The online whiteboard of Kristofer Palmvik
With very rare exceptions of some OSS or in-house projects (Google, FB) most of software industry consists of such sweatshops which are almost an assembly lines which produce bloatware that mere passes most of tests. Have you ever seen so-called Enterprise Software? ERPs? Web-portals? Or take a look at the bloatware MS produces - these all products of such software-manufacturing processes.
rdtsc’s law of failing large companies: "a large enough failing company, with a power crazy CEO is indistinguishable from a TV show"
If you feel mediocre then you probably aren’t being challenged enough in the role you are currently in.
Perhaps for a self-learner a nice approach is to write it yourself and then go searching for a solution. That way you’ll likely: validate what you did, figure out that you missed a detail or perhaps learn some new
If bitcoin gets traction, it will effectively ruin any financial privacy we have remaining. It’s one thing for a government to have access to this, it’s a whole other world of problems when everyone from my neighbor to my cable company has access to it.
It does not look that bad actually. Your list lacks Oracle, Microsoft technologies to really complain about inefficient usage of public money.
Move up the value chain. If you can turn a design into code, learn to turn a spec into a design. If you can turn a spec into a design, learn how to understand a problem and produce a spec to solve it. If you can understand a problem, learn to talk to people and discover the problems they have so you can solve them for them. If you can do that, learn a million other things and run your own business.
That made me think, are there any IT workplace where programming is really considered a "team work", just like sport ? I sometimes felt like this with some coworkers, when we were under extreme pressure and someone needed help to fix some mess, or to design something complex, and frankly that’s some of my best memories.
The technical infrastructure and code quality of a company are secondary factors in its success. The biggest influence they have is in the ability to attract and retain brilliant engineers, because most brilliant engineers don’t want to work in a place where they’re just treading water with bugfixes (which is the situation you eventually get into without automated testing).
Oracle is like COBOL; the only techies who like it are those whose job security depends upon it ;)
Java totally rocks compared to what the rest of us have to use. I once spent six months working in FORTRAN on a Gould/SEL. The only editor I had access to was "ed", God help me.
Unfortunately I cannot come close to recommending Joomla. Looking through the core code of the system is an exercise in frustration at best.
I have a couple side projects I’d like to work on. That’s not right. I wouldn’t like to work on them. I would like to have worked on them.
...there is way too much trust required, way too many possibilities for mistakes to happen. Contrast this with Bitcoin: all Bitcoin requires is trust in three cryptographic algorithms which fit in a few thousand lines of code
There will be more detail tomorrow, but at a high level: * JS engine on a background thread * Communicates via batched, async messaging protocol to a native (objc or android) server running on the main thread (basically create_view(), update_view(), destroy_view(), on_event() etc) * Plug-in for React that speaks that protocol * Tools to make cross-platform dev a bit easier (standard text component, cross-platform flexbox layout system) * Designed to take advantage of native platform views, NOT be the next Java Swing
React is so much different from other frameworks, I feel. Someone that doesn’t know React can basically come in and start working on a large app from Day 1. It is so much less frustrating than Angular, Backbone Ember handlebars, etc. You can continue to add features to a React application and not slow down.
You can’t have it all. A wife & kids, a full time job, a social life and an open source hacker reputation. Many of the biggest names in open source have none of those other things.
the main idea is, do not tie your identity or sense of self-worth to your job. be very clear that your job is what you do to get enough money to support your "real" life, and concentrate on making the rest of your time enjoyable. the side project is a good start, but also exercise more, take up some non-tech-related hobby (maybe one you can share with your wife), take short courses in random, interesting skills (e.g. cooking), develop an active community of friends (host dinners, board game nights, regular "check out a new restaurant" outings, walking tours of interesting neighbourhoods, etc.)
Trying to learn some new technology? Awesome, I get to use ONE new thing. Since I already understand every other variable in my stack, I’ll have a much easier time pinning down those ‘unknown unknown’ issues that invariably crop up over time.
Not everyone is an isolation-loving codemonkey. Some people need the feelings of team involvement, urgency and repercussions. If I’m just left to sit in the corner all day, and no one knows what I’m doing, and no one gives a shit if I do nothing... guess what? I’m going to end up doing nothing. Perhaps people like me are flawed, but we’re still very talented and capable – and not every company can afford to pass over the extroverted developers.
I’ve noticed that Agile is frequently creatively misinterpreted as: * "move fast and break things" or * "testing is the end user’s job" or * "what we were doing before, except with morning meetings where nobody is allowed to sit" I expect some of the backlash is, ironically, against that.
Designers of future languages, please take this example as a proof of the rule: don’t design anything for newbies. They will find a way to make an error anyway, but dumbs-based design will be the problem for everyone else.
The article makes some valid points but anyone who thinks databases should be used for everything and the kitchen sink should come fill out an application where I work. They could then spend the next 10 years debugging hard to troubleshoot database issues instead of easy to troubleshoot code issues. Jamming too much logic in the database is a recipe for disaster in my experience.
A lot of "progressive" corporations end up creating mini-Innovation teams internally with their best & brightest, who are told to "act like a startup" and end up basically creating 75% of all the new stuff ... until it requires an interface to a legacy system and the devs outside the team refuse to cooperate out of fear.
A friend and I hosted a "Finish it! Weekend" once (as opposed to a "Startup Weekend"). The idea was to get people together for one weekend and finish that last 10% or whatever of a project.
One benefit of React that I haven’t seen discussed: Learning it made me feel like I was improving as a programmer. The best way to improve React applications is to learn more about the concepts behind function reactive programming, which is a skill that transfers far beyond the world of frontend development.
I’m totally cool with Facebook mining my data if their open source keeps up this pace. GraphQL + Relay are total game changers for structuring web + mobile applications. Code bases get cleaner and more reliable. Less data gets sent over the wire. Other cool libraries are going to be built on top of Relay
I cannot fathom why anyone would want to deal with MSBuild for other platforms. There are so many better alternatives. And as bad as MSBuild is for building .NET stuff, at least it’s the right tool for that job. Trying to shoehorn it into some other stack entirely, which you know is just going to cause even more pain? No. Just no.
IoT is one of the least well thought out ideas in quite some time, right up there with the "semantic web". Hopefully it dies a quick death and is resurrected in a more sensible and mature form years down the road
Copyright is supposed to be limited, but eh you know, somebody who descends from someone who around the 1911s wrote a one song, honestly, really, still very much deserves money for their hard work. Otherwise those guys back in 1911 will go back in time and undo what they’ve done, because it was clearly not worth it.
I’m so happy they released this! Few things give me more pleasure than ignoring something engineered at Oracle.
I completely understand the appeal of snapchat; it’s basically LSD in social network form... The intimacy of shared human experience, the infinite nowness, the mindfuck UI, the altered values, the sense of sacred space, etc.
I can always read text. I can’t always sit and watch a YouTube video with sound.
Yarn looks like it will be Cargo for JavaScript. After Cargo improved on many of the great ideas of npm, those ideas are returning to help improve the JavaScript ecosystem. Cross-pollination at its best.
The fact that HPKP can create this kind of gigantic foot-gun is a pretty good sign that it actually works. So much of security technology turns out to be cosmetic