john-tells-all

Did you apply directly on LinkedIn?

I've switched to finding companies + jobs on LI, then applying directly on the company's website.

Wife and I adore the podcast. Will be sending money. We love you guys.

There's a big difference between a _puzzle_ and a _mystery_. In a puzzle, the goal state is known, and as more pieces - data - appears, the goal gets closer. You know how far you are from the goal.

A mystery is worse. With each additional piece of data, the goal gets farther away. Everything is more and more confusing.

(Popularized by Malcom Gladwell)

The Los Angles Public Library lends an amazing variety of tools -- https://lacountylibrary.org/tools/

- glue gun

- Crikut cutter

- pots and pans

- tape measure

- bike repair kit

- bolt cutters

- musical instruments <3

I adore programming books... for a specific use case. If I want to learn a lot about a subject, nothing is better than a book:

- it was edited, so ideas and text are consistent

- the examples worked (at some point in time)

- the author has enough time-space to clearly describe a lot of material well

Nothing beats a book for an enormous amount of detailed information. Even just reading the table of contents helps to help understand what to focus on during study.

My copy of "DevOps Handbook" is covered in tags and handwritten notes. Brett Slatkin's "Effective Python" is way too much for me, but I got a ton out of the parts I focused on. No other media is like books!

Adore Vaporwave!

Recommendations:

- 夢愛 by Telepath / Virtual Dream Plaza. Beautiful mysterious drone, incredibly buoyant and great to go to sleep to. I've listened to this dozens of times and never gets old.

- Birth of a New Day by 2814 -- https://2814.bandcamp.com/album/birth-of-a-new-day Atmospheric, sort of like a very long night, up at 3am, in the future.

- Guardian by Virtual Dream Plaza -- https://virtualdreamplaza.bandcamp.com/album/guardian I listen to this 1-2 times a day. Engaging drone, great to work to.

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Git's data structure is shockingly simple. Here's an article with diagrams on the four basic data types. Also shows why "HEAD" is different from a "commit".

https://eagain.net/articles/git-for-computer-scientists/

My friends subscribe to one service per month. They watch everything they want, and when they run out, they cancel the service and subscribe to another one.

When they want to watch something on another service, they add it to a shared spreadsheet.

It works really well! They get to watch everything on all services, and it's all high quality media that they want to watch.

My wife and I realized we were spending too much _time_ just watching shows we didn't really like.

So we paused on ALL paid streaming services.

The "effort" it takes to a watch a movie on Kanopy, and the fact a movie is only two hours, gives us a lot of value. It's not a money thing, it's a "what am I spending my time on" thing.

Kanopy has a wonderful selection, and ironically its website UI is better than Netflix et al.

Watching movies and other shows without commercials is such a treat!

I haven't tried audiobooks nor ebooks on Hoopla but look forward to it.

I'd love to have a global "toggle Teams mute" button.

Thanks! The album is Fuji Grid TV

https://vaporwave.wiki/wiki/Vektroid#fuji_grid_tv

(TIL Vaporwave has a wiki. We live in awesome times.)

Yes. And, a bad test -- that passes because it's defined to pass -- is _much worse_ than no test at all. It makes you think an edge case is "covered" with a meaningful check.

Worse: once you have one "bad apple" in your pile of tests, it decreases trust in the _whole batch of tests_. Each time a test passes, you have to think if it's a bad test...

Patriot is brilliant. Very surreal with pitch-black humor and rare horror. And piping! Lovely piping.

Same.

I like the idea of my money going to the artists. And, you can "buy the catalog", give an artist $150 or so to get ALL their music. I have a couple composers who I adore so that was a no-brainer. If I was going to pay them for most of their work anyway, why not give them the money now?

- find "my people": creatives; also reconnect with tech friends

- participate in local tech scene; give talks

- publish ideas to help people

- cook a lot of food. Yum!

I'd be curious how this compares to the straight Linux kernel, as well as other kernels. Even basic metrics like KLOC would be interesting.

If no one gets to it, I'll drink a pot or three of coffee and publish it myself.

Simon's blog is stellar, and he posts on many tech topics in addition to AI.

His "Today I Learned" series is an extremely useful selection of small learnings: https://til.simonwillison.net/

Strong recommend! Julia's posts are always really engaging and educational.

She also publishes a number of technical topics as ZINES. I bought her "Oh Shit, Git!" zine and learned a ton of useful info, despite having decades in the industry.Zines are a great way to encourage book-allergic coworkers into learning great material.

https://wizardzines.com/

Switch Angel has dozens of Strudel music videos on Youtube, including a few with no voiceover. Super entertaining!

This is literally comic. The plot of the live action comic book movie "Danger: Diabolik" [1] has a segment where the a country's tax records are destroyed, thus making it impossible for the government to collect taxes from its citizens.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger:_Diabolik

I've paid for Feedly for years and use it daily.

One section is "Hacker News People". When I find someone on HN who writes well, I subscribe to their comments in a RSS feed, so I can read everything they write. Very often they comment on a link I don't see on my main HN page, which is useful.

App http://hnapp.com/ converts names to RSS feeds. Example: `author:nickjj`

I thought I could program in any language. But: that Cobol project makes Assembly language look clean and elegant.

I applaud Jms Dnns! This project really makes you think.

The Life Scientific is a wonderful and engaging podcast. The episodes delve into a scientist's field of study, but really bring out their human side. Hobbies, interests; scientists are people too :)

I read this book many years ago and it made a big impression on me.

His view is that normal, rational, intelligent people... can have fictional stories in their heads about how things work. It takes energy and focus and research to fix these wrong stories, so often we live with them or don't recognize them.

Many times I've been casually talking with someone, say something, then realize that doesn't make any sense. My wrong story made sense in my head, but not when I speak it out loud.

By practicing the scientific method, we can gradually weed out the wrong stories in our heads.

Now I'm going to re-read `The Demon-Haunted World`

It's a thinking challenge, not an AI challenge.

A while back, a junior asked me a question. They wanted to do X, they had code, with error Y. So they searched for it, got a page on Stack Overflow, pasted "the answer", then got a new and different error.

They:

- didn't understand the original code

- didn't understand the original error

This is fine. They then searched for the error and found a relevant page.

This is also fine. However, they:

- cut-pasted "an answer" from SO _without understanding if it was relevant or not_

The junior was hoping to work with a Puzzle: adding information will gradually give them a solution. In practice they are working with a Mystery: more information makes the task harder since they can't distinguish between different aspects.

I focused them on a few relevant details and let them go to it.

I had the identical reactions, and like you it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Java: "stiff", awkward, verbose. Gets the job done but ugh.

C#: "soft", flexible, has possibilities

Although to be fair I programming in Java a long time ago, and haven't done much with C#. C# I see as a "corporate Python", vs Java I see as a language designed by committee and not for use by humans.

I've heard Java is way, way better now.

As a counterpoint, I find coding assignments refreshing:

- I always learn new things

- learn and experiment new ways of doing a task

- get to see how a different team thinks about projects

During the walk through, I can demonstrate my organization and documentation skills, in addition to having an interesting back-and-forth about different tradeoffs.

If an assignment takes too long, then I make sure a subset is implemented. Then the rest is stubbed out, to be handwaved on the walk-through. In theory. Sometimes I get carried away and work too long on an assignment.

I'm mostly a Backend Dev / DevOps kind of person.

`In Our Time` is a joy! Very fast intellectual conversation on relevant topics by academics in the field. Their enthusiasm is infectious.

Strong agree

Breathe in: ONE. Breathe out: TWO. Next: THREE... reset at 10.

If you find yourself breathing in on an even number, or out on an odd number, you've gotten lost. No problem, just reset to 1. Got to ten? You win! Also, reset to 1.

Very useful and simple technique for calm and focus.