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griffindy

109 karma · joined December 1, 2011

Music / Classics major.

software engineer at Twitter in Boston.

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griffindy··on W3C HTML JSON form submission
jersey[0], the reference implementation of JAX-RS[1] does this if you specify an incoming query string parameter as a `List`

[0] https://jersey.java.net/ [1] https://jax-rs-spec.java.net/

griffindy··on Practical Typography
While the fonts themselves are proportional, usually each letter (counting space as a letter) has the same width every time, it just happens that an 'i' takes up less space than 'w'. Regular spaces are usually 'en-spaces', meaning the width of the 'n' in whatever typeface you're using.

That being said, spacing is obviously very different in justified type (and a huge pain to set by hand), where it will change depending on which words fit in the line.

griffindy··on Why Ruby rocks
> What kind of creation are you building that you are expecting > to not know which methods are available while running your program?

`method_missing` is more useful for dynamically responding to method calls than actually not knowing how to respond. A good example of this is rails' (version 3.2 and lower) dynamic finders:

User.find_by_username('a_username')

`find_by_username` is never defined anywhere, it is dynamically responded to using method missing. this allows code to be much more precise and DRY (though at the expense of readability if you don't know what's going on)

griffindy··on In Defense of Floppy Disks: The Vocabulary of the Interface
but very few people who are in college right now were perhaps old enough to remember floppy disks. I graduated from college in 2012 and remember having floppy disks as a kid (I think for Encarta?) but don't remember ever using them.

I think that we're right on the cusp of people graduating college who have never used a floppy disk.

griffindy··on PHP 5.5
If michh is working on plugins for other people, shared hosts can be pretty behind on their PHP versions. I just had to backport a wordpress plugin to 5.2(!), which came out in 2006.

EDIT: meant PHP versions, not plugins.

griffindy··on Students build computers out of cardboard
me too, and I was very pleasantly surprised!
griffindy··on Linux Jobs Forecast: Pressing Need for Linux Talent
I'm not trying to be rude or anything, but what exactly is a 'linux' or 'unix' pro?
griffindy··on Keeping Passwords in Source Control
on a unix system you could put them inside `/etc/profile.d/user.sh` as environment variables so that whenever that user is running something those variables exist. then if you're using chef (not familiar with puppet, etc.) you could keep those passwords/keys in an encrypted data bag and set them during provisioning.
griffindy··on Micro Responsive Grid - a tiny little fluid grid
a nice framework and a great site, good job!
griffindy··on Writing Testable Frontend Javascript Part 1 – Anti-patterns and their fixes
I've always liked testing ajax requests with sinon [1]. It injects its own version of an XMLHttpRequest object to keep track of all requests, and you can also send specific responses to test success and failure handling.

[1] http://sinonjs.org/docs/#useFakeXMLHttpRequest

griffindy··on How SublimeText Bodybags vim+Terminator
I know about vim scripts, I just don't think the process is as smooth as sublime's package control
griffindy··on How SublimeText Bodybags vim+Terminator
Other than the central repository (which vim does lack, there are quite a few plugins I'll admit), I don't see anything too different from vim, or am I just missing something. not trying to be mean spirited, just curious.
griffindy··on Crafting Code in Clojure
slightly more idiomatic, though perhaps not quite as clear as the clojure:

    def unique_keys(*hashes)
      result = {}
      hashes.each do |hash|
        result.merge! hash
      end
      return result.keys.map(&:to_s).sort.join(', ') unless result.empty?
      '<none>'
    end
https://gist.github.com/4695388
griffindy··on Airmail – A Real Sparrow Alternative?
I've been trying this out side by side with sparrow for the day, and I like it's looks, though it seems to be a little choppy (I do have a rather sizable gmail inbox), here's hoping the developers keep up the good work!
griffindy··on The Best Tech Ad I’ve Seen Lately
the most recent New Yorker also had this, I thought it was pretty clever.
griffindy··on Is the use of “utf8=✓” preferable to “utf8=true”?
they did use a snowman before, though I can't find the commit where they changed it.

EDIT: found the commit with some git log magic - https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/c616089

griffindy··on Measure results, not hours
non mobile version: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/business/measure-results-n...
griffindy··on More whiteboard coding won’t build you a better team
I agree with the ability to learn part, but do you need the basics for what's required for a CS degree? I say this as someone who does not have a CS degree, but I also don't know that many places working directly with binary trees and linked lists, though I'll admit I may not have found them.
griffindy··on [dead]
not even a serious car crash, even someone who has had a major heart attack. talking from personal experience, they can look just fine, but if their brain was without oxygen long enough, there's no chance that brain's coming back, even though certain reactions will still be present.
griffindy··on What are the drawbacks of Python?
^ this ^ never understood why certain methods (or are they functions?) are not called on the objects. This is one of the reasons I love Ruby, everything is clearly an object.
griffindy··on Tomorrow Theme
thanks, exactly what I wanted!
griffindy··on Surprisingly modern graffiti from the walls of Pompeii
as far as I remember, it was all paint. they would go around at night with buckets of red paint and write, sometimes over other words, it could be a mess. only because Pompei was so frozen in time did the paint not wear away
griffindy··on Surprisingly modern graffiti from the walls of Pompeii
as a classics majors, I love running across these things, and I'm especially glad to see it on HN, though I agree with tborg that both the presentation and translations could be more up to date. something to work on if I'm bored tomorrow. Now I just need to find the Latin
griffindy··on Ask HN: What are your side projects?
what a great idea! I've been working on a place where potential landlords and renters could connect, as using craigslist is just a hellish experience: http://github.com/griffindy/Rently. is this just for landlords?
griffindy··on Ask HN: Asking what you did wrong in an interview?
the one time I asked for this I actually got a detailed list of notes each of my interviewers had made, I found it very helpful
griffindy··on No More Internet
I feel the same way, and I don't even have cable! But I always have mountains of books to read, which was the pre-internet internet to an extent.
griffindy··on No More Internet
I'm not sure if this was in the book you're describing, but I remember reading somewhere that was has changed is that we no longer remember specific facts (Boston is the capital of Massachusetts), rather where we can find them most easily (Wikipedia). Whether or not that's a change for the better, I couldn't say.
griffindy··on Pixel Perfect
not to be too pedantic, but The New Yorker uses Caslon, which while gorgeous and second in my mind only to Garamond, is a rather old type face and is widely used because it is 1) very readable, and (possibly more importantly) 2) uses a lot less ink than other similar type faces
griffindy··on My next text editor
I remember feeling like sublime's vintage mode implemented some of the things from vim, but not enough of them to make me switch. Then again, if one is looking so hard for an application to imitate vim, why not just use the original?
griffindy··on Education is Our Generation's Big Problem. Let's Fix it.
+1 I made it through college with hardly any debt because my family's income wasn't high enough to warrant loans (instead of straight up aid) until I was a senior. However, I have a friend whose family makes more money than mine, but also has a sibling in school so they have a lot more debt.
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