in that job, and start looking for alternatives.

Well the hard part here is determining if lack the tools due to management disorganization or due to my own lack of skill or intelligence. I have already left the organization.

> you _can_ estimate things correctly once you have the context

Maybe my problem comes down to not recognising when I lack a piece of context or being stubborn enough to get it.

It sounds like you are saying that when I take an hour to work on debugging something, I should spend 55 minutes taking notes on the system and where the problem might be and 5 minutes turning those notes into a coherent email. Is that a reasonable approach?

I certainly prefer to think of debugging as a process of learning about a system rather that trying to try things at random without making a mental map of where I am.

> comes down to experience.

Yea. I really should get into the habit of keeping better records of things so that I can look back on past projects. I write in a paper notebook as I program, but that is usually just thinking out loud or trying to artificially increase my working memory.

> If you don't have a spec, get a spec.

Yea, I think I've concluded that I need to always write a spec for myself before I start a project. I know Joel says that PMs should write specs, but I should be prepared for the reality that projects rarely have separate PMs.

The hard part is how to write out the technical details ahead of time before I've gotten my mind into the codebase Im adding onto or the new framework I'm using.

> Risk assessments

Any tips on what to read to do these effectively?

> Once you understand what is going on

So I should feel safe in disregarding the advice to "avoid trying to understand the universe"? Or at least attribute it more to how I communicate about being stuck on a problem? That is kinda a relief. I really didn't understand how to put that advice into practice.

> A few good books on estimation and debugging

I've read Debugging: 9 Indespensible Rules, Mythical Man-Month, Critical Chain, and a few chapters from Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art. Do you have any other recommendations? The latter three books seem to be talking on the level of projects that are anticipated to take at least 6 months. I'm looking to start out with being able to reliably estimate how long I can get done in 90 minutes.

As a new grad who has worked a couple different jobs now, some things I don't get about this:

- What do you do when you don't have a spec and when you ask the senior engineer you are working with questions, they don't respond or push back against having a spec or a plan longer than the very next feature?

- The author says that estimation is easier to do if you are doing something you have done before. What do you do if you are always working with a new framework or language?

- How do you break down the steps if you don't know what a project entails until you are finished?

- What do you do if asked to estimate how long something will take to debug? What if you just started on a project and the error message you are trying to debug doesn't make sense? My approach there is to try to understand the system I am working with. If the system doesn't have documentation and the existing people on the project don't have time to give a walk through of things, I figure that means source diving. However, I've gotten the feedback that I should avoid trying to "understand the universe" when debugging. What can I do to produce accurate estimates of how long it takes to find a bug in a system without spending the time to gain a mental model of the system?

- This excercise takes a lot of time. What do you do when asked for an estimate in a meeting rather than over email? What

- What do you do if the thing you are building relies on getting an external API to work and that API is either undocumented or is documented in a foreign language? Assume that the google translation is not making sense and this is your first project and you don't have a budget to hire a professional translator? This sounds like something you would need to get working before you could actually give an estimate.

Why do experienced engineers ask for estimates anyway? Every time I give one I feel like I am lying and I try to warn people "I really don't know how to come up with estimates but I am guessing 3 hours". How do I deal with it when they are upset about it taking a week and a half?