mightybyte

I don't know what kind of emphasis you've seen, but being able to look at a public example of code a person has written is IMO the single biggest risk reducer available to a company hiring developers (well, other than actually having worked directly with the person before, which is an order of magnitude or two less common) because it gives me a picture of performance on real world software. Hiring is substantially about risk reduction because there's a huge amount of stuff you don't know about how the candidate will do. It would be foolish for companies to not take advantage of this potential source of signal. If it's not available, then I would proceed with my normal assessment process. Lack of public code isn't going to disqualify a candidate, but it does help to increase my confidence.

Takt | Haskell Engineer | San Francisco, CA | Full-time, ONSITE preferred, but REMOTE is an option for senior candidates.

Takt also has open positions for Data Scientist, Data Engineer, Systems and Infrastructure Engineer, Product Managers/Designers, and more. Check them out at http://takt.com/careers. Here is the Haskell Engineer job description:

Takt is seeking experienced Haskell programmers to help develop our flagship product. Our platform processes giant event streams of all kinds, identifying patterns, trends and opportunities to intervene and improve processes, aided by machine learning. Our vision will change the way people engage across multiple industries, be it retail, finance, or healthcare. We're reaching more than 10 million users, making us one of the largest ventures using Haskell.

As a Takt engineer, you'll work in small, self-sufficient teams with the shared goal of delivering excellent software anchored in an agile culture of quality, delivery, and innovation. You understand that legacy code is the work you did yesterday. You also share our passion for functional programming and using data to solve complex problems. Contact mightybyte at the google mail service for more information.

Takt | Haskell Engineer | San Francisco, CA | Full-time, ONSITE preferred, but REMOTE is an option for senior candidates.

Takt also has open positions for Data Scientist, Data Engineer, Systems and Infrastructure Engineer, Product Managers/Designers, and more. Check them out at http://takt.com/careers. Here is the Haskell Engineer job description:

Takt is seeking experienced Haskell programmers to help develop our flagship product. Our platform processes giant event streams of all kinds, identifying patterns, trends and opportunities to intervene and improve processes, aided by machine learning. Our vision will change the way people engage across multiple industries, be it retail, finance, or healthcare. We're reaching more than 10 million users, making us one of the largest ventures using Haskell.

As a Takt engineer, you'll work in small, self-sufficient teams with the shared goal of delivering excellent software anchored in an agile culture of quality, delivery, and innovation. You understand that legacy code is the work you did yesterday. You also share our passion for functional programming and using data to solve complex problems. Contact mightybyte at the google mail service for more information.

Takt | Systems and Infrastructure Engineer | San Francisco, CA | Full-time, ONSITE preferred, but REMOTE is an option for senior candidates. Takt also has open positions for Data Engineer, Haskell Engineer, Data Scientist, Product Managers/Designers, and more. Check them out at http://takt.com/careers. Here is the Systems and Infrastructure Engineer job description:

Takt is seeking Systems Infrastructure Engineers to support the development of our flagship product. Our platform learns and adapts to people's preferences, habits, and feedback—orchestrating highly relevant experiences that are truly unique to each person. Our vision will change the way people engage with their favorite brands across multiple industries, be it retail, finance, or healthcare.

As a Systems and Infrastructure Engineer at Takt you understand that legacy code is the work you did yesterday. You’re well versed in modern technologies and select tools based on what is best for the team, product and organization. If those tools don’t exist, you’ll roll up your sleeves and build them. At Takt “DevOps” isn’t a role, but an approach to collaboration. We work in small, self-sufficient teams with the shared goal of delivering excellent software anchored in an agile culture of quality, delivery, and innovation.

As much as I dislike Javascript, I can't agree with this article. There's tremendous value in using the same language in both the front and back ends. I personally might argue that with the prevalence of compile-to-js languages (Haskell being my personal favorite) there's no reason to use Javascript any more. But that doesn't mean that everyone else's calculus is the same. And if you use JS on the front end, there's a compelling reason to also use it on the backend.

Takt | Data Engineer | San Francisco, CA | Full-time, ONSITE preferred, but REMOTE is an option for senior candidates. Takt also has open positions for Systems and Infrastructure Engineer, Haskell Engineer, Data Scientist, Product Managers/Designers, and more. Check them out at http://takt.com/careers. Here is the Data Engineer job description:

Takt is seeking data engineers to help develop our flagship product. Our platform learns and adapts to people's preferences, habits, and feedback—orchestrating highly relevant experiences that are truly unique to each person. Our vision will change the way people engage across multiple industries, be it retail, finance, or healthcare.

We share your passion for using data to solve complex problems. You understand that legacy code is the work you did yesterday. You'll work in small, self-sufficient teams with a common goal: deliver excellent software anchored in an agile culture of quality, delivery, and innovation. Contact mightybyte at the google mail service for more information.

> These are the guys who consistently tell you how they are incidentally connected to someone who has actually done something - why? because that's all they know how to do. Worthless.

On the whole I agree with you. However, that's not completely worthless. There is some amount of value in being able to connect people. However, you need to be able to make meaningful connections. And that's where people with no vector and no capabilities have trouble. You don't have to have done something worth connecting to. But you do need to understand enough about the details of what the people you're connected to have to done to be able to make a meaningful connection.

Takt | Data Engineer | San Francisco, CA | Full-time, ONSITE preferred, but REMOTE is an option for senior candidates. Takt also has open positions for Systems and Infrastructure Engineer, Haskell Engineer, Data Scientist, Product Managers/Designers, and more. Check them out at http://takt.com/careers. Here is the Data Engineer job description:

Takt is seeking data engineers to help develop our flagship product. Our platform learns and adapts to people's preferences, habits, and feedback—orchestrating highly relevant experiences that are truly unique to each person. Our vision will change the way people engage across multiple industries, be it retail, finance, or healthcare.

We share your passion for using data to solve complex problems. You understand that legacy code is the work you did yesterday. You'll work in small, self-sufficient teams with a common goal: deliver excellent software anchored in an agile culture of quality, delivery, and innovation. Contact mightybyte at the google mail service for more information.

The number of people who trip over power cords is almost definitely much larger than the number of people who need VGA output, or need four USB ports (given the easy availability of USB hubs).

The operative clause there is "should be built in". And of course I can say "should be" because it has been for years now. Literally just yesterday magsafe saved my computer from being thrown off the desk. The regressions in overall user experience with this latest MBP mean that I'm no longer willing to pay Apple the premium that I've been paying them.

I categorically refuse to pay more money to buy something to add on to an already overpriced laptop that sticks out from my computer's form factor and that should be built in.

Fortunately for me I got a new laptop not long before this new abomination came out. If Apple doesn't correct this gigantic mistake, the next time I get a new laptop it won't be made by Apple.

If it was a complete waste of time, we might as well write our web apps in machine language. There's never been a side-by-side study comparing machine language to modern languages that meets the scientific bar put forth. So even though you can't definitively prove causation, the history of programming languages has demonstrated that multiple substantial advances have absolutely happened. There's no reason to think there can't be more.

It wasn't a rewrite. It was two separate web apps. Type safety categorically prevents classes of bugs that I've seen in real Javascript apps on multiple occasions. Haskell frontend apps that I worked on both before and after the JS app never suffered from that class of bug.

Unquestionably it was working with other talented people. All else pales into insignificance by comparison.

Not really. Even then you'll get criticism that the teams were more skilled in one language, or that they didn't use the best practices of the other language. Also, even if you could manage to normalize for all these variables. You're still only going to be comparing the cost to create the project. You're never going to get someone to maintain the two projects side-by-side for years and compare the total maintenance costs. That is where the biggest benefit of languages like Haskell comes.

The fact of the matter is there never will be absolute proof of these questions. The naysayers will always have straws to grasp at.

That's all well and good except for the fact that your standards are impossible to reach. Even if I do write the exact same project with two different languages, there will always be differences in either the skill of the teams or, if the teams are the same, the amount of experience the team has when they tackle the project.

What we can do is compare similar types of projects in different languages. And the things we can say there are pretty significant. For instance, at my last job using Angular we experienced a particular bug in production a couple times. In my current job our frontend is written in Haskell. I don't make definitive statements that often, but in this case I can definitively say that there is a ZERO chance that bug will happen in our codebase. I can say that because the type system guarantees that that class of bug can't possibly happen.

Takt | Haskell Engineer | San Francisco, CA | Full-time, ONSITE preferred, but REMOTE is an option for senior candidates.

Takt also has open positions for Data Scientist, Data Engineer, Systems and Infrastructure Engineer, Product Managers/Designers, and more. Check them out at http://takt.com/careers. Here is the Haskell Engineer job description:

Takt is seeking experienced Haskell programmers to help develop our flagship product. Our platform processes giant event streams of all kinds, identifying patterns, trends and opportunities to intervene and improve processes, aided by machine learning. Our vision will change the way people engage across multiple industries, be it retail, finance, or healthcare. We're reaching more than 10 million users, making us one of the largest ventures using Haskell.

As a Takt engineer, you'll work in small, self-sufficient teams with the shared goal of delivering excellent software anchored in an agile culture of quality, delivery, and innovation. You understand that legacy code is the work you did yesterday. You also share our passion for functional programming and using data to solve complex problems. Contact mightybyte at the google mail service for more information.

> If anything, ignorance of finance is how you give your money to the bankers.

I don't think it's quite that simple. It's probably some combination of a number of factors such as:

  * Inability to control one's spending
  * A consumer-driven culture where status is equated with material possessions
  * Availability of easy credit
  * Society not recognizing compulsive spending as an addiction

> Haskell is actually infamous for having an evangelical following and limited real-world uses.

That may have been true 15 or more years ago but is not the case any more. I've been using Haskell almost exclusively for the last 7 years for everything from financial analysis to web back ends to, most recently, web front ends.

Takt | Haskell Engineer | San Francisco, CA | Full-time, ONSITE preferred, but REMOTE is an option for senior candidates.

Takt also has open positions for Data Software Engineer, Systems and Infrastructure Engineer, Data Scientist, Product Managers/Designers, and more. Check them out at http://takt.com/careers. Here is the Haskell Engineer job description:

Takt is seeking experienced Haskell programmers to help develop our flagship product. Our platform processes giant event streams of all kinds, identifying patterns, trends and opportunities to intervene and improve processes, aided by machine learning. Our vision will change the way people engage across multiple industries, be it retail, finance, or healthcare. We're reaching more than 10 million users, making us one of the largest ventures using Haskell.

As a Takt engineer, you'll work in small, self-sufficient teams with the shared goal of delivering excellent software anchored in an agile culture of quality, delivery, and innovation. You understand that legacy code is the work you did yesterday. You also share our passion for functional programming and using data to solve complex problems. Contact mightybyte at the google mail service for more information.

Lennart Augustsson

http://ioccc.org/winners.html#Lennart_Augustsson

https://github.com/augustss

I don't consider github to be a requirement and am completely open to hiring people who don't have any work on github. I view github code as a sanity check that helps me reduce false negatives from the other steps in the hiring process.

Yes, github can be falsified, but that doesn't mean it's useless. It's really not that hard to look at a repo and figure out if the things there are likely to be real or not. Is it an absolute guarantee? No. Should an extensive github history be an absolute requirement for jobs? No. But it can be a tremendous source of signal if you spent a few minutes actually looking at commits to find some evidence that the person has committed non-trivial code for a project that is not something generic that could be found on StackOverflow.

> But if I know someone, even if I don't like them, they're a friend.

That's not the definition of the word "friend" as it is conventionally used. Sounds like the word "acquaintance" would be more appropriate to me.

Years ago I left a great job that I loved working at a Fortune 200 company because I had to make a family-related move. The company I worked for also had a significant presence in the city I was moving to. My boss gave me a referral to someone there with the logic that I was already known to be a reliable contributor, and at the very least it would be lower risk for the company to move me there rather than hire a new unknown person.

I got several job offers in the new city including one from the same company. Problem was...the company was 20% lower than the best of my other offers! Apparently there was a company policy limiting how much of a raise could be given, so they straight-up couldn't compete. I got the distinct impression that I could have taken a job with another company, then come back 6-12 months later and gotten a much higher offer. Basically mandated turnover. Talk about an awful policy.

As I write this my MBP is plugged in to a power cord with about two inches of bare wire just below the connector. This cord is only ~4 years old and it has had exposed wires for several years now. I can't see how my use is unusually hard on it. Definitely no doors, desks, or pets. It pretty much just sat in my room and I used it.

Takt | Haskell Engineer | San Francisco, CA | Full-time, on-site

Takt also has open positions for Data Software Engineer, Systems and Infrastructure Engineer, Data Scientist, Product Managers/Designers, and more. Check them out at http://takt.com/careers. Here is the Haskell Engineer job description:

Takt is seeking experienced Haskell programmers to help develop our flagship product. Our platform processes giant event streams of all kinds, identifying patterns, trends and opportunities to intervene and improve processes, aided by machine learning. Our vision will change the way people engage across multiple industries, be it retail, finance, or healthcare. We're reaching more than 10 million users, making us one of the largest ventures using Haskell.

As a Takt engineer, you'll work in small, self-sufficient teams with the shared goal of delivering excellent software anchored in an agile culture of quality, delivery, and innovation. You understand that legacy code is the work you did yesterday. You also share our passion for functional programming and using data to solve complex problems.

Contact mightybyte at the google mail service for more information.

Thanks! That's fantastic. CSS frameworks should talk about this idea more!

Oh, I might not be aware of that type of CSS framework. Can you point me to some examples? I was thinking of frameworks like Bootstrap and Semantic UI.

It depends on what you want to optimize for. If you're starting a startup and you anticipate having a dedicated design team, I think you're better off making your markup match your domain and hand-rolling the CSS instead of using a framework like Bootstrap. This is the ideal approach IMO because it lets you much more effectively keep the styling out of the markup and in the stylesheets. CSS frameworks by definition require you to put styling in your markup.

But if you're just trying to bang out a small project quickly and have it look nice without needing to muck with CSS too much, then a framework can be very useful. These days I prefer Semantic UI over Bootstrap:

http://semantic-ui.com/