jacabado

But my company is worth nothing and my dog is cutest than my neighbors!

1) Space for algorithmic innovation? (which is the coolest thing to be in front of but I guess there must be already some algorithm application to handle this case) 2) Why? Could you give some examples? I ask because I also think that rating-less like is dependent on the subjects personality. For me a dislike button should be much more meaningful because as a optimistic there is a bigger range of things I like with a bigger variation of likeness, while when I (would) hit dislike I must be pretty sure that I don't like it. 3) I agree but the implication is that sites should use negative qualifications differently, it shouldn't be shared with others in the same way the likeness is shared unless, as in your suggestions, they enable you to find better content. I don't go telling people I dislike that I dislike them, I just avoid them. The approach should be similar.

I also have a bad knee, I guess from repeatedly hitting the ground with it while playing handball when I was young(<20). It started to be really painful in long car rides, whenever I standed up for long times or had long walks but it never bothered me when I had played some sport.

A year ago I got into a gym and I feared that my knee would break down, amazingly I learnt what you refer to, that weight lifting is one of the best ways to strengthen muscles that are important to the joints. When I thought of weight lifting I just thought of stressing the body, my idea now is completely different, weight lifting is a way of activating some of your more obscure muscles. Never again I got any complain from that knee.

In this case they do it, like 10 kilometers from the solar plant is the dam that created the biggest artificial lake in Europe. The dam is prepared to do that as it has a smaller dam after it.

The biggest controversy here in Portugal is if we have reached the limit of util unstable renewable energy, and how much/longer it should subsidized. And also the need of nucler energy.

I can't quantify but in my home town, Moura, it had a good impact in local economy. They built there one solar plant with 46 MW capacity which was at the time the biggest in the world. (http://translate.google.pt/translate?u=http://economia.publi...) They also built a fotovoltaic pannels factory for constructing the solar plant and which now exports pannels.

Considering how bad every economic aspect goes there it was really a blessing. The jobs it created, qualified or non-qualified; the population it brought (desertification is one of the worst problems there). And they really deserve it, right now it might be 45ºC there. I work in Lisbon and when I occasionally go there in the weekend I can barely do anything(hint: fresh beer tastes like gold there!).

Regarding the cons, the fotovoltaic power doesn't have an environmental impact as bad as the dams. I guess the only one could be the visual impact. It even creates the possibiility to cultivate new cultures behind the solar pannels.

But, and there is always a but, there is much controversy about the solar power. The thing is that you can't store electricity, and as the production hours depend on the sunlight you will have a period of abundance and a period of scarcity that will not adjust very well. This will lead to an unbalanced match of supply and offer and so the efficiency of solar power is lower than other energies (a similar thing applies to wind power) like the hydropower where you can control when you want to generate it.

It makes me really proud to see so many good references to Portugal here in HN, for a country that is in such a bad shape it's good to see some things might change in the future.

"Coming to work in Israel:

Migrant workers can work in Israel as specialists in one of the following trades: Nursing care Agriculture Construction Welding and industrial professions Hotel work Ethnic cookery"

http://www.gov.il/FirstGov/TopNavEng/EngSituations/ESMigrant...

I would really appreciate to work there. What are the special conditions for Jewish families?

In case anybody was wondering what was he playing, it's a brazilian classical music composer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAg8VHuXNKU&feature=relat... - Choros nr1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDc230BMy8Y&feature=relat... - Choros nr10 (part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GVWge4q8uc&feature=relat... - Choros nr10 (part 2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZnQj9yWTlo - Trenzinho Caipira

Well and what could you expect from one of the greatest composers coming from the Brazilian musical culture? I accidentally started watching the Proms and was completely obliterated by that performance of Choros nr10, I had never enjoyed classical music that way.

But concrete and equal in all languages, which is the point of the OP.

Ambiguous example formatting strings would give an error, as an invalid one does now. I like the proposal, although localization is an issue as the examples would have to be in a concrete language.

Removing unneeded abstractions is positive, specially if you have to deal with conflicting models.

The proudly presented see-as-you-type Wave feature is a major example of what you are saying.

Real people hated it because it was distractive, annoying and embarassing but they never tought about that because it showed their big technical achievement: the wavelet syncronization in real-time. REAL-TIME!!

Why working on .NET with C# would hinder a start-up culture?

Product scalability? Is that important?

Thanks for your replies!

I am thinking in going to Toronto to work in web development(C#, javascript with 2 years of experience). One of the reasons was because I see Toronto as a sophisticated city.

I'm portuguese, would I have a problem with my nationality/origin/accent?

I was not worried at all with this until I read your blog post.

How does this relate to the TDD mindset?

I guess the problem comes from the fact that you can't convince any programmer(engineer?) with rational arguments so the evangelists and team leaders need to resort to fairy tales.

It's an art in itself which can be mastered without any technical knowledge. When this art comes to discussion it's easily taken down.

I'm still reading all the related posts here but the humility and measurement could be my new passion. :D

I upvoted you for your braveness but I strongly disagree with you. (For me) Type 2 is wrong for everybody because: + Been there, done that, ended sadly; + We're all different but our limitations are pretty much the same, respect your colleagues! + Every successful achieving programmer I've worked with are persons with particularly good sense; + Knowing how programming related skills like abstraction and logic are highly related to cleverness you can be easily tricked into seeing programming as a cleverness demonstration or competition. That should be done in college or in controlled environments(no deadlines, no changes in team).

He was really a language hacker. Most people looked at his writing as most programmers look at Lisp. Ignoring some syntax facilities and abusing on others he could convey meaning as nobody else.

While most writers use syntax conventions to communicate as clearly as possible, Saramago adulterated syntax to communicate on a different level.

At first it's frustrating, and his lack of respect for most of the conventions or beliefs may throw you off, but then you understand he mastered writing expression as few to transmit his thoughts.

His writing is a landmark for me as an example of Portuguese language use. While I envy and admire English simplicity, Saramago's work remembers me why it is a privilege to be born as a native Portuguese speaker.

I also would like to speak/write better English, no disrespect intended.

In portuguese Tuesday is terca-feira which literally means third fair, in the article it's in an unusual form 3ª feira, the machine still managed to read it as Tuesday but left there the confusing 3rd. Still an amazing translation.

Could you elaborate?? I can barely conclude anything from your comment.

Bradford sorry for dismissing your post so fast but I don't agree with the way you try to conciliate the two approaches.

Those are two different problems at different levels. Minimum Viable Product is a principle to follow at a tactical level to drive the development. The strong vision you refer is required at a strategic level.

Depending on your role you should rely more on one or the other but trying to conciliate the two may just create more ambiguity because they guide decisions at different time-frames. A product manager without an holistic vision will not understand the drawbacks in adding yet another customer requested feature. A team lead focused on the strong vision will try to integrate the new feature with the whole system, slowing development cycles.

The two principles are fundamental for developing a great product but they define the mission of different parts of the system.

By the way, I really liked your blog. I don't know if it's new here on HN but it's new for me.

http://measuringmeasures.com/blog/2010/6/3/software-product-... Wow, love to see how you explained, it really ressonated with me. Yesterday in the end of the scrum sprint retrospective a big discussion arose where this would have been helpfull.

Liked this as well: http://measuringmeasures.com/blog/2009/12/2/the-decline-of-t...

He lost me here: "A maximum viable product doesn't fail fast - it succeeds slowly as you iterate toward it with minimum viable products and learn along the way."

So there's nothing new there, that's what minimum viable product "people" have been doing. The hard part is to convince some people to follow the fail fast mantra. Getting passionate with big vision is easy as it is to be provocative and look innovative being so.

It's interesting to see all the replies, they show the interest on the iPad, but to be fair with the parent he said the first generation.

I'm with him, as I am with the rest of you. I bought a first generation Macbook: battery problems who led to hard drive problem (tic tic tic no more hard drive) and fan noise problems. The worst of all? Dealing with Apple support. Horrible here in Portugal, paying premium for subpar service really gets you angry.

Am I buying an iPad? Yes, but I will at least check for problems with the batch I'll be buying. It's not expectable to see the regular consumer having this behavior but you should.

So what do you look for when choosing those organizations? (And if possible how to do that, multiple interviews, experience period?)

Being in my second job right now my heuristics are: - Strong and clear team leadership - Fitness to value proposition, besides my work as a developer how well can I contribute to help improving the organization

Would love to hear from you how to be more selective.

I agree completely but that shouldn't drive the way a team works.

If the convention says that the code should be as clever as it could be you will have problems. If your tech lead acknowledges some limitations on the team he will have to compromise cleverness for simplicity. And everybody will still learn.

I can't see why my first comment was downmodded, and it's happening for my last comments, confusing or bad grammar? :\

18 ?

And if you work in heterogeneous teams you are just proving the author's point.

If the gifted code is unintelligible to the less skilled how can a team work? Immediately you have the problem of the less skilled not being able to follow the code pratices of the gifted coder, it will be harder to reuse. And the when somebody else has to extend it will cost a lot more time, or to correct something.

Surely some parts of code should be clever, sometimes it has to be clever because there are no alternatives. It should always be somehow well contained. But if you start evaluating code <i>per se</i> you surely end with a bad compromise.

Isn't this obvious to everybody who has to lead a team(I don't)?

You can mark the video with chapters, and you could structure that someway, on your own of course.

Firstly I disagreed your comment, but now I see it's a really poor usability testing tool. From the 4 "new" features they highlight there is just one that is fundamental to the problem they want to solve.

Heatmap is a must-have, task analysis support should be high on their priorities (they announce it, but I can't see it anywhere).

For me is the opposite, Art is the group of the most elaborated things we do for sex.

Evolutionary psichology 101.

What bothers me the most is the flash animation with the overview of the steps. What a poor Fitts implementation.

I had the idea to explore a similar concept, based on shared events instead of a friend list. The objective was avoiding the degradation I had seen on other social networks. Hi5 and Orkut were the experiences where I based this reasoning. This was 3-4 years ago, I still hadn't used facebook.

One of my ideas was to give users access to sponsored SMS's. They could send a SMS and would have to choose some sponsor to that SMS, in the bottom of the SMS it would be included a slogan of the sponsor (20-40 characters). This could also work as user acquisition by sponsoring the platform itself. <evil> The friends contact information could also be used somehow </user>

The strong points for this idea was that the profiles of users would have been richer to the advertisers allowing better targeting. Consumer brands are strongly tied to events, and I suppose this would facilitate getting advertisers. It would also enable to give brands opportunities to sponsor smaller events (long tail on the event advertising market).

Ads targeting is in a whole new level nowadays and I don't believe it would be a real competitive advantage, but maybe it could be sold as so. The success of this idea also depends a lot on how much people value free SMS's. Here in Portugal SMS's are free inside the same operator but I see younger people doing big gimmicks to get free SMS's to other operators. The effort people are willing to put to achieve that is crucial, I don't know how well that applies in other contexts.

Could we see something similar on Twitter? Instead of a sponsored SMS, a sponsored Tweet? If they give me the possibility of tweeting from my cell phone for free in exchange of a few characters and ads noise I would do it.