Give your programmers professional tools | Hacker News Reader

Give your programmers professional tools

programmingzen.com

23 pointsacangiano14 comments

That article is Amazon affiliate hotlink heaven. All items mentioned are Amazon links with referral code hidden behind a domain redirect. I initially expected to get another article on the item I clicked on. But the links serve no purpose than to make some money off referrals.

I use Amazon affiliate links on my blogs when I refer people to products. The redirector is there as it is much easier for me to link to /?XXXXXXX when I compile posts, than manually build links from the Amazon Associates site. From the disclosure on the site:

"Some of the links contained within this site have my referral id, which provides me with a small commission for each sale. Think of it as a form of tipping for the large investment of time I put into this site. Thank you for your support."

This disclosure is very arrogant.

A tip for the investment you chose to put into the site? A tip for an investment the reader didn't ask for and only tangentially benefits from?

It is so hard to read it makes me crazy.

Thank you for your feedback. I changed it to:

"Some of the links contained within this site have my referral id (e.g., Amazon), which provides me with a small commission for each sale. Thank you for your support."

There's a good way to do this and a bad way. One good way is to make the link text specific to a unique product. If 'Sony 30" XXX-700' was used as the link text, instead of 30" Monitor it would be a detailed link telling the user that they're going to a page specific to that item. Another option is to put all your referral links at the bottom of the post and highlight some of the best 30" monitors to choose from. Same for all the other product types you linked to.

The bad way is to link a nondescript phrase like 30" Monitor to a random 30" monitor on Amazon. It doesn't provide any basis to understand why you linked to that specific monitor. Are you recommending that monitor specifically? Is that the only one out there? Etc.

I was aiming for an example of a pretty sweet setup (SDD+Monitor+Chair), but I can see why using specific anchor texts would have been more user friendly.

No. Give them the tools they WANT. It doesn't matter if the tool has been labeled 'professional' by a major corporation that makes the tools. It only matters that it does what the programmer wants it to do.

I don't believe the two things are mutually exclusive. You can have a standard professional "package" for new developers, but allow them to customize it if they feel so inclined.

A happy developer sharing with the world that he has a 30" monitor and a powerful computer and etc, even if it comes close to luxury, may well be more efective than any talent recruiting marketing campaign

Ironically, this is exactly what I have at home, but not what I have at work. 30" monitors are "not approved" and SSDs are "not tested by the regulatory agencies".

(Actually, I have a 24" monitor at home. Holding off on the 30" until I implement better window management in Emacs.)

There may be big companies that don't understand this, but are there really any HN readers that don't find this obvious?

One of my developer refused to get a bigger screen (19' at the moment). Should I force him to upgrade ? :)

No, I think a nineteen foot monitor is already taking a good thing too far.

But please post a pic of the office that fits it.

i suspect pro^H^H^H expensive tools hinder creativity

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