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crdoconnoron On Resigning from Google

>Google spent decades selecting for these "moralizers" and is now reaping what it sowed; "don't be evil" was a cultural slogan that carries consequences if it attracts a particular kind of mindset.

And apparently that mindset drove an enormous amount of profit and, at least in the beginning, gave the company some sort of social conscience.

It's amazing that you can be so against these things

crdoconnoron On Resigning from Google

>One cannot publicly criticize a company while enjoying cushy paychecks

Why is it that you think that the people who see the sausage being made are exactly the ones most unqualified to criticize it?

crdoconnoron On Resigning from Google

I'd probably read an article by a ex member of mensa that wrote that.

Arguing vociferously about how that "wasn't such a big deal" would make me wonder what ax you had to grind with people who talk shit about mensa.

crdoconnoron On Resigning from Google

To be fair Google did downgrade their "do not evil" value to "it is possible to conduct business without being evil" but it's fair to be reminded of all the evil they do do that led them to downgrade themselves in their own estimation.

crdoconnoron On Resigning from Google

A lot of people on hacker news get threatened by collective action. This is understandable, given the number of employers, wannabe employers and people with large portfolios who frequent this site.

This is kind of why I expected some people to make a big deal out of how this isn't a big deal. Tech unionisation is genuinely threatening to many here and this Google walkout stuff is a potential sign of things to come in this industry.

crdoconnoron Bocker – Docker implemented in around 100 lines of Bash (2015)

Yes, I remember it was a problem with Django. It wasn't just the application server, you might need to run some scripts, after the database is up, before kicking off the webserver. Any workflow like this is explicitly unaccommodated.

100% of the solutions ive seen to address this problem have been hacky - either polling bash scripts or explicit waits.

docker compose is a piece of shit.

crdoconnoron Bail – Get out of your plans, guilt free

in those instances I'm almost always glad I went afterwards even if I wasn't feeling "hot to trot" before.

crdoconnoron Bocker – Docker implemented in around 100 lines of Bash (2015)

https://docs.docker.com/compose/startup-order/

>The problem of waiting for a database (for example) to be ready is really just a subset of a much larger problem of distributed systems. In production, your database could become unavailable or move hosts at any time. Your application needs to be resilient to these types of failures.

absolute bullshit. docker compose thinks that it can excuse its bugs by dint of the fact that we're supposed to build "more resilient" applications to accommodate them.

and, their proposed workaround with "wait for" is disgusting. their tool should be able to handle readiness detection. it's so fucking basic.

it's not only this but this is an example of the bullshit in this shitty tool excused with shitty reasons.

crdoconnoron Bocker – Docker implemented in around 100 lines of Bash (2015)

docker compose is the tool that winds me up the most.

crdoconnoron Educated Fools

Racists don't use the term racist to describe what they do either.

Language policing is still big in dem circles.

crdoconnoron Nuclear power is the only green solution (2004)

Nuclear has shown no particular inclination to come down in price whereas renewables have.

It's just not cost effective without both massive implicit and explicit government subsidies.

Renewables are cost effective now and will only become more so.

crdoconnoron Nuclear power is the only green solution (2004)

Reliable and predictable at 2x the cost.

Saving 50% on generation gives you a lot of options in terms of demand shaping and storage.

It's also far, far less capital intensive and doesn't require an uncapped disaster insurance subsidy from the taxpayer.

crdoconnoron Curl to shell isn’t so bad (2019)

Curl to shell is usually indicative of a package manager that could be doing a better job.

crdoconnoron Why Continuous Integration and Delivery Is Important

The point, however, is that the customer/regulator dictates quality standards, not the person assembling the burger.

Whereas apparently many software engineers do not take their cue from customers since they strive for some impossible "no bug policy" (or some other such rubbish).

crdoconnoron Why Continuous Integration and Delivery Is Important

Correct, it aims for mediocrity. If the customer requested 50 McDonald's hamburger, is it a cultural problem that you're not delivering one steak?

crdoconnoron Why Continuous Integration and Delivery Is Important

IME that culture, where it exists, varies from organisation to organisation and is driven from the top.

I think a lot of companies don't care about bugs as much as their developers do though, and that isn't necessarily irrational behaviour.

Some kinds of customer facing bugs really are ok to just let happen.

crdoconnoron Staff emails claim Boeing 777X ‘shares Max problem’

I'm inferring that you believe that the regulators were wrong to ground it.

crdoconnoron Staff emails claim Boeing 777X ‘shares Max problem’

China's approach with its 737MAX competitor, has, ironically been the exact opposite of this. Their fear wasn't getting the price low enough to satisfy shareholders but not getting the airline approved by US and European regulators.

I was dubious before the crashes but after Boeing's reaction to the crashes I'm fairly sure I'd feel safer on their planes than Boeing's.

crdoconnoron Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

It's also a business endeavour that's done a lot of bragging about the number of people it will render jobless. It's not going to be an easy political sell to erect lots of additional road furniture unless it's cheap and unobtrusive.

crdoconnoron Things that I think will be important in the next decade

>Luddites complained about the automated loom as well, saying the cost to society was too great despite its benefits

They actually didn't. They just broke them because they (rightly) saw that as an effective means of raising the price of their artisanship.

The luddites are more akin to the Paris Uber strikers - who also weren't anti technology.

crdoconnoron Boeing 737 Max: Worker said plane 'designed by clowns'

The truly damning part was "I wouldn't let my family fly on a plane where the pilot was trained on MAX simulator".

crdoconnoron For suicide prevention, try raising the minimum wage, research suggests

>If there is an opportunity to not over-pay, you should be able to start your own firm and put overpaying ones out of business.

Sure, but first lend me a few hundred million in capital would ya?

I realize not every business requires that much but I work for an oil supermajor... so, little hard to do what you're suggesting without your help. The "capital" in "capitalism" keeps getting in the way.

crdoconnoron Can Nuclear Power Offer a Way Out of the Climate Crisis?

Why not? Wind is a ~50% cheaper source of energy per kWh than nuclear.

Edit : apparently the answer to this question is "downvote" :)

crdoconnoron Can Nuclear Power Offer a Way Out of the Climate Crisis?

The point is that Chernobyl could have turned Ukraine into an unlivable country. Badly although it was managed, it could have been even worse.

crdoconnoron It is perfectly OK to only code at work, you can have a life too

>Hard skills are surprisingly small percentage of the overall picture of the person from employment perspective.

This is true outside of tech hubs and in companies with non technical management. What is true in Oklahoma City and Paris isn't necessarily true in SF/NYC

crdoconnoron Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

Lots of people who employ developers and wannabe entrepreneurs on hacker news.

crdoconnoron Major union launches campaign to organize video game and tech workers

Employers tend to be a lot more hostile to unions in the US. This manifests with deliberately spread FUD about unions (e.g. the ridiculous Walmart video), covert attempts to sabotage, depiction of schoolteachers as terrorists (by the Kentucky governor) and, in one rather extreme case, aerial bombardment of striking workers.

crdoconnoron Is Git Irreplaceable? (2019)

Most of the guis are crap because everybody who builds them thinks that a GUI should just be a more or less a visual representation of the command line.

crdoconnoron Anti-patterns and malpractices in modern software development (2015)

If you look at the Google trends for ruby on rails (where the hype is clear) it looks markedly different to python (steady trend).

I remember that comic - I think it coincided not with anything special happening in the python world, it was just when Randall Munroe learned python.

crdoconnoron Anti-patterns and malpractices in modern software development (2015)

Eschewing newer technologies in general is clearly a terrible idea but it's not such a bad idea to eschew hyped technologies (particularly corporate driven hype).

Python is an example of a technology that grew relatively slowly and without a hype cycle.

IME hype in this industry correlates pretty strongly with crap.