nlnn

Absolutely - I don't see code reviews as a replacement for mentoring, more as something to augment it, or direct future mentoring sessions.

I've had quite a few experiences where I've suggested a change in a code review, and found out that the author lacked knowledge in that area. That's then turned into a future topic to focus on in future mentoring sessions.

Agree about design too, I don't think code review is really the place for that, since it's often a bit late by then (plus it's hard to get a sense of the overall intent and architecture from code chagnes alone).

It's a shame it doesn't happen formally more often, but one place I worked in the past always had a separate design review (which needed at least one person to approve) before coding could even start. This was fairly informal, but caught a few major potential design problems early on.

One goal that I think often gets missed out of code review guides is education.

To me, code review is not just there to produce better software, but also better developers.

It's a great place to talk about tradeoffs, alternative approaches, reasoning behind changes, etc.

Maybe less useful in huge projects with many contractors you're never going to work with again, but I've seen the mentoring aspect have great benefits in small teams.

Sometimes configuration is fairly complex (e.g. nested map data structures) which gets pretty complex with simple key/value env variables.

I'm thinking of things like config for nginx, Apache, Kubernetes, etc.

I think for many, it's that they're not able to do those things you do without some form of help. I know many people with major social anxiety that (for better or worse) use alcohol (modest amounts, none are heavy drinkers) to get over that to dance and talk with people.

They've expressed that the experience has lessened the fear for them, and they're better able to do those things (to a small extent at least) without drinking, but would never have been able to so without the initial nudge.

FWIW, I've got a friend that sounds exactly like you - he's pretty much always sober, but is super outgoing, dances all the time, and talks to anyone enthusiastically. He's sometimes been asked to leave clubs we've been at as bouncers assumed he was high on something, and been refused alcohol as bar staff thought he'd had too much already.

Nice, I saw this referenced in another post, but didn't know what it was, looks super useful.

That's exactly the sort of thing I was after, thanks. Trying to search for in depth info about mmap has generally given me docs on how to use it, not where/when it should/shouldn't be used.

Thanks, that's a great idea. Last time I read kernel documentation was probably 15+ years ago, so I'm probably very out of date in some concepts I've internalised.

Thanks, I hadn't seen that discussion, looks like there might be some useful info there too.

I'm in the middle of reading Designing Data Intensive Applications, and Database Internals is next on my list, but hadn't come across the other two yet - have added to my reading list now.

It probably doesn't apply here (and might well be country/region specific), but one thing I've heard from friends who've done similar has been some resentment/hostility related to jobs that are only people with previous money can afford to take.

I've got several friends that made a lot of money in tech/law before switching to more fullfilling jobs (things like furniture maker, barista, something music-related, plumber, museum curator, librarian).

One argument they've heard is that by taking jobs that aren't economically feasible to do without money, they're encouraging low pay for others in that field who don't have any other choice. One or two volunteer for free, and have heard complaints that volunteers have destroyed careers in certain sectors.

This has happened to two friends of mine (in the UK).

One moved out to somewhere on the country and of suburban, only to find out that his neighbour was running a firewood selling business on the side. So saws going for at least several hours each day.

Another moved somewhere very much in the country. Then the owner of the field next door decided to rent it out to dirtbike racers. So every weekend they have to deal with tons of noise and clouds of dust for ~6-8 hours.

I guess it will depend on the family/household too. A friend of mine (same age as me) grew up in a house where everyone sung, and used to have huge family gatherings based around singing together. All his family played at least one instrument.

My parents, on the other hand, had exactly zero interest in music. I grew up without any music in the house (no radio, no recorded music, no musical instruments).

After I left home music became one of my main hobbies, though I've always felt far behind many of my peers (many of whom at least had a few piano lessons in their youth). Slowly making progress, though I've always struggled with where to start with singing (since no-one in my house sang, I'm very self-concious doing it).

I don't think you can count of any company not to have layoffs, that's quite dependant on the economy, company performance, sector, etc.

If a company promised no layoffs ever, I wouldn't believe them. But if they promised to continue WFH, I'd believe them, since that's directly under their control.

Even if none allow WFH, they might go somewhere with less of a commute, or to a more trustworthy employer that doesn't backtrack on promises.

Same for me, I really enjoy playing scales and the like as studying jazz has made the application and benefit of practice a lot more clear.

I did some classical study and grades years ago and remember there being a big disconnect - my teacher just gave me scales and pieces as totally separate entities, and just taught them as things necessary to pass the exam, with no real application or purpose explained to me.

I don't know about these exact exams, but often there are a lot of variations to play.

E.g. multiple octaves, arpeggio inversions, scales in 3rds, 4ths, 5ths, 6ths, etc.

Plus there's often a requirement to play at a certain tempo, legato/staccato, with correct intonation (for certain instruments), and also to use the correct fingerings as taught in other cases.

So can be a lot more involved than playing a simple scale.

At a place I used to work we had optional "pizza parties" as a reward for employees during work hours. Then many people started grabbing pizza and going back to their desks to work, or to head out for a break, etc.

Management got upset that people weren't staying in one place to eat and talk, so they made it mandatory to stay in the room for anyone that was eating.

It was pretty clear then that the pizza wasn't a reward for employees, and was something intended to achieve some other purpose (e.g. teambuilding, work discussions, etc.).

As a very occasional solderer, one thing I don't see written about much in beginner guides is ventilation.

With lead-based solder, I'm never sure what I should be doing, especially in a small room/workshop. Keeping windows open or having good airflow isn't always possible.

Things like: should I avoid leaning over or breathing in while leaning over something I'm soldering? Do I need to air the room afterwards? Would a small carbon fume extractor help? Anything to worry about from other chemicals in lead-free solder? Or is even lead harmless enough for someone that's not soldering ever day?

Ouch, I looked at the top 30 list and have only watched one and ever heard of three others.

I feel very out of touch...

One sillier one I look back fondly on was an undersea themed email signature generator I wrote maybe 20 years ago or so.

I think it was a Perl script connected to a named pipe or similar, so whenever my mutt client read it I got a new sig.

It generated 4 lines of an ASCII art underwater scene, containing a randomised selection of different fish, sharks, boats, seaweed, crabs, rocks, shells, treasure chests, etc.

There was a bunch of code to ensure no overlap, and more natural looking scenes.

There were also certain things that only triggered on certain special days of the year (Christmas etc.), and others that only appeared in conversations with people I'd exchanged more than N emails with.

Sadly it went away when my email client moved to be primarily web based.

> This is not like Europe where you have to re-mortgage every two years.

This isn't strictly true - 2 years tends to be the shortest (with the lowest rates) you can get, but longer terms are very common.

In the UK, 2/3/5/10 year fixed rates are common. Many people used to go with 2 year fixed rate (for the lowest interest rates), then at the end of the term, switch to another fixed rate for the next N years. Now people are opting for 5/10 year fixed rate a lot more than they used to, especially if they can lock in to a low interest rate deal.

In France you can get a fixed rate mortgage for the entire term of the mortgage. In Germany, I've seen fixed rate mortgages for 10/20/30 years advertised.

Those are the only countries I'm familiar with though, not sure how other European countries differ.

Wish there was a good solution for this sometimes.

I maintain some small open source projects (which I wrote for my own benefit), and judging from GitHub issues and stars, get some use.

But I have absolutely no idea who's using the software, or which subsets of features they care about.

I'd happily put work in to improve things users cared about, but have no idea how to get that info (I don't know who they are so can't ask), or using telemetry (which I'm loathe to add due to its perception).

Two other uses cases I forgot I'd heard one of the students mention: 1) drafting emails to people, 2) checking if he'd forgotten any key aspects in coursework essays.

For 2), he said that after writing an essay, he'd ask the GPT model something like "I've written an essay on X, and talked about A, B, and C. Are there any other important factors I've forgotten to discuss?". Then use that as the basis for more research.

From the sounds of it, he was treating the model more like a colleague he could bounce ideas off, not something to be treated as infallible (much like another student I guess).

This was from an overheard conversation, so not 100% sure myself. It sounded like he was giving it a list of activities he wanted to achieve within a certain time window (going for a jog, studying for exams, coursework, etc.), and asking it to write a schedule for him.

He then said he asked it to tweak it in a few ways (e.g. more time on study, a 5 minute break between activities, etc.). Then he'd print it out and pin to his desk.

Yeah, same for me. I sounds like the uses they'd found for it didn't really involve expecting reliable information, more just as an initial source of ideas with a nice conversational interface.

Weirdly, I heard of some genuine use from a family in a pub the other day.

Two of the kids were university/college age, talking to their parents about it.

They were using one of the AI models daily for things like: recipe ideas for food they had in the house, scheduling daily activities, bouncing ideas off for essays, and asking for gift ideas.

They understood it wasn't much good for facts, but liked the conversational interface as a way to give them ideas or jumping off points for things.

I've worked with great developers that swore a lot, and great ones that didn't.

Main difference I observed was that the non-swearing ones were seen as less intimidating and more approachable. They were often more helpful to junior members of the team in terms of providing advice or guidance.

The swearier ones were left alone more, and the swearing was seen a bit like wearing headphones (i.e. I'm focusing and busy, don't you dare interrupt me).

I'd definitely agree here. There's a lot of things that cannot be expressed in a language, and need comments.

Even for e.g. get_height, does it make a DB call? Is it expensive and shouldn't be called in a tight loop? Can it ever return 0?

I've worked either both fully remote and fully in the office over the past decade depending on job at the time, and noticed little difference in work productivity at home vs. the office.

The major difference has been in the dead time around work. Time spent commuting, lunch breaks, coffee breaks, etc. When working in an office, nothing much is achieved during those (maybe some socialising or reading), and work takes them out of my time rather than their time.

Working remotely gives that dead time back to me, allowing me to spend it on things I consider more valuable (e.g. playing a musical instrument, doing some DIY around the house, gardening, putting on washing, etc.).

It's that which I feel has given me a better quality of life than the act of not working in an office. If an employer is paying me, I don't object to doing that work where they request. What I do object to is the extra hours that takes out of my life that they aren't paying me for (typically commuting).

I thought about this, but realised that I don't spend that much time typing when coding.

Maybe when defining a new variable/class/etc. the first time, then IDE autocomplete fills it in the next.

Yup, that's exactly the sort of thing I was thinking. Having a narrow focus means friends know exactly what they're going to get out of the evening, which makes it easier for them to decide whether to attend or not.

Same goes for me too, if a friend invites me over for board games, great, I'm up for that. If a friend invites me over for a general hang out, that could mean the even goes in any number of directions, some of which I'd be less interested in (e.g. heavy drinking, watching sports), so I'd be less likely to attend.