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mangler

64 karma · joined May 16, 2012

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mangler··on You are not Steve Jobs
From Isaacson's excellent biography of Jobs, the one thing I gathered is that he had taste (turtlenecks and baggy jeans notwithstanding... ok, haven't seen the yacht either). He bullied a whole company into satisfying his exquisite taste, and the results are still outstanding. I'll take them even at a small price premium.

That does not justify any boss being a jerk, but if you have the taste and the power to bully a lot of people to satisfy that taste, you'll likely produce something tasty.

mangler··on Why the Fuck?
Because millions of others have a much more desperate need for some love and some feeling of self worth. Even a surrogate one. There's no insulin for that...
mangler··on Petition the Whitehouse to remove Carmen Ortiz from office
Of course, I assume nobody wants Ms. Ortiz to spin into deep guilt-driven depression for doing what she believed was right. This kind of emotional blackmail is probably not helping anyone or anything, at least not this soon after the events when emotions are still looming high and, more importantly, nobody actually understands the exact circumstances of a person's... well... personal predicament that lead to certain actions....
mangler··on NVD3 Erased From Existence
Some publicity is bad publicity, Novus Partners....
mangler··on Non-programming skills every programmer should have
> these kinds of post (and we seem to get a lot) usually strike me as "a list of good things about me" or "why everyone should be like me".

Yep... That's why the mysteriously named skill, "spiritual" may actually be quite important and why the OP should work on it a bit more. Beginners' minds don't go around dispensing advice. I think that touches lightly on the "social" as well...

mangler··on Minnesota Gives Coursera the Boot, Citing a Decades-Old Law
Thank you Terminator!!! We knew you'd do a great job!...
mangler··on Minnesota Gives Coursera the Boot, Citing a Decades-Old Law
This is 'backward' until you meet a bunch of doctors who claim to cure cancer using cucumber juice and find that they all have PhDs and MDs from the University of Tantric Study and Life Exploration, Middlesex Town Massahoma. People in trouble DO fall for this bs.
mangler··on How I Hired Someone On Craigslist And Quadrupled My Productivity
... and may be you don't call her a slapper in your blog posts or she may slap you for real. I would. She should...
mangler··on How Jeff Atwood works
"call her"??? Atwood never "calls her"! She calls Atwood! Hey and I don't mean in the Hollywood kind of way - Atwood Da Man!!!
mangler··on Professional Software Engineer Exam coming in April 2013
Yeah, not a big waterfall (or agile, or any other pyramid scheme) fan myself, but this kind of bullshit did get a man on the Moon and then a mixture of them got some kit on Mars, and generally they are doing OK.

Some of them can actually scan you or your friend's internal organs to see if they're alright too - that's not going to be php on a lamp stack. I'm guessing they are probably not moving fast and breaking things either. They may be taking it easy with your friends internal organs, just so they don't get sued by the growing legal community on HN.

There's also all that bizarre software that somehow delivers you to the airport of your choice. I wonder how that happens - do they have their Agile/Waterfall/Kanban/Nonsense boards on their office walls in order to get you there?

mangler··on Lenovo Computers, Soon To Be Made In America
In all fairness, the US corporations probably owe more than a little to Mexico. On purely ethical grounds, I'd rather buy an IBM machine built in Mexico than in the US. It's that little personal satisfaction.... But it DOES make a difference if you're going to use it for the next year or two...
mangler··on Everything that's wrong with Java in a single class
Clojure functions are Java classes. It's not much different from using a Java functional libs. Except that Java will probably be faster as Clojure still doesn't do primitives and stuff (not sure about that one, may be it already does)

You can do all the functional stuff in Java, Clojure is doing exactly that. It will be more verbose, but once you learn the ropes it just looks different, it is not different.

mangler··on Everything that's wrong with Java in a single class
If you spent your life being inconvenienced by the things you made earlier to make your life convenient, you'll go to extraordinary lengths to make other things that seem to make your life convenient given all the inconveniences you've already created for yourself. It does not really compute that this is another inconvenience you're building for yourself that is going to need another convenient AOP driven bean thing that you will write in a few months to get around the nonsense you burdened yourself with in the first place. It also does not help that everyone (well, at least the people with the money) is buying it and forcing it down their developers throats. If they don't want it, there's always a bunch of guys who are cheaper and will take it....
mangler··on Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now
So what's wrong with it is that it feels clunky to you...
mangler··on Thanks Mr. Jobs, But it Seems I Can Use a Linux Laptop Now
This posted by Dell or something?! What's with the over-excitement?
mangler··on iOS 6 Breaks the App Store
> "This notion that we should get down on our knees and pray (or otherwise please) the overlords is just wrong"

Yep. Totally wrong - just don't buy Apple. Kind of simple. It's not like there's no alternatives...

mangler··on Apple At Its Worst: It's Time to Stop Censoring Apps
You can (and should) be removed from private property for not complying with the rules.

Apple makes it very clear: "We view Apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app. It can get complicated, but we have decided to not allow certain kinds of content in the App Store."

Go to Walmart and take your clothes off and see what happens. Nobody dragged you into that party and I'm guessing nobody even invited you. You looked at the market and picked what you thought was the best.

Stallman and his "free" Chinese tech are always at hand if you really feel abused.

mangler··on Thoughts on being a programmer
That's why you "Inherit a codebase", as opposed to "Build a codebase". People who maintain and people who build are... well... they're just different people. We do need them both, but, they are different. Which is why we need them both.
mangler··on The Innumeracy of Intellectuals (2008)
Yeah, the next time you go to your local yoga class and the local bleached bimbo starts babbling on about quantum physics (for some reason, a favourite subject), ask them if they can solve a quadratic equation. Guess what, they can't. But that is not a reason to desist! The quantum physics banter lives on...

So, learn from these smart people. Fake it and bask in it!

mangler··on Java for iPhone
Original post. iOS in Java?! Why?! GWT! Why. Just learn ObjC, Javascript, whatever the local language is... It's not that hard really...
mangler··on Java for iPhone
Why is it so hard for Java programmers to learn anything other than Java?!
mangler··on Amazon Career Choice Program
In all fairness, allowing people who are unhappy, in a first warehouse job, or in skilled occupations to train themselves out of their unhappiness is a very novel and extremely favourable idea.

This is like saying, it's not you, here's a chance, take your time, we'll help you and then move on when you are ready. I wish every company did that... It is way better than laying you off and even more superior to keeping you in a job you resent and do just because you need to pay the bills...

mangler··on Addict Pride?
Everyone is addicted to food. Most people are addicted to food substances that are completely non-essential, such as sugar, salt, butter and caffeine. In places where drugs aren't available people get addicted to certain spices to a point where they feel hungry if their daily intake lacks a certain spice.

Some people get addicted to exercise. They feel incomplete if they can't do their nightly run. Exercise alters your internal chemical composition. Just like food and other ingested substances. And coffee, mountain dew, beer, rum, mojito, etc. In the case of some of these its an extreme mix of all sugar, caffeine and alcohol - think JD and Coke.

mangler··on Show HN: Action.io - 0 to Rails in 60 seconds in your browser
60 seconds?! It took me at least 10 seconds of looking for a 60-second thing to work out that the shortest one of the things you can see that has some meaning is almost five minutes long. Am I missing something??
mangler··on Codecademy closes $10M round
'He said Codecademy wasn’t just about teaching people to be programmers, but about helping people learn higher skills. “There are definitely people who become programmers through the site, but there are also people using these courses to level up what they are doing anyway, like someone going from being an administrative assistant, to someone who can write HTML and CSS for email campaigns.”'

Love the concept of 'higher' in this quote. Some become programmers, but some learn 'higher skills' - like writing html. The whole idea of higher (and presumably lower) is fascinating. HTML and CSS is higher than administrative assistant. Does anyone here understand how hard it is to be an admin assistant??? A PA, essentially... Much much harder than hacking a bunch of tweaks on top of bootstrap or whatever.

And, incidentally, this whole higher/lower bullshit is what your "founders"/"funders" arses think about you - you are the bitches with the "lower skills" and one day, if you learn, you'll get your own bitches with the "low skills" who will code your marvellously fantastic idea and if it fails it's because they hired muppets, and if it succeeds, it's because they are the next messiah.

mangler··on Light Table: 24 Hours to Get Another $7000 in the Kickstarter for Python Support
I am not opposed to anything. Kickstarter included. Kickstarter is inherently against the system and all the classical financial theory as it is known. If you invest in something (even a minuscule amount) you should expect a fraction of the return (small or big). Investors should be rewarded for making the right choice (and punished for making the wrong choice). The only reward for investment is return. This is not about money either - it can be time, effort, or attention.

Kickstarter does not provide enough difference between bad and good choices. You get a t-shirt or nothing. It's an option that nobody would buy in an open market.

This is not necessarily bad. Or good. It's ok. But it is not a market that is in any way fair with respect to capital. And capital does not mean Big Money! Capital means ordinary Joe giving away cash they saved for worse days based on the emotional appeal of something, instead of any rational assessment of its worth.

mangler··on Light Table: 24 Hours to Get Another $7000 in the Kickstarter for Python Support
I'm not against money in any way whatsoever, but, really, you don't do this kind of stuff for cash. You just don't. It should have been done already and the money should be flowing in without kickstarter to YC or other means. You build it, and if it's any good the money will swamp you...
mangler··on Light Table is in YCS12
OK now, this is a whole new business model and I like it. Early supporters pay for the demo and get a t-shirt. Later supporters pay for the continuing refinement of the demo and get a t-shirt. Later supporters pay for the demo and get a t-shirt a mention somewhere.

When the demo is awesome (but not open to the public) and also the market can be assessed based on early support, someone (who saw the latest demo and the early support) pays for the rest, but what they get is a cut from any potential future cash flows. Now, this, is, neat!!!

Incidentally, this is the problem with Kickstarter - if you want money, don't give me a t-shirt, give me a part of your future profit. Then people who back bad ideas suffer and people who back good ideas profit. As opposed to the current model, where everyone gets a cheap shitty t-shirt and the world gets another worthless r&b record that nobody wants.

mangler··on It Takes 6 Days to Change 1 Line of Code
No, don't quit! Embrace! That's 14 hours (if I remember correctly) you could have spent working on your own projects instead of being pissed off on HN. The world is full of this, and it's well accepted and nobody questions it - make the most of it.
mangler··on Goodbye, MongoDB
This is completely unrelated to the subject, and I have not used mongodb, have no idea if it's good or bad, and I don't even know how to spell it, but isn't it ironic that this post shows up on the day when the top HN post's title is "Please learn to write"?

As I said, no idea how good or bad mongo is, but I'm guessing, if you are as sloppy in your code as you are in your English, I'll be happy to give mongo the benefit of the doubt...