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azurelogic

539 karma · joined January 29, 2013

https://azurelogic.com https://twitter.com/azurelogic https://github.com/azurelogic

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/azurelogic; my proof: https://keybase.io/azurelogic/sigs/SvlKKUtqsOZBFMZbdZAHC5EE29sPVoRJjPxW7-JaI_M ]

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azurelogic··on Ask HN: I am the dumbest person in the room. What should I do?
I pity your situation. I've been there. I was still in school, when I got the opportunity to work as a contractor with a team that had their shit together in an epic way. Everything they wrote was tested. Unit tests, acceptance tests, integration tests, and thorough exploratory QA. They were working on a legacy system, but everything they touched got nicely refactored and wrapped in a big hug of tests. 100% agile, always pair programming, and their process was smooth. I had never heard of any of it, and it was amazing to experience.

Unfortunately, the domain was super deep and insane to wrap your head around, and almost the entire team was made of introverts who wanted their machine to keep whirring along perfectly. I'm an extrovert, and I was so green it was ridiculous. I was one of the best students in my classes, but I felt like an idiot when I was at work. I left questioning why I had chosen to become a developer everyday for about 5 months, when finally things started to click. Unfortuately, these people had already formed an opinion of me. My boss was superb though and offered to move me to a different team. I jumped at the chance. I joined a team of more junior guys that got more chance to work solo. I blossomed in that environment. I taught myself things without fear of judgment and banged out features like a champ.

My manager was considering me for hire when upper management laid off a sizable chunk of the IT/Dev staff and froze hiring. I already had been interviewing elsewhere and ended up in as a consultant, which was a perfect fit for me to learn and grow. My advice is this: learn what you can from them, try to sharpen your skills, and don't be afraid to jump ship when you need to. I hope that helps.

azurelogic··on Node.js Tools for Visual Studio
The two major issues I have run into with doing node on Windows are likely out of your control. First is the file path length limitation, which conflicts with the nesting of npm dependencies. Second is dealing with any packages that depend on node-gyp for compilation. It shouldn't require an entire IDE to be installed in production just to build your dependencies that need node-gyp compilation. Not to mention that the process is problematic even in dev if you're not lucky enough to have installed the exact expected dependencies. I found it easier (and more portable) to just use a VM running some *nix flavor (Ubuntu for me) and deploy to a similar environment.
azurelogic··on Node.js Tools for Visual Studio
It's super cool for people wanting to do node on Windows. I used the beta while doing a small side project at my last job, and they worked well for that project.

My issue isn't necessarily azure and VS. It's the state of node on Windows. It's a second class citizen compared to the versions for posix compliant OSes. There are things that just don't work on Windows without installing VS, which is undesirable for deployment, and that's assuming they work even after VS is installed.

I'd rather spin up a local Ubuntu VM and write code in WebStorm, and that's what I do. I get debugger support, test runners, code completion, etc. Plus, I can then just deploy to cheaper VPS providers (DigitalOcean, Vultr, etc).

azurelogic··on How to set up your own free VPN server on AWS
I was really hoping this would be a more generic tutorial for various Linux flavors. I failed miserably at setting up L2TP IPSec last time I tried.
azurelogic··on Pencil code
At first glance, this looks like a modern implementation of Logo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logo_%28programming_language%29
azurelogic··on Ask HN: Do you take nootropics?
I was prescribed Ritalin and later Adderall from 3 years old until I was 24, when I quit. They did the job they were prescribed for: I was focused. I found Adderall to be "cleaner" feeling, and it had less of a negative effect on my personality. That said, both of them made me much more angry and type A. There is no doubt in my mind now that my dosage was too high, but back in the 80s and 90s, I don't think anyone really understood what constant stimulant overdoses in children looked like. This stuff has irreversibly shaped who I am for better and worse. I can't really recommend either one to anyone unless they really need it.

On the topic of more accessible nootropics, I have worked with a number of the "racetam" substances, which tend to promote acetylcholine use in the brain. Because of this, all of them were taken with copious amounts of choline. I took Piracetam for about 2.5 years. It worked decently well early on at enhancing my focus, but towards the end, I questioned its benefits and quit. During that time, I also added in splashes of Oxiracetam, Aniracetam, and Pramiracetam. Oxiracetam is hands down the best of them all. It was made for hardcore analytical thinking. I used it primarily when I had exams or when I was more exhausted at work right after my daughter was born. It tends to tire the brain as it wears off and lead to some headaches though. Overall, it was a very useful tool Pramiracetam just gave me an instant headache the couple of times I tried it. Aniracetam is suggested to be more creative and anxiolytic. I felt a little calmer, but not enough to warrant consistent use.

Quitting caffiene was really helpful for me. I know that's close to heresy among developers, but I wake up feeling a lot less crappy.

Lately, I've been just taking Huperzine A, which acts as an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor. I feel like I get something similar to the performance of Piracetam, but without the need for the choline supplement to prevent headaches.

azurelogic··on Programmer Passion Considered Harmful
The author has a good strong point about leaving work at work when you leave. Unfortunately, he makes a logical error in thinking that this generalizes to any sort activity that resembles your work. Would anyone berate a mechanic who likes to go home to work on the classic Camaro he is restoring for fun? Just because the guy does similar things for work and fun doesn't make him absolutely wrong or necessarily worse at his job.

When I leave at 5, I don't worry about work. I go home, have dinner with my family, play with my kid, etc. Then, while I'm watching TV, I sometimes sneak in coding on some side project or open source fix, writing a blog post, or organizing a meetup. This doesn't make me a fool or bad at my job. If anything, I'm continuing to develop and retool to keep my competitive edge so I can keep getting paid well for work that I don't hate. That's smart.

I've worked with guys like this, and they drive me crazy. If you hate your career path, that's a you problem. Don't make it mine.

azurelogic··on BBC gives children mini-computers in Make it Digital scheme
While I'm excited for these kids, the title does not deliver. There is a distinct lack of minicomputers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minicomputer

I was totally expecting something more like the video where they take kids born in 2000 and show them a VCR.

azurelogic··on The gold Apple Watch Edition will start at $10,000
I'm not totally sold on the current concept of the smartwatch. I think that wearables are the future, but it's going to take something more to make it truly compelling. But whether you're sold on it or not, a $10k version is just insane.
azurelogic··on AT&T is charging an extra $29/month to opt out of “tracking information”
Fortunately, you can host your own VPN server on DigitalOcean for $5/month. Heck, you could probably even get away with one of atlantic.net's $1/month servers.
azurelogic··on How (!not) to make a 404 page
This was posted here 9 days ago => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9013890.

Consensus is that Bloomberg's 404 and 500 pages are quite awesome.

azurelogic··on Ask HN: What to do when CloudFlare is on an Adult block list
Buy a cheap SSL cert from RapidSSL ($11/year via namecheap). Get $5 DigitalOcean server, and reverse proxy whatever you're serving with nginx. Done for $5/month.

Bonus points: get the guy a private VPN on there too.

azurelogic··on 404. PAGE Not FOUND
Comedy gold. It's good to see that serious business has a sense of humor.

I still love the Lemmings 404 game here: http://www.romainbrasier.fr/404.php

azurelogic··on 404. PAGE Not FOUND
Mouse movement over the graphic does it on desktop too, fyi
azurelogic··on Node v0.12.0 (Stable)
Both this and io.js 1.1.0 are available via nvm now.
azurelogic··on Eero – Blanket your home in fast, reliable WiFi
I'm skeptical of the app based setup. This thing is dripping with a nice glossy coat of "made for non-technical users". I sure hope they have provided means for reserved IPs and custom port forwarding for when people need it. Bonus if it can update dynamic DNS for me.
azurelogic··on Nvidia GeForce GTX 970: Correcting the Specs and Exploring Memory Allocation
Sure. Some people might just get mad enough to do so.
azurelogic··on Matter.js – A 2D rigid body physics engine for the web
Pretty slick. I think I might be using this at Global Game Jam this weekend.

On a side note though, it seems that there are some issues if you get things moving fast enough. I was consistently able to fling shapes through the walls on the first demo.

azurelogic··on Octopress 3.0 is coming
I looked at Hexo, Assemble, Wintersmith, Docpad, Metalsmith, and many others. I wanted flexibility to restructure as I saw fit and easily add structures other than just blogs. I tried docpad but it struck me as too "tell you how it's gonna be", even setting your front end template. Metalsmith (http://www.metalsmith.io/) was a great solution to that. It's a lot like using Gulp and Express' middleware plugins. I liked that I could completely customize the build pipeline to get exactly what I wanted. There's also a way to do your build pipeline with config files, if that's your cup of tea.
azurelogic··on MySpace Still Reaches 50M People Each Month
Yes, 49.9M people each month visit MySpace after discussing old, washed up websites with their friends and saying, "Does MySpace even exist today?"

The other 100K are juggalos and pedophiles.

azurelogic··on Java 8: No more loops
Yeah, I read this and immediately thought it felt like a knockoff of LINQ.
azurelogic··on Sandy bridge, Ivy bridge, Haswell and the mess of Intel processors feature list
The author is complaining out of context on a couple of points here:

1) The B820 came out 1.25 years later than the B940. So, it's not hard to see that maybe Intel decided in that timeframe to add VT-x support.

2) None of the K-series CPUs support VT-d. For some reason, VT-d and overclocking are not compatible. This would have been more noticeable if, for example, the author had compared the i7-4770K to the i7-4770, not the i5-4570. The same distinction is there between the i5-4670 and i5-4670K.

3) The table is organized in a misleading fashion. Why put the weakest CPUs in the center except to make proper trend be intentionally disrupted

After fixing or striking these issues, this isn't even an article worth writing because the features suddenly make sense.

azurelogic··on Dear Apple, why is my iPhone always full?
This article is ignorant in so many ways.

1) Apple did see this problem coming. See iCloud Photo Library.

2) Before smartphones, we had digital cameras, and what did we have to do with them? That's right, we took out the card and copied the photos to our computers. Just because your smartphone acts like a computer doesn't mean that you should treat it the same. Copy. Organize. Curate. Sync. Done.

3) What does one of your people's opinion of the iTunes logo have to do with the price of tea in China? Moreover, it cements the impetuous and immature tone of the article. Whining "look at me" is not how to get things done. Grow up and prove yourself.

Ladies and gentlemen, please think before you blog.

azurelogic··on Ask HN: Alternative jobs to take a break from being a developer?
Project manager, front end designer, QA, or DBA maybe? Depends on your background and passion.
azurelogic··on Ask HN: What was your best investment in yourself?
Mine was going back to school to get my MS in CS after getting a BS in a field I didn't much care for. It has increased my income and job satisfaction many times over.
azurelogic··on iPad Air 2
What's really sad is that the iPad mini 3 is an iPad mini 2 with a TouchID sensor. Looks like I'll be saving $100 and getting a mini 2.
azurelogic··on Hive: Free unlimited cloud storage for you and your friends
You're right on both counts. However, everyone, including members of younger generations, is becoming more aware of the potential harm from cloud providers not having sufficient security around our data. The market for services where this kind of cavalier "let your data be free" attitude prevails is shrinking. Look at the recent Snapchat and iCloud photo leaks. All the kids are seeing this.
azurelogic··on Hive: Free unlimited cloud storage for you and your friends
I really dislike the fact that this is totally anti-privacy which is one of the hottest topics in cloud file storage today. Everyone is asking for things to be more secure, and people are willing to pay for storage and security when they need it. This is solving the wrong problem.
azurelogic··on Ask HN: Have you rejected an offer to work on a project because of self-doubt?
Sounds like classic imposter syndrome. I've dealt with it at times myself. The best cure I've found is taking on a tough task, breaking it down to more manageable chunks, and completing them. Even after completing some tough projects, I still feel the fear grip me. I took a new job recently that required working with an unfamiliar framework and design patterns. Early on, I kept running into road blocks and thought for sure that everyone would think I couldn't hack it. Turns out everyone was actually impressed that I was picking up on things quickly. Just because you perceive something, doesn't mean others perceive it the same way. Go for it, and ask for feedback early (just don't get too hurt if they have something negative/constructive to say. Remember you can't be perfect)
azurelogic··on Why Sometimes I Hate Myself
This article made me feel so much better about taking some time off from my current side project to splatter zombies in Dead Rising 3 lately. I do need to get back to it soon though...
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