conorh

There was a lot of interest last time on this topic in a previous hacker news discussion [1] so posting this article by my wife (the parathyroid surgeon) here. If you have any questions feel free to post them here and she will check in.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24061164

There are great questions on this thread, when she is available she will weigh in. I don't have the answers unfortunately! Feel free to reach out to her via her website too if you have very specific questions - she doesn't mind that at all.

She was thinking about writing a blog post on Vitamin D already and she says she will it in the next few days and I'll post it here when she does. She is not talking about patients with pre-existing hyperparathyroidism - they often think they have it because the calcium is high, but it is only high because of the vitamin D!

I've mentioned this before, but my wife is a parathyroid surgeon (parathyroids are the glands that regulate the calcium in your neck) and would beg you to PLEASE monitor your calcium levels if you are supplementing with Vitamin D. She often sees patients on high doses of Vitamin D from well intentioned doctors, but with out of whack calcium levels because of it, and the patients can be very sick without understanding why. Often their doctors don't understand the processes either which is why they end up with her. I'll have her write a blog post about it at some point, but it is a real risk with possible severe long term consequences and she sees it a lot more often these days. She is getting her blog kicked off here (just yesterday actually) https://devaboone.com if you want to follow along.

What was your experience though when interviewing?

I find it incredibly depressing that the current state of interviews for many companies is still a bunch of algorithm problems that test how much time you've spent grinding through leetcode. Like many other things we've optimized on what is easy to test, rather than what is relevant.

SEEKING WORK: Remote - Three person design and development freelance team working together for over 10 years (individually with 20+ years experience)

Locations: Tampa, FL / Maine / San Francisco (or local to one of those areas)

Technologies and Skills: React, Go, Ruby on Rails, Design, UX, MySql, Postgres, Redis, Redshift, CSS/HTML/SASS, Webflow, AWS etc.

Email: hi@squaremill.com

Website: https://squaremill.com (recent projects @ https://squaremill.com/projects)

We have extensive experience in building applications from design, through implementation and ongoing management. We have very happy clients over the last 10 years and can put you in touch with them. Because we have worked together as a team for 10+ years we are extremely efficient - we pride ourselves on that along with being predictable and responsive. We can plug into an existing team to fill holes (design, tech) or can work as a design/developer team to get built what you need from soup to nuts. Experience in building healthcare applications, retail applications, financial apps, custom CMS, webflow apps, phone apps, real estate, high throughput message delivery!

I used dynamically generated awk scripts a few years ago to take some delimited text files that were several hundred gigabytes and pre-process them for faster loading to a DB. It sped up the whole process a huge amount - I don’t remember exactly now but I think it went from 24 hours to get it all loaded to under 2 hours. Useful tool to have in the tool box.

Just discovered this recently, great app, it even replaced sequel pro which was my go to for MySQL DBs.

I disagree. Do you remember the days when J2EE was the hot stuff? Popularity comes and goes and is not necessarily correlated with whether something is a good idea or not.

Over the last 15-20 years or so as a web development shop we've gone through Prototype, Jquery, Backbone, Angular, Vue and now React for JS frameworks. We've mostly settled on React lately. Our experience is however that it is wildly overused where it is not needed and adds significant time to development. Features that should take a week to build now suddenly have complex client side state management requirements (to name one issue) and take several weeks. We've seen this in several projects while working alongside experienced developers.

We do use React extensively and we find the sweet spot is in smaller components on a page, or highly interactive sections, things without lots of shared state, but it often seems like web developers have one hammer and it is not the right one.

SEEKING WORK:

Remote - Three person design and development freelance team working together for over 10 years (individually with 20+ years experience)

Locations: Tampa, FL / Maine / San Francisco (or local to one of those areas)

Technologies and Skills: React, Go, Ruby on Rails, Design, UX, MySql, Postgres, Redis, Redshift, CSS/HTML/SASS, AWS etc.

Email: hi@squaremill.com

Website: https://squaremill.com (recent projects @ https://squaremill.com/projects)

We have extensive experience in building applications from design, through implementation and ongoing management. We have very happy clients over the last 10 years and can put you in touch with them. Because we have worked together as a team for so long we are extremely efficient - we pride ourselves on that along with being predictable and responsive. We can plug into an existing team to fill holes (design, tech) or can work as a design/developer team to get built what you need from soup to nuts. Experience in building healthcare applications, retail applications, financial apps, custom CMS, phone apps, real estate, high throughput message delivery.

SEEKING WORK: Remote - Three person design and development freelance team working together for over 10 years (individually with 20+ years experience) Locations: Tampa, FL / Maine / San Francisco Remote: Yes (or local to one of those areas)

Technologies and Skills: Design, UX, Ruby on Rails, Go, React, Javascript, MySql, Postgres, Redis, Redshift, CSS/HTML/SASS, AWS etc.

Email: hi@squaremill.com

Website: https://squaremill.com (recent projects @ https://squaremill.com/projects)

We have extensive experience in building applications from design, through implementation and ongoing management. We have very happy clients over the last 10 years and can put you in touch with them. Because we have worked together as a team for so long we are extremely efficient - we pride ourselves on that along with being predictable and responsive. We can plug into an existing team to fill holes (design, tech) or can work as a design/developer team to get built what you need from soup to nuts. Experience in building healthcare applications, retail applications, financial apps, custom CMS, phone apps, real estate, high throughput message delivery.

SEEKING WORK: Remote - Three person design and development freelance team working together for over 10 years (individually with 20+ years experience) Locations: Tampa, FL / Maine / San Francisco

Remote: Yes (or local to one of those areas)

Technologies and Skills: Design, UX, Ruby on Rails, Go, React, Javascript, MySql, Postgres, Redis, Redshift, CSS/HTML/SASS, AWS etc.

Email: hi@squaremill.com

Website: https://squaremill.com (recent projects @ https://squaremill.com/projects)

We have extensive experience in building applications from design, through implementation and ongoing management. We have very happy clients over the last 10 years and can put you in touch with them. Because we have worked together as a team for so long we are extremely efficient - we pride ourselves on that along with being predictable and responsive. We can plug into an existing team to fill holes (design, tech) or can work as a design/developer team to get built what you need from soup to nuts. Experience in building healthcare applications, retail applications, financial apps, custom CMS, phone apps, real estate, high throughput message delivery.

SEEKING WORK: Remote - Three person design and development team working together for over 10 years (individually with 20+ years experience)

Locations: Tampa, FL / Maine / San Francisco

Remote: Yes (or local to one of those areas)

Technologies and Skills: Design, UX, Ruby on Rails, Go, React, Javascript, MySql, Postgres, Redis, Redshift, CSS/HTML/SASS, AWS etc.

Email: hi@squaremill.com

Website: https://squaremill.com (recent projects @ https://squaremill.com/projects)

We have extensive experience in building applications from design, through implementation and ongoing management. We have incredibly happy clients over the last 10 years and happy to put you in touch with them. Because we have worked together as a team for so long we are extremely efficient - we pride ourselves on that along with being predictable and responsive. We can plug into an existing team to fill holes (design, tech) or can work as a design/developer team to get built what you need from soup to nuts. Experience in building healthcare applications, retail applications, financial apps, custom CMS, phone apps, real estate, high throughput message delivery. You name it we've probably built something like it at some point in our careers :)

SEEKING WORK: Remote - Three person design and development team working together for over 10 years (individually with 20+ years experience) Locations: Tampa, FL / Maine / San Francisco Remote: Yes (or local to one of those areas) Technologies and Skills: Design, UX, Rails, Go, React, Javascript, Angular, MySql, Postgres, Redis, Redshift, Aurora, CSS/HTML/SASS, Docker, AWS, Google etc. Email: hi@squaremill.com Website: https://squaremill.com (recent projects @ https://squaremill.com/projects) We have extensive experience in building applications from design, through implementation and ongoing management. We have incredibly happy clients over the last 10 years and happy to put you in touch with them. Because we have worked together as a team for so long we are extremely efficient - we pride ourselves on that along with being predictable and responsive. We can an plug into an existing team to fill holes (design, tech) or can work as a design/developer team to get built what you need from soup to nuts. Experience in building healthcare applications, retail applications, financial apps, custom CMS, phone apps, real estate, high throughput message delivery. You name it we've probably built something like it at some point in our careers :)

Er, I read through the article and I'd agree with Snopes on this one. They present a pretty good argument. If you change the claim to 5/6 it becomes technically correct (the best kind of correct!), but the nuance that Snopes presents in the article is extremely compelling for why it is mostly false. Three of those 5 impeachments didn't even make it out of committee to go in front of the house, they were only introduced (and any rep can introduce anything crazy they'd like, including articles of impeachment) and one of the impeachments was Nixon which had bipartisan support.

I find your argument a bit cynical at best - this is a very black or white way of viewing two very large sites. Having read through Wikipedia decisions they are often open about the process, and the decisions can be very nuanced, they'll never be 100% successful, but they work extremely hard at trying to avoid bias and mistakes. I find Snopes to be a reasonable resource too, they present sourced facts as much as possible and whether or not I agree with all their conclusions I find the way they go about their research very compelling.

It wasn't until I read a comment here that there was a wiki that I found most of your documentation. I'd link this higher in your README as it is what I was looking for when I went to the project (lots of examples):

https://gitlab.com/honeyryderchuck/httpx/-/wiki_pages/home

SEEKING WORK: Remote - Three person design and development team working together for over 10 years (individually with 20+ years experience)

Locations: Tampa, FL / Maine / San Francisco

Remote: Yes (or local to one of those areas)

Technologies and Skills: Design, UX, Rails, Go, React, Javascript, Angular, MySql, Postgres, Redis, Redshift, Aurora, CSS/HTML/SASS, Docker, AWS, Google etc.

Email: hi@squaremill.com

Website: https://squaremill.com (recent projects @ https://squaremill.com/projects)

We have extensive experience in building applications from design, through implementation and ongoing management. We have incredibly happy clients over the last 10 years and happy to put you in touch with them. Because we have worked together as a team for so long we are extremely efficient - we pride ourselves on that along with being predictable and responsive. We can an plug into an existing team to fill holes (design, tech) or can work as a design/developer team to get built what you need from soup to nuts. Experience in building healthcare applications, retail applications, financial apps, custom CMS, phone apps, real estate, high throughput message delivery. You name it we've probably built something like it at some point in our careers :)

SEEKING WORK: Remote - Three person design and development team with 20+ years of development experience.

Locations: Tampa, FL / Maine / San Francisco

Remote: Yes (or local to one of those areas)

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Rails, Go, React, Javascript, Angular, MySql, Postgres, Redis, Redshift, Aurora, CSS/HTML/SASS, DevOps

Email: hi@squaremill.com

Website: https://squaremill.com (recent projects @ https://squaremill.com/projects)

We have extensive experience in building applications from design through implementation and ongoing management. We have incredibly happy clients over the last 10 years and happy to put you in touch with them. We gave worked at startups and large companies. Can plug into an existing team to fill holes (design, tech) or can work as a design/developer team to get built what you need from soup to nuts. Experience in building healthcare applications, retail applications, financial apps, custom CMS, phone apps, real estate, high throughput message delivery. You name it we've probably built something like it at some point in our careers :)

Started a new project with Rails 6.0.0.rc2 the other day. Great experience, up and running quickly and enjoyed all the new little touches (object allocations in the logs is great). The multi database[1] thing is also great to have built in - the new app has an analytics database and a web app database that it needs to query, so it is great to be able to use the new functionality for that!

[1] https://edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_multiple_da...

They fail because of severe checklist fatigue according to my wife (a surgeon). Checklists are great - so let's do them for everything, ALL the time. People start to tune them out because they do the same checklist hundreds and hundreds of times and they often have many irrelevant things on them. The people using the checklists have little ability to change them or to improve them and so they start to suffer from checklist fatigue. As they say in the article:

> “There's no point in having an item that says, 'Have the antibiotics been given?' if there are no antibiotics in the hospital,” says Dixon-Woods.

The checklists that my wife uses are apparently filled with these types of irrelevant checks.

Not to say that they aren't useful, they are, but as this article points out the implementation of checklists often leaves a lot to be desired.

SEEKING WORK: Remote - Three person design and development team with individually 20 years of professional development experience each.

Locations: Tampa, FL / Maine / San Francisco

Remote: Yes (or local to one of those areas)

Willing to relocate: No

Technologies: Rails, Go, React, Javascript, Angular, MySql, Postgres, Redis, CSS/HTML/SASS, DevOps

Email: hi@squaremill.com

Website: https://squaremill.com (recent projects @ https://squaremill.com/projects)

We have extensive experience in building applications from design through implementation and ongoing management, including team management and hiring. We have incredibly happy clients over the last 10 years and happy to put you in touch with them. We gave worked at successful startups and large companies. Can plug into an existing team to fill holes (design, tech) or can work as a design/developer team to get built what you need from soup to nuts. Experience in building healthcare applications, retail applications, financial apps, custom CMS, phone apps, real estate, high throughput message delivery. You name it we've probably built something like it at some point in our careers :)

I had read a few of these negative articles about Amazon fulfillment centers and then a guy we know working the counter at our local pizza place got a job at one of them. That made me change my mind and doubt the reporting after talking with him. The pay was much better better, the benefits if he transitioned to full time were much better, and he was really excited about a program Amazon has to cover tuition after (I think) a year for some educational programs.

I like it too, except that my (bronze level in the marketplace) high deductible plan is ~$1300 a month for my family, that is not sustainable. A recent ER visit with 1 night stay cost us about 8k out of pocket, the family deductible for the plan is $13k a year.

I’ve done Amtrak with my young kids twice, Tampa to DC overnight, in a sleeper cabin as described in the article. They love it, we love it. Hanging out, watching the scenery go by, exploring the train, meeeting other passengers, reading, playing on devices, playing games (the kids love making little forts in the upstairs bunk). It is a wonderful way to travel. We do the train one way and then fly back to save time.

I agree with the overall sentiment. After having worked on backbone, then angular and now react/vue apps I find that we often spend more time figuring out how to do things and futzing with the configuration and tests than we spend actually writing useful app code. Our approach after much hard earned experience mirrors somewhat what he is saying - 1. Rails monolith with Turbolinks. 2. sprinkle React components as needed. We have rarely needed to go beyond this and we find it much (much) more maintainable and stable after a year or two.

Nice insight into the tools, but wouldn't a simple memory monitor have shown the issue?

Very nice. I usually find that the features in new versions of Rails are solving 'real' problems - issues that I have in daily development and have been solving separately with Gems, or custom code. In this case I have usually been integrating tiny-mce, but with custom work for the image and file uploads. Also looking forward to the multi-db work when it lands!

There is some interesting research* showing that deforested soils take more than a thousand years to rebuild their carbon sequestering ability. So even if there are more trees, we may have done long term damage to the environment:

https://natureecoevocommunity.nature.com/users/169969-peter-...

Paper here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-018-0192-7.epdf

* I should disclose that I know the person doing this research!