Hacker News Reader

lamp_bookon Strong Eventual Consistency – The Big Idea Behind CRDTs

We really ought to come up with some new terms in this space... it is just confusing to mix "strong consistency" in with "eventual consistency" in any way.

lamp_bookon Data engineering and software engineering are converging

I’m pretty sure the term came from Google (at least that is where I heard it first described) and just referred to a backend engineer with speciality in this area. Now usually these roles have “distributed systems” in the title, even if you aren’t really on the inside of the systems. That or “systems and infrastructure”, “data infrastructure”, or “AI/ML infrastructure” or sometimes “MLE” for those kinds of orgs. Or back to good ole “big data” now that it’s no longer tacked on everything.

lamp_bookon Databricks is raising a Series K Investment at >$100B valuation

Anyone investing is in a k hole

lamp_bookon Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students

Fair enough, but this did read that way to me:

> why I am very sad that we could not achieve reform without resorting to measures such as threatening the international student admission process

lamp_bookon Trump administration halts Harvard's ability to enroll international students

In what way does this or anything else Trump has done or indicated to do advance the state of education towards the goals of the reform you are talking about?

lamp_bookon Missing out on jobs because of LeetCode

LeetCode, concurrency, system design... each contrived in its own way and you can only figure them out by burning good opportunities. Reminds me of the Bridge Keeper in Monty Python's Holy Grail. My tip is just to ruthlessly ask questions because interviewers frequently are not remotely clear as they think they are.

I'll be branching off towards a different career path because of this. Tying your employability to passing these tests rather than your accomplishments as a professional is a sucker's game long term.

lamp_bookon Soldering Wires – Here's a different way

Look for an iron with a ceramic heating element as well - they come up to temperature much more quickly and it makes a big difference. I also recommend Hakko.

lamp_bookon Employees are happier when led by people with deep expertise (2016)

> It sounds like you're saying that top-tier engineers are not generally qualified in terms of non-technical requirements, and I don't know that this assertion is justified.

I see this sentiment or implication that technical skills and people skills are somehow mutually exclusive often, even on here which is crazy. I think this stems from some broader trope that people are "balanced" like RPG characters or something, e.g. nerd vs. jock or artist vs. scientist, salesman vs. accountant, etc. The reality is that people who achieve in one area are more likely to achieve in others. If someone figured out how to be a good engineer, they can probably figure out how to be a good manager, too, if they wanted.