Kaedon

Looks like this is a little closer to what you're looking for I think: https://medium.com/aws-activate-startup-blog/running-service...

Yeah, I use Terraform and like it quite a bit. Terraform tends to be quite responsive to changes in AWS land and `terraform plan` is incredibly useful. It's saved me from blowing away instances a few times.

It feels a little unfair to compare fund groups from 2003 and 2006 to those that must be after 2009, when A16Z was founded. Give it a few years and we can have an article like this...

“Watching them on VHS is closer to the old drive-in or grindhouse theater, the way the director intended it to look.” Practically no director intended for the films to look terrible on VHS tapes, it was a limitation of the technology. I understand enjoying the look of the technology as a consumer and I doubt the producers cared for it.

In a similar vein, Andrew Godwin gave an excellent talk at PyCon last year called "What can programmers learn from pilots?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we4G_X91e5w

Absolutely. I think code reviews make sense for knowledge sharing and improving the quality of the code. Most people during code reviews don't actually find bugs in their comments, according to some research done by Microsoft. http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/180283/ICSE%202013-codere...

The book covers a number of ways System 1 and System 2 thinking affect the way we approach problems, of which the article includes two examples. There's many other neat applications in the book.

SmartBear has their own set of best practices and they recommend about 300-400 loc per hour[1]. I think that's probably about right. It's something I think I've gotten faster at over time, partially because we're improving from previous reviews and partially because it's a skill that develops.

[1]: http://smartbear.com/smartbear/media/pdfs/wp-cc-11-best-prac...

I'll admit that I don't follow them perfectly either. I'll usually pick one or two instances and work on those. I think most of these items are on a continuum from severe to minor basically. It's usually when it's on the severe end that I'll suggest it might be worth changing.

My code has bugs and flaws too! That's why I like code reviews, they give me an opportunity to see my blind spots.

Sure! Best of luck at Cisco. I think everyone looks for different things in a code review, this is just what has worked for me.

Yes, exactly true. There are situations where it's probably fine to violate the guidelines if there's a good reason.

Yeah, thank you for the link! I use this list as a set of rough guidelines, basically, so it may or may not apply in all cases.

Sometimes it can be helpful to split up a method to be called once if it helps readability, for example if it helps split up a loop or abstracts the specific way we get a value.

Very interesting, thanks for sharing! It made me think about how we could improve our process.

Couple questions for you. How do you go about choosing which metrics go into a grade when designing the work sample test? Should the process of grading it be completely automated, so as to eliminate bias? What's the ideal length of time for a work sample test, in your experience?

I'm not sure I understand the value proposition over using the Chromecast. What's the main difference? It looks like the specs are better, it supports Amazon's streaming service and does not support HBO Go, and it has the potential for games. To me, none of those are convincing enough to choose this over the Chromecast that I already have, even at the discounted price. Am I missing something?

Is there a video of your talk available?

Is pair programming really that awesome?

Very cool, this seems much nicer than using hotshot to profile Django.

I'm a little confused by this page though: http://mtford.co.uk/silk/request/1907/profiling/. Why is wrapped_target listed so many times for a single blog post query? Is there a hierarchy to the profile calls that's not shown? Oh, does it go deepest level to highest level calls?

Good timing! I just started working with libGDX yesterday with my little brother. We decided it would be better to use it than roll our own Java framework and I think that was the right choice. It's been fairly straight-forward to work through the install and demo game located here: https://github.com/libgdx/libgdx/wiki/A-simple-game

Yes, absolutely. Voting is an easy activity to do physically and maps well to the online space. I also have a hard time finding the time to physically go to the polls for each election. It's hard to go out for more than the "Big Elections" such as the presidential ones.

Fraud would be problematic and difficult identify specific people. Another worry would be people misunderstanding the ballot or clicking the wrong thing or multiple submissions. I'm just glad, at the moment, that I can register online. That's a good start.

I was wondering the same thing. I also strongly associate manage.py with Django, so it confused me a bit when I first read it.

Feels ridiculous that this sold out so quickly. It's a shame.

It's interesting how quickly its fallen even since this article was posted. It looks like it's around 150 now.

That's true. For me, I view redundancy as one of the values of Heroku. If you're deploying on your own, that may still require provisioning additional servers as needed, manually backing up databases periodically, etc etc. It can be a time cost beyond just deploying it once in some cases. Still, is the cost of Heroku worth it? It's an important question and a personal one for most I think.

I tend to think of deployment as a challenging thing too but the more I discuss it the less I think of it as a mystery. Thank you for sharing.

I think you bring up a couple of great points. It can be hard to escape the sort of lock-in effect if you've got a larger app on Heroku. For instance, I'm guessing it would be difficult for RapGenius to move somewhere else at this point. I think you also touch on the key argument for Heroku which, as far as I can tell, is "If the amount you pay is less than few hours of your time, why not?"

Thanks for the amendment to the comparison. In a sense, an ORM can still have ongoing "costs" as it tends to run a little slower and require more processing, so it might require additional hardware eventually as the scale goes up. Maybe I'm belaboring the analogy too much at that point.

To me, the article boils down to an argument that says "You should learn how to be a DevOp. It's not that bad." I don't think that's a trivial thing to pick up. I think it's important to develop some of these skills but I wouldn't describe it as easy.

I think the key argument for Heroku is that it enables you to delay (sometimes indefinitely) learning the skills required to deploy a production application and managing it. In some cases, such as security, it can be a real bear to keep up with the latest developments in addition to managing the application itself.

Ultimately, I view Heroku as similar to an ORM. With an ORM, it will get you most of the way most of the time, but there's some instances where it starts to make sense to dig into the raw SQL below it and get the performance you want.

Definitely useful, I'll revisit the slides later when I'm looking at optimizing.

I'm working through some of CPU overhead issues with Django now and wishing occasionally that I had chosen to use Sqlalchemy as my primary database tool. Django seemed like the easier solution at the time because of the steep learning curve of Sqlalchemy. I think it's worth learning, especially now that I've hit some edges in Django's ORM. I suppose it's good to know I can always use a crazy hybrid of the two libraries if needed.

Yeah, they talk about using it for runners but how quickly does it fill? Would it require a full marathon length to fill a single water bottle? It may still be practical even if that's the case. I'd like to know more.

It's interesting to think about what can happen after the collapse of a startup, particularly when we tend to give so much of ourselves to the process. I think it's inherently a regenerative process, though. A company may disappear but the lessons stick with you. I'd guess it's not easier but perhaps more familiar the next go around. That's comforting.

Have you had experience with his book? I'm looking to see if I should consider picking that up or The Lean Startup.

I agree with the basic premise - which seems to be not that everyone should be upper class but rather that everyone should become more entrepreneurial and take greater ownership in their careers and business.

I disagree with one of the points the author makes. Here's a quote: "And yet, here we are, in a country with no peasants. (We also don’t depend on peasants in other countries – the US is a big food exporter, not importer.)"

In one sense, that's true. The number of farmers has gone down dramatically with the advent of technology but there's still around 3-4 million migrant / seasonal workers in the US [1] that act as modern day peasants. If you expand the definition of peasant beyond farm hands, it could include things such as low-paid workers in China or the working poor in the US. This particular point doesn't ring true with me.

[1] - www.ncfh.org/docs/fs-Migrant%20Demographics.pdf