hn_reader

Thanks for the post Alex. One of the things I do like about being a developer at BigCo is that it's possible to keep the politics at an arm's length - something that I think would be almost impossible in a startup with a handful of people. (Whether this kind of hands-off approach is actually good for one's career is another matter.)

To continue the analogy..once we determine we're in a sim, maybe the next step is to figure out if there are any paravirtualization hooks we can use to optimize our universe.

This sounds like something quite different - a career fair for students / recent grads.

I love this idea. A few more features (like curves/masks) and a faster UI and I can see using this a lot.

It's hard for me to believe there exist companies that have the resources to hire software developers and that don't use source control.

I'm interested in how many new people facebook will have to hire as it attempts to grow to justify its $100b valuation.

Perhaps the guy feels his work is important and derives personal satisfaction from it. That might make him happier in the long run and a better husband and father.

While the process doesn't sound pleasant, a long interview might benefit the potential employee as much as it does the company.

If you're going to be spending a lot of time working with these people..you want to get a chance to get to know them a bit before jumping in. (Same goes for their tools, development process, etc.)

True, though in this example integer overflow would happen first.

I was wondering the same thing. But I can confirm it compiles and runs, though I had to supply a -std=c99 flag to gcc.

Best solution I've seen here so far.

I'll admit the demo is beautiful, but surely there's a way to accomplish this without history pollution.

I wonder if this actually applies to all fields of human endeavor.

What about the evidence that companies that are known to seek out the best programmers(Google, Microsoft, facebook) are some of the most successful? (Or at least the most visible.)

I believe in the "10x programmer" phenomenon.. In my experience, the best programmers seem to quickly become very good at whatever development task they put their minds to.

Indeed, since I got a smartphone I no longer dread long lines in supermarkets, etc. Just more time to read HN.

I have this fear literally every time I start on a new problem: am I re-inventing the wheel? Has this problem been solved already - maybe written about and discussed at length about in some paper/textbook/blog I haven't read? The more I learn the more I realize I don't know, which seems only increases my anxiety level. So that's one reason I can't stop reading this stuff.

The ditto clipboard manager for Windows http://ditto-cp.sourceforge.net/ has completely solved this problem for me.

I think the intent of #1 is clear (I agree with your reading of it) but the sloppiness of the statement is distracting. Same really for #2, though it looks like I'm wrong and Google does have three official languages..still I have a hard time believe a 30,000 employee company would not use many more languages internally in some capacity.

Agree with yours (and olefoo's) interpretation of #1; I singled it out because it raised a red flag for me as the kind of statement non-tech savvy people would make, thus calling into question the validity of this piece as a whole. (As much as I, as a software developer, would like to believe it!)

I also thought maybe he meant to write "iPhone app" and accidentally left out that word.

As a full-time developer with a family, it's not as easy as it seems to pick up the hot language/platform of the month, especially to learn it deeply enough to compete with people who have been working with it for years. (As everyone knows learning requires doing, and that takes time that is hard to come by.)

I remember hearing about this. Sounds like she should have placed a limit on the number of deals Groupon could sell. But what's the connection to his line about having an iPhone?

I'm on page two of the story but I am already starting to doubt the writer's basic understanding of technology and question whether continuing to read it is a waste of time:

1) "If your bakery doesn’t have an iPhone, it will soon be at the mercy of outfits like Yelp." - What does that even mean?

2) "A little known fact about Google, for instance, is that its investment in Python (one of the three languages the company uses for its work)" - Gonna go out on a limb here and state that Google uses more than three languages.

> "To a person fighting a critical bug they lack this luxury. It's my job when I create code to help the person debugging it (even if it's me) to understand the code as quick as possible so that they may find and solve the problem as soon as possible."

I am quite often in this situation - maintaining code written by others on a very tight schedule, weekends, evenings, trying to find and fix bugs and still make it to the next family commitment, etc. Wish more people understood this and considered the many future maintainers when writing their code.

I work from home part time and while I appreciate having that option, I do find there are negatives. Other than missing basic human interaction, there's something to be said about the chance encounter with a co-workers in the hallway that leads to an idea or being able to pop by someone's office to discuss a problem. I also find that face-to-face communication is a higher bandwidth medium than phone/IM chat.

I'm in a similar situation (except with an even bigger tech company) but I work in a geographic area with no other tech employers. I do believe this cuts down on the number of people leaving for greener pastures and helps keep salaries down.

>> ...why I am remotely working on a Sunday for a fraction of that?

Asking myself the same question today..