Hacker News Reader

I am not suggesting that you don't need technology.

I am suggesting that FogBugz doesn't offer enough flexibility in their workflow definition to do the gymnastics required for SOC1 compliance. FogBugz is trying to follow best software development practices and as you noted, Jira is a dream-tool for a micro-manager.

solutionyogion Why Fogbugz lost to Jira

Having mainly done line of business applications my entire life, I have a slightly different take.

Jira won because it was not opinionated. You can use it however you want. FogBugz had the philosophy to make bug entry super easy above anything else. Jira will let a manager define new custom fields and make them all compulsory. It perfectly fits how manager at big companies think.

FogBugz provides Completion Date Probability Distribution chart and Burn Down Chart [2]. Anyone who has worked for big companies knows that these two are USELESS for them. They set a project delivery date and you just have to hit it.

At my current company, we are going for SOC1 compliance. This forces an amazingly complicated issue workflow and they implemented it very easily in Jira. I am looking at FogBugz documentation on workflows [1], and I don't see how we could have implemented the same in FogBugz.

I also feel that Jira has a better ecosystem for plugins and integrations then FogBugz.

[1] http://help.fogcreek.com/7483/statuses-categories-and-workfl...

[2] http://www.fogcreek.com/fogbugz/features/project-management/

solutionyogion Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Baidu Announce Joint Investment in CloudFlare

My guess is that if you need a CDN, it's highly likely that you will at least need their Pro plan, most likely a business plan. Other than geeks, I don't really see too many people consuming their free offering to a limit where it becomes a financial burden for them.

solutionyogion Apple refunding all purchases of Peace

Wow. That's a real example of putting money where the mouth is.

I always felt that he is an opinionated, stand up guy but this move actually proves that he means what he says and he was sincere about his feelings on ad blockers [1]. Much respect.

[1] http://www.marco.org/2015/09/18/just-doesnt-feel-good

solutionyogion Jackfruit could save millions from starvation

I never saw them at Trader Joe's but they are always there at Indian grocery stores in NYC/NJ and it is reasonably priced.

solutionyogion Jackfruit could save millions from starvation

I am originally from Gujarat (a western state) and jackfruit is definitely not as popular as it is in South. There are no dishes in Gujarat which are made using jackfruit. I know this because I grew up in Surat (a city in Gujarat) but worked in Mangalore for 2.5 years. I personally love jack fruit especially fried jackfruit chips! Luckily, Indian Grocery stores in NYC carry those jackfruit chips. Completely agree that it's impossible to describe the taste, you just have to try it.

solutionyogion Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace

I am curious. If work environment was so toxic, why did you stick around 5 long years? What was your thought process? I have had similar happened to my friends who somehow get stuck at one place for one reason or other and don't realize what they are missing out. Right now, I am trying to help another friend who is stuck in similar situation (not at Amazon).

solutionyogion Ask HN: Any movies that changed your life?

Pursuit of Happyness is definitely one of my favorite.

Another one which I regularly watch is Shawshank Redemption. A choice quote from the movie:

Hope is a good thing, may be the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

solutionyogion A Drug Hits Cycling Before It Hits the Market

Agreed. 'Stop At Nothing' [1] documentary captures this and more in a gripping fashion. It's available on Netflix and a must watch if you want to understand the whole Armstrong saga.

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3511812/

solutionyogion Ask HN: What skills would you invest in learning?

Could you please given an example or two for X + Y? I am not following that.

solutionyogion What's new in Magit 2.x

That's very interesting. What did Emcas offer you that Vim could not?

solutionyogion Git Koans (2013)

My favorite:

Master Git snapped his fingers. A hobgoblin entered the room and ate the novice alive. In the afterlife, the novice was enlightened.

solutionyogion How We Learned to Cheat at Online Poker: A Study in Software Security (1999)

I think the problem is the randomness.

When you use your language's random function, you are getting a pseudorandom generator. As noted in the article, they were able to figure out the seed for the random function. Once you know the seed, the game is over. The adversary can now figure out the exact shuffled deck.

Also see: http://ericlippert.com/2013/05/06/producing-permutations-par...

solutionyogion Vim's 400 line function to wait for keyboard input

He covers in the blog post: http://geoff.greer.fm/2015/01/15/why-neovim-is-better-than-v...

From the blog post:

That if statement’s conditions span 17 lines and 4 different #ifdefs. All to call gettimeofday(). Amusingly, even the body of that statement has a bug: times returned by gettimeofday() are not guaranteed to increase. User intervention or ntpd can cause the system clock to go back in time. The correct solution is to use a monotonically increasing time function, such Linux’s clock_gettime() or OS X’s mach_absolute_time().

solutionyogion Thanks Pivotal, Hello Redis Labs

I would love to know the actual deal which happened however I highly doubt if he would publish it.

It is very clear to me that redis is a labor of love for antirez and money is not a driving factor anymore in his life. I am sure If it was about money, he would have started something like redis labs long time ago himself.

Personally, if I was as smart as him and created a great open source product like Redis, I would have definitely started something like Redis Labs to benefit from it financially. I am jealous of folks for whom money is not a driving factor.

solutionyogion Zombie Operating Systems and ASP.NET MVC (2009)

Can someone add 2009 to the tile?

solutionyogion Iowa Makes a Bold Admission: We Need Fewer Roads

  > I feel like people need multiple-pass compilers for their logical arguments.

If you don't mind, I am going to steal that line for future discussion. :)

solutionyogion Pens Are Making a High-Tech Comeback

Have you looked at Boogie Board Sync?

http://www.myboogieboard.com/na/products/boogie-board-sync-9...

I tried it. I really wanted to like it, but the writing screen was just not bright enough for me. May be it will work for you.

solutionyogion GitFlow considered harmful

Yes, 'develop' branch is still useful. See my comment on that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9744787

solutionyogion GitFlow considered harmful

True. You do have to fix all the true conflicts. But you have to do it only once. If you merge your master, you have to resolve conflicts every time you merge from the master. git rerere could be potentially useful here.

Even more importantly rebase allows you to resolve conflict at individual commit level. During conflict, you can see the exact commit that is causing it, making it much easier to resolve it.

See: http://jeffkreeftmeijer.com/2010/the-magical-and-not-harmful...

solutionyogion GitFlow considered harmful

If you need independent release cycle for Feature A / Feature B, you adjust GitFlow by basing all branches (feature/release/hotfix) from the master.

Let's say next release is Release-1.10

1. We merge Feature A and Feature B to it.

2. Feature A is tested and ready to be deployed. Feature B is not.

3. You either revert Feature B commit OR re-create the release branch with only Feature A.

4. Deploy the release branch.

5. Merge the release branch in to master.

This is exactly what we do at my current workplace where we have 4 developers working on changes with different release schedule.

solutionyogion GitFlow considered harmful

I see. But as you noted, one must do CI tests again after a rebase.

solutionyogion GitFlow considered harmful

Then rebase interactive is your friend. Clean up your feature branch BEFORE merging in to the release branch.

solutionyogion GitFlow considered harmful

Could you expand on what do you mean by rebase breaking CI tests? I don't see how that's possible.

solutionyogion GitFlow considered harmful

It is better to have a messy but realistic history if you want to trace back what happend and who did and tested what at what time. I prefer my code to be clean and my history to be correct.

^^^ Couldn't agree more.

However, I don't know why people want to avoid rebasing feature branches. Rebasing feature branches means that you only have to resolve the conflict once and have a clean history for your release branch. Granted, it works well in my team where only a single developer owns a given feature branch.

solutionyogion GitFlow considered harmful

So let me get this straight.

He is suggesting to use 90% of what GitFlow suggests (feature/hotfix/release branches) but doesn't like the suggestion of non-fast-forward merge and master/Dev and that makes GitFlow harmful? I don't think I agree.

I think having the Dev branch is useful. Consider this actual scenario at my current workplace.

1. We have 4 developers. Nature of the project is such that we can all work independently on different features/changes.

2. We have Production/QA/Dev environment.

3. When we are working on our individual features, we do the work in individual branches and merge in to Dev branch (which is continuously deployed).This lets us know of potential code conflicts between developers in advance.

4. When a particular feature is 'developer tested', he/she merges it into a rolling release branch (Release-1.1, Release-1.2 etc) and this is continuously deployed to QA environment. Business user does their testing in QA environment and provides sign off.

5. We deploy the artifacts of the signed off release branch to Production and then merge it in to the master and tag it.

Without the development branch, the only place to find out code conflicts will be in the release branch. I and others on my team personally prefer the early feedback we can get thanks to the development branch.

Advantages of an explicit merge commit:

1. Creating the merge commit makes it trivial to revert your merge. [Yes, I know it is possible to revert the merge but it's not exactly a one step process.]

2. Being able to visually see that set of commits belongs to a feature branch. This is more important to me (and my team) than a 'linear history' that the author loves.

We have diverted from GitFlow in only one way, we create all feature/release/bugfix branches from 'master' and not 'develop'.

Now, don't get me wrong, GitFlow is not simple but it's not as complicated as author seems to suggest. I think the author was better served with article title like 'What I don't like in GitFlow'.

solutionyogion Uber Drivers Deemed Employees by California Labor Commission

Wait a second. I understand that they will have to let drivers negotiate rate but as a contractor why can't they enforce that you must have certain type of car? E.g. I did contracting for financial firms in NYC and certain ones expected me to wear business formals (including a tie) whenever I worked in the office. Why can't Uber have similar requirement that you must have car with certain features?

solutionyogion New Relic Boxes – Monitor your servers and applications

I agree that it is expensive. However, I went through their Product Tour and blogs and it looks like they are taking a very novel approach as far as APM is concerned. Apart from the price, how's the actual experience? Does their AI actually identify the root cause of a problem? Does the no-configuration approach actually work?

solutionyogion New Relic Boxes – Monitor your servers and applications

Ruxit looked very interesting. But you are right, they are expensive. 0.15$ per host per hour. That means, 0.15 x 24 x 30 = 108$ per month per host.

Compare it to something like Data Dog which costs 15$ per host per month. https://www.datadoghq.com/pricing/

solutionyogion Ask HN: How do you deal with overly confident people?

This. One thing which seems obvious to me now but wasn't earlier that we are software professionals and not fire fighters or professional athletes. When you are a fire fighter or an athlete in a high pressure game, you need to make a decision there and then. This is not true of a while collar workplace. If you are not sure, buy time. No one is going to object to that. Even better, move conversation to email where you can share links to facts supporting your argument. In fact, senior people appreciate that you do proper due diligence before making a decision.