ritchiea

SEEKING WORK - Berlin, Germany or Remote (originally from NYC, can make trips to US east coast)

Experienced full stack Ruby and Javascript developer with work history focused on startups. Some big company (e.g. NY Times, Cleversafe), small business and agency experience as well. Most of my experience is with Rails and/or Angular but I've also worked with node.js, React and Sinatra. Not dev-ops per say but I have experience managing deployments with AWS, Digital Ocean, Rackspace and Heroku.

A lot of my projects have involved helping startups get to an MVP or from an MVP to product-market-fit but I'm also not shy to jump into legacy code. Really I'm open to any project that sounds interesting, let's talk. Lots of client facing experience as well, great at communicating with the business side. As well as picking up the slack when design resources are short.

Github: https://github.com/ritchiea

Resume/CV: http://www.andrewritchie.info/docs/andrewritchie.pdf

There's a huge difference between "no system is perfect" and "the dominant process for development work in our industry completely ignores work that nurtures employees into being better employees."

If the system has to be gamed to achieve the best results for your team then the system is flawed.

The author could certainly go further into detail and while sparse writing can be great writing here it feels like too much is left unsaid.

My interpretation of the original comment isn't that context is key, it's that the internet amplifies the kind of extremist speech that wouldn't reach very many people pre-internet. For example: a suburban white supremacist in 1985 might feel isolated and alone, the same person in 2018 can publish their hatred on Twitter & Medium find like minded bigots on web forums.

The rolling substitutions are a big thing people fail to bring up when talking about the danger of the game. Between the platoons and rolling substitutions the game is designed to be a string of never ending high impact hits. There's little worry about stamina over long stretches because you can be substituted out and if you succeed your side gets a break. Players train their bodies to be explosive instead of having high endurance.

Where in Brooklyn? Williamsburg & Bushwick are teeming with cops

I strongly disagree with you. There is research in social psychology showing it is difficult for most people to reason from technical, statistical arguments. One thing I have noticed reading political essays recently is that the emotional impact of scientific, technical and statistical arguments can be bolstered with fitting specific anecdotal evidence. Logic is often not enough to change people's views or motivate them to change. This applies to the most logically minded of us as well.

Are you saying everything that exists outside of deeply researched technical arguments is propaganda? I'm not talking about misleading people, I'm talking about finding ways to reach people who will never be interested in digesting the type of science it takes to deeply engage with the scientific arguments. Those people exist and they vote.

We need to use whatever arguments are effective to steer people and governments to good policy as long as we know those arguments are supporting a cause that is scientifically backed. Some people don't get and don't want to get scientific evidence. If there is a plausible causal chain from global climate change to that suffering polar bear we should be using that polar bear to convince people climate change is real and bad. Most people don't have the patience for or interest in scientific arguments and we have to convince most people that this is a problem not just hacker news.

Bail is broken [0], that's the assumption they're starting with. They and many others have observed that bail lends the wealthy an opportunity to walk free with little cost, overfills jails, creates debt/costs for innocent people who are never convicted of crimes and has created a market for businesses to profit off of justice system inefficiency. Whether you agree or not is for another argument. They believe the bail system is not working and that it's a worthy cause to raise money for people that would be stuck behind bars because they can't afford bail.

And while there are clearly engineering costs to mining, this app provides users a passive way to donate to the bail reform cause. The theory is clearly that people who otherwise would not donate will download the app and donate CPU cycles. Getting people to open their wallets is harder than getting people to donate their CPU cycles. "Direct donation is more efficient" is only an effective argument against this if it is the case that every potential user of the app is equally likely to enter their banking information and donate a small sum monthly. I suspect many people who would not be willing to set up a small monthly donation would be willing to donate CPU cycles & electricity.

0. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/07/12/536905881/epis...

It's hard to get people to donate their money directly. You might be able to get more people to passively donate CPU cycles and electricity than to directly donate money. And please don't argue there's no difference because people definitely are more likely to do something if you make it easy for them to do it.

I understand from an engineering perspective this has a cost but the idea is clearly to find a way to get more people to donate to a worthy cause.

You're right that policy needs to change but raising money via mining to actually free people can change those people's lives while we press for a legislative solution. It's an abstract problem for you but why merely sit around waiting for policy to change when people still suffer from bad policy?

Added bonus: when there is energy around sidestepping bad policy that is another sign to legislators that the policy should indeed be changed.

I would say the JS community has both NIH syndrome and huge dependency trees. Everyone does things differently and there are 5 or 6 kind of decent options for any dependency you might need. Yet somehow there is rarely one great option.

It's actually really simple why we can't all just throw ourselves in 100% to every new thing. Instead of learning a new tool I could be writing app code for my client or employer who needs the code for their business. I have a finite amount of time & energy so I try to use it well.

Every web application requires at least 2 languages (a sever side language and HTML). Virtually all of them also end up also including Javascript and CSS. And Javascript as a server side language is relatively new. That's not a great argument against Rails.

I'm not buying this argument.

There's a Rails way, Python famously aims for one obvious way of doing things. That just isn't true of Javascript exactly because there is a history of developers writing several styles of JS, the "right way" to write JS being redefined by diligent people like Douglas Crockford & John Resig and things changing yet again and yet again.

And look at ES6, the JS ecosystem barely resembles what was considered good, idiomatic Javascript just a few years ago. There are a bunch of devs who have managed to stay on top of what's current and I'm sure are laying down examples of good practices & building tools in that style. But you are also talking about an ecosystem that includes people that started writing JS 4-10 years ago, have adopted some of the absolute newest flavor of the month practices but also have seen JS change so much over the years that they aren't throwing themselves into everything that is now considered a best practice because they know their code works and there could be another seismic change in 8 months.

Writing Javascript nearly every line of code is haunted with "is this still the way I should do this?" and no other language has that much hassle.

In a world of options where an experienced programmer has had a chance to experiment with different languages the most familiar language is the best prototyping language. In a world where C is the only option programmers think about what other options they could imagine.

I believe the problem is Quebec has a poor economy and figured to lose out economically and in subsequent trade deals if they became independent. Catalonia on the other hand is ~20% of Spain's economy and ~15% of the population so on the national level there is an interest in keeping Catalonia as part of Spain against the wishes of the Catalan population. Canada has leverage if Quebec wishes to secede, Spain doesn't have leverage with Catalonia.

Honestly most things people are uniquely passionate about that take work outside of your workplace will get you equal or nearly equal weird looks. A lot of people want to go to work to make money and come home to watch TV. I worked for Obama for America in 2008 and spent months walking door to door in Indiana, most people went to to work, took care of their kids and watched TV. And didn't want to spend time doing much else.

As more nerdy and ambitious people, we are the weird ones. Programming in your free time might get slightly weirder looks than participating in local theater or something but I think some of the scorn you perceive is residual from the hostile environment that existed for nerds in grade school and high school. After that people still think you're weird but generally don't care that much, they're busy watching TV & taking care of their kids.

When I'm reading HN I assume the commenters are at least somewhat similar to myself until I have evidence to think otherwise. The culture here is neither anti-intellectual nor anti-math. Given that we're on HN I'd say it's safe to assume no one is telling you to quit coding or stop caring about math. On this forum issues around workaholism and burn out come up all the time, "getting a life" is a step toward not burning out.

My guess is in this case the original commenter means "get a life" if you feel pressured to only think about programming or work.

If you are happy and fulfilled programming all day, go for it, program all day. Personally I would also encourage you to at least try and pursue some other interests because experiencing new things is fun & exciting, but if you're happy that's what's most important.

But many of us, especially those of us in the United States, live in a culture where we can be expected to think of our work as our life. A culture where we are encouraged to memorize CPU cache fetch times rather than picking up a novel, going to a museum or spending time with family. When we say "get a life" most of us are arguing against that culture, not telling you how to enjoy your time.

SEEKING WORK - Berlin, Germany/New York City - Remote Ok

Experienced full stack, product focused Ruby and Javascript developer with work history focused on startups. Some big company (e.g. NY Times, Cleversafe), small business and agency experience as well. Most of my experience is with Rails and/or Angular but I've also worked with node.js, React, Sinatra, Wordpress and Python/Django. Not dev-ops per say but I have experience managing deployments with AWS, Digital Ocean, Rackspace and Heroku.

A lot of my projects have involved helping startups get to an MVP or build out features from an MVP. I've also done cleanup on projects when another agency or developer was behind schedule and a project needed to ship ASAP. Really I'm open to any project that sounds interesting, let's talk. Lots of client facing experience as well, great at communicating with the business side and shaping technical decisions around business needs. I can also pick up the slack when design resources are short.

I've been based out of NYC for 8 years & I'm still in the city regularly but at the moment I'm in Berlin seeking a freelancer visa. Open to work with both U.S. & German clients.

Github: https://github.com/ritchiea

Resume/CV: http://www.andrewritchie.info/docs/andrewritchie.pdf

So your point is some of the Nazis were reasonable other than the ones that want to commit genocide?

It doesn't even hold up today because you are saying historically there were Germans that supported the Nazi party because of Hitler's leadership in other areas. But we're in 2017 where everyone knows that Nazis committed a genocide. So anyone like the Daily Stormer that supports Nazis we know to be dangerous. And It's okay to not do business with dangerous people who want to harm innocents.

To your point about Muslims, we know that there are millions of peaceful non-violent practicing Muslims. You are trying to make a logical equivalency here and what I believe is more important is the facts that we know about the real world we live in. Supporting Nazis is explicit support of genocide. Practicing Islam has an unfortunate overlap with violent terrorists. But practicing Christianity also has an unfortunate overlap with domestic terrorists like Timothy McVeigh and Dylan Roof. I don't think existing in this theoretical world of forced equivalency even benefits your argument as much as you believe it does.

Well anything near Times Square is a mess, I'm in a quiet part of Brooklyn.

Yup, pretty much anywhere in the city will be close to that. But that's regular NYC pricing, everything is more expensive there.

Where do you live? I almost never experience this going to the theater in NYC.

I firmly believe hiring decision makers are incapable of assessing people objectively.

I've never interpreted diversity programs as telling minorities we are stupider. Universities are a great example, wealthier people with more money can afford better educations and test prep for their children. If the "merit" you refer to is manufactured by circumstance, and the circumstances are weighted in favor of the already powerful, why should we accept the status quo & pretend the admissions standard are an objective measurement?

Quotas are a crude tool but I'd rather see something like that than simply accept a world with a cycle of the powerful remaining powerful in large part due to the less powerful never having opportunity.

I suspect this getting up-voted is about the Google engineer's diversity essay. How about instead of framing it in terms of what you can't say politically, let's rephrase it another way:

Imagine you make a post inside your company Slack complaining all your colleagues are stupid and unqualified. You'd probably be reprimanded right?

Didn't that guy basically just do that but only about his female and minority colleagues (and future female and minority colleagues)? Don't we all monitor our words at least a bit at work for the sake of the day going smoothly?

And if he's so correct about Google's diversity initiatives being a problem and/or failure why doesn't he start a company that only hires men to take advantage of the market inefficiency in hiring (if you say hiring laws would get in the way, when is the last time a company paid a serious price for failing to have diverse hires)?

The most upvoted HN comments on threads about the diversity manifesto reek of protecting the status of the people already at the top. And are as flimsy and irrational as they claim the liberal values they decry are. White men have traditionally been in power in this country and suppressed the rights of women & minorities to vote, educate themselves & work for years. How can we know that another group wouldn't be historically more powerful without a control group study where each group is allowed to be a historical oppressor for an equal amount of time?