MrDom

> Most people on HN are level minded enough to realize that it is hypocritical to try to block people from immigration to protect their own jobs.

Why is this hypocritical? Hypocritical of what?

Did I misread your comment? I took it as an insult on the author, but re-reading it I can see where it could have been just a humorous observation. Could you clarify?

> Why can't an introvert put on headphones or simply disregard irrelevant conversations in an open office?

You can't disregard your peripheral vision. People walking behind me all day stresses me out in a predictable fashion, as it does with most introverts I've worked with. Unfortunately for me, most startup programmers these days seem to be extroverts. Which makes sense, I suppose, given the large percentage of apps focused on all things social.

> Unfortunately I have no good suggestion how to escape from that situation (quickly)

Java apps! ducks But seriously folks, I'm curious what went wrong there. The JVM these days is very fast, runs everywhere and comes installed by default on most operating systems. I was still a student during the java hayday, but the only downsides I vaguely recall were poor UI, poor security and poor speed. The last two have been fixed and the first one seems very fixable. Furthermore, you don't have to write apps in java anymore. It just seems like there's a lot of untapped potential there these days.

> Irony is an important part of your diet, kids.

It certainly is, since the author of said article contributes heavily to freebsd. You know what else is an important part of your diet, kids? Reading and thinking before speaking.

Why the downvote? Is discussion of a previous discussion too meta or otherwise off topic?

What strikes me the most, while reading through that thread, is how many times I saw the phrase "I didn't read the book that defined the terms "cathedral" and "bazaar", but cathedral/bazaar is..." Or something equivalent. The author kept asking if the people commenting read the book.

The author's latest blog post says that exactly: "Quality Software Costs Money - Heartbleed Was Free" [0]

[0]: https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2636165

Snow.

To be honest, the only language I've really taken an interest in for the past few months has been Jonathan Blow's Jai, which isn't available yet.

IntelliJ?

It's not an attack, it's what's happening to the public discourse right now. There are areas of the internet that are right wing. Left wing people go to those areas to debate ideas, but when they see the comments sections aren't on their side, they claim harassment. This harassment may or may not come with requests for the moderators to make the comments a "safe space".

How long before the trigger warning itself triggers the very behavior they're trying to warn about?

> it doesn't interest me enough to choose it over C.

Why? If it's as fast as C but has the benefit of sugar, why not use it?

> People are (for good reason) very suspect of dependancies.

Not web developers. :D Although we should be.

> And most people are suprised to hear that I probably wouldn't use it for anything serious either.

Again, why not? C performance but easier to read code sounds like a good reason to use it for something serious. What are the downsides?

> But this is going to remain very difficult until fully decentralized, peer-to-peer communication networks become widespread.

Do you think they ever will? There's not much financial incentive for companies to embrace decentralized p2p and there's a clear financial incentive for SaaS. Until that situation reverses itself, we have a problem.

Most people hate individuals who act like they have greater moral authority than us mere mortals. It feels like an implicit judgement of our character. The fact that he's been proven right over and over makes it worse.

This thread could be a case study in debunking the claim that programmers are more logical and less prone to emotional manipulation than other humans. From everything I've seen, programmers are actually more emotionally sensitive than the rest of the population and thus are more susceptible to emotional arguments than logical ones. After all, logic we can trace and refute. It's harder to refute feelbad.

Why is this always the first comment on posts like these?

"This hiring process is messed up." "This guy has an inflated ego. We shouldn't listen to him. DISQUALIFY!"

Pretty much anytime somebody posts a story about bad hiring practices this is the first response I see. Why? What does it add to the discussion but an unhealthy dose of ad hominem?

Are you sure you're an introvert then? Being around people doesn't energize an introvert. That's the definition. Being an introvert myself, hanging around in a coffee shop even without interacting with anybody will wear me down slowly. I've built up enough of a tolerance that I can deal with it and still go on to have other social interactions throughout the day, but the fact remains just being near people is an energy net negative for me (and all introverts).

> Open plan workspaces tend to get a bad rap on HN.

And in several scientific studies.

If this is all it takes to demoralize you, don't go into gaming. I put it off for years myself because of the EA spouse scandal in 2004. When I graduated, I went into web development instead. Years later, I had a convenient opportunity to work at a gaming company and only stayed in the industry for 3 years.

When people say only work in gaming if you can't imagine doing anything else, they mean it. The work is hard, the hours are long, the people are "colorful" and most gaming companies are completely disorganized, even by startup standards. Read "masters of doom" and realize what is depicted in that book is practically industry standard, including the egos, yelling, screaming and off-color humor. Some see those things are a bonus. Some don't.

The upsides are the technical problems and the coolness factor. To a certain extent, gaming has ruined me for web development. After coding a solution to efficiently visualize an EXPLODING PLANET, it's hard to get excited about creating yet another social network.

In theory, yes. In practice, no, because most of those female computer scientists won't be looking for jobs writing code. They'll be looking for project management roles. So while female applicants may bump qualified male applicants, the number is so small as to make very little difference.

No, it isn't. I agree the nerd part should be ignored, but the sentence itself is her way of saying she's not attracted to the OP, which he should pay attention to. The OP should do what it is in his power to do and improve his social skills with women. If the OP is interested in hearing more of my opinion, he should email me (it's in my profile). I won't post it here because I'll get downvoted into oblivion.

I was thinking a complete replacement of the entire platform, but thinking about it more made me realize that's not practical for anybody. For better or worse, a lot of applications are already written for this platform.

A drop in "replacement" that creates a web-based UI for easy creation and retrieval of Meditech data would be very useful. It could communicate with the system and translate javascript into MMagic. Bonus points if it could translate already existing applications automatically. Time to see if Meditech has an API I can access from javascript.

OT: I took a look at your projects page and I have to say I like the cut of your jib, sir.

Are these numbers so low because of rent control? I lived in a 300 square foot studio last year that cost me $1400 a month. That exact same studio now costs $2800. I've seen similar increases from craigslist posts throughout the city, compared to what I was looking at last year. What I wouldn't give for it to only have increased 15%.

> I'd use an embedded compiler running in a fastcgi like daemon.

Sounds like nginx's lua plugin. Anything non-performant can be written in lua. Anything performant can be written and C and called from lua. Best of both worlds.

> the guy bet the farm on a technology without looking into whether that technology actually worked.

> When I had not gotten it working after just two hours, he started raging at me about how it was all my fault that it didn't work.

This is how most mid-sized non-technology companies operate when it comes to making technical decisions. If you have a couple of months to spare (the guy is verbose), I recommend reading the Gervais Principle[0].

[0] http://www.ribbonfarm.com/the-gervais-principle/

Were they quality hires? And are you still hiring at amazon? ;)

Here's something my mother badly needs: an alternative to meditech that is easy to program and use, but cheap enough for small hospitals to afford.

Just to put this in perspective, Meditech allows users (ie: non-technical medical personnel) to write their own "programs" for retrieving and organizing information in something called "Meditech Magic." Here's a clip:

  BEERv1.1,
  100^b,T("")^#,DO{b'<1 NN(b,"bottle"_IF{b=1 " ";"s "}_"of beer on the wall")^#,
      N(b,"bottle"_IF{b=1 " ";"s "}_"of beer!")^#,
      N("You take one down, pass it around,")^#,b-1^b,
      N(b,"bottle"_IF{b=1 " ";"s "}_"of beer on the wall!")^#},
  END;

What is it about the current solutions that leave you cold? It sounds like google calendar, anki, evernote and Tinder could all work together to do exactly what you suggest. I'm curious what you think is missing, the X factor that another solution would be able to address?

I'm not trying to be "provocative", but do you have any examples of this ever happening? And by that I mean any examples where a company has purposefully broken a law, was shut down and then laws were changed as a direct result? I've seen it happen the other way (technically no laws against it, shut the company down anyway then passed laws against it) but what you're proposing sounds improbable.

I can confirm that with a couple dozen n=1 anecdotes. I used to have a mirror on my monitor so I could see people coming up behind me. That calmed the lizard brain down a bit, but I was still distracted every time somebody walked behind me. I've known dozens of programmers who also hate having their back exposed because it's a distraction.