Hacker News Reader

hammadfauzon How do you capture WHY engineering decisions were made, not just what?

If the pattern is consistent, it gets easier to ignore the noise when you don't need it. Like, a three/four digit number or a 3 letters and 3 numbers separated by a hyphen.

Sometimes, an issue might depend on another issue and contain commits from the other branch. Tagging each commit makes it easier to pinpoint the exact reason for that change.

hammadfauzon How do you capture WHY engineering decisions were made, not just what?

If you do these things:

* File issues in a project tracker (Github, jira, asana, etc)

* Use the issue id at the start of every commit message for that issue

* Use a single branch per issue, whose name also starts with the issue id

* Use a single PR to merge that branch and close the issue

* Don't squash merge PRs

You can use `git blame` to get the why.

git blame, gives you the change set and the commit message. Use the issue id in commit message to get to the issue. Issue description and comments provide a part of the story.

Use the issue id, to track the branch and PR. The PR comments give you the rest of the story.

hammadfauzon Show HN: Git-chain – Simplify branch dependency management in Git

Hi HN,

I built Git-chain to help with branch management in trunk-based development workflows.

When you want to keep changesets small and reviewable, but still build new work on top of unmerged changes, Git can get messy fast. Git-chain makes it easier to track and manage these dependent branches cleanly.

Would love feedback — especially from teams doing trunk-based development!

hammadfauzon Ask HN: Show me your half baked project

https://github.com/hammadfauz/syncPlay

Whipped up a quick way to play videos in sync across different computers so people can watch movies together, remotely.

hammadfauzon Vynchronize – A fun realtime video sync platform for friends

https://github.com/hammadfauz/syncPlay

hammadfauzon Critique me please?

Fixed. Thanks for pointing out.

hammadfauzon Critique me please?

Basically, I have created this as a substitute for a resume. I would like suggestions on what to include to make me more likely to be hired.

hammadfauzon Ask HN: Socialize to make software

I am in the exact same situation as you. I live in Sharjah. my github: https://github.com/hammadfauz Most of the times, I want to make something, but I have no idea what. If you or anyone has something neat to do, I'll be glad to participate.

hammadfauzon The State of JavaScript in 2015

To me, it is not at all alarming. But it might be due to my inexperience in dealing with truly huge code bases.

No matter what framework, in the end it's all JavaScript. So even if I develop a flashy app using a nice fat framework, it is still going to run unless JavaScript itself is changed.

That said, I can build an app in Angular today, and when something flashier comes out, I can code new features/modules to my app using that.

hammadfauzon The hitchhiker’s guide to solving problems

Interesting read. As with all things, absolute extremes must be avoided. If we stop and work out solutions to problems already worked out every time, when would we find time to build upon the solutions? Transfer of knowledge is one way, we as a species succeed even with the limited lives we have.

In programming, for example, while it is important to learn how basics work, if I try to write everything from scratch instead of using a library, I am doing it at the expense of furthering human capability. I mean, I just need to know, that I _could_ whip something up, if it didn't exist. Since it does, my time would be better spent on using it to create something even more functional.

hammadfauzon The hitchhiker’s guide to solving problems

"Don't Panic."

hammadfauzon Hoodie – Fast web app development

I didn't realize there there was a name for it. Nobackend. catchy. I use SharePoint server as a nobackend solution. All the apps I write are client-side JavaScript. User profiles, permissions, and authentication are left to SharePoint to deal with. I create lists, query and update them via web services provided out of the box. Even search is provided by a web service, so I don't have to worry about indexing content. All I have to do is build user-centric clients for dealing with the data. It's brilliant.

Hoodie sounds like a great generalization for that, in a public/non-corporate domain. Plus it has events for displaying data changes immediately. What's not to like?

hammadfauzon Ramsey Nasser's Arabic programming language artwork

This link is blocked in UAE. I am confused.

hammadfauzon A Motion-Sensing Keyboard

This concept might well be the best thing since vi, itself!

hammadfauzon Greed and the Wright Brothers

I just got an insight upon reading this. Patents stand to incentivize the research and development, the failures that precede innovations. On the other hand, they hinder research and development that builds on existing technology.

A good middle-ground would be patents being applicable only on rights to create _products_ based on a technology. Rights for any products based on a derivative patent belong solely to that patent, with nothing going towards the 'parent' patent.

This encourages the incremental innovation, as well as pushing the original inventor to continue to improve on their own patent.

For example, let's imagine someone patented a glass bottle as a container for ketchup. Any glass ketchup bottle makers pay that person. A person examines that glass bottle, observes that breakage of glass is a problem, and patents a plastic ketchup bottle. All plastic bottle makers buy their rights from this person. Glass bottle makers (if any) continue to pay the original patent owner for their rights. The glass bottle person, improves upon the plastic bottle, and gets a patent for a squeezable plastic ketchup bottle...You get the idea.

Discuss.

hammadfauzon Ask HN: What's your greatest epiphany?

Customers do not know the price of the thing you're selling.

hammadfauzon Teaching Devina to Code

I pity the poor little kid. At this stage in life, people (none other than her parents) are already concerned how she is going to contribute to the world. Let her live for a while. Let her explore, find a path that's interesting to her.

I know programming is the future, its the basic skill that will be necessary for all professionals. But let her learn to walk, see, smell, touch, taste the world around her. Sheesh.

hammadfauzon Be Glad That Corporate Liability Is Limited

Limited liability is just not fair. If an entity's (Person or corporation) actions cause harm, they must be held liable for the full extent of the harm that they have caused, matching their level of participation in said activity.

What is really at fault here is the tort law, that allows plaintiffs to sue for unreasonably huge amounts, and for ridiculous reasons. In the example given in the article, a person could be sued for owning shares in asbestos production, in the past for as short a time as 10 min. I think that person should be liable, how else would the peoples' grievances be fulfilled. Partially fulfilled grievances is not a fair solution.

I also think it is unfair to hold that person liable for a huge amount. His liability should be calculated based on how many people he affected during his 10 min of holding the shares, and how many shares he had in the establishment during that time.

TLDR; Liability should be limited by the extent of participation in harmful activity (whether intentional or not) and to the measurable amount of damage done rather than arbitrarily.

hammadfauzon Ask HN: Best OSS Projects for Beginning Contributors

I would like to add a couple of filters to the OP (for personal use): The project is mainly in JavaScript, preferably uses Node.js

hammadfauzon 2048

I won! Woohoo! https://scontent-b-ams.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc1/t1.0-9/p75x...

hammadfauzon "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang [pdf]

The Heptapods in the story, they're 'right-brain' thinkers! Brilliant story.

hammadfauzon Is Afghanistan really impossible to conquer?

Stupid me, I thought they were going in to liberate. All this time they were a-conquerin'

hammadfauzon Why do Americans write the month before the day?

Also, why do they not adopt the metric system of units? (A need to differentiate from the plebs in the rest of the world, perhaps?)

hammadfauzon Show HN: ifcfg.net

To avoid relying on external sources, I use expect, to telnet into my router and get the ip address of its public interface. Here's an example expect script.

http://serverfault.com/questions/89114/finding-the-public-ip...

hammadfauzon Panasonic Toughbook Tablet

This isn't for anyone. _Anyone_. Beyond the 300-350 pixels per inch, the 'sharpness' and the 'detail' is not perceivable by human eyes. It's a wastage of power, memory and CPU/GPU resources. This is what happens when Marketing dictates Engineering.