stratigos

I want to like Atom so badly. I really buy into the features it offers over my beloved Sublime Text (3). I want the connectivity to the greater community, the ease of styling, and the ease of extension. I want everything Atom claims to offer!

In my last year of switching from Sublime Text 2/3, I have pretty much just gained one thing: cooler language syntax styles. I havent actually taken advantage of all of the ideas behind atom - I guess, when it comes to the grind, Im not interested in them enough to actually take advantage. When it comes to how I use my code editor, I seemed to have focused only on my career's needs, and not the joy of customizing, extending, and contributing back (to the code editor's community, that is).

What is important to me is productivity. In my year of using Atom, I lost a lot of productivity. First I lost lots of productivity configuring Atom to be in a similar state to how I use Sublime Text 3. That wasnt hard, Atom is just different, so there was some learning that distracted me when I wanted to focus on work. Thats cool, I can accept that for any "next big new thing." Then I lost a lot of productivity due to things related to package-management systems, configuration issues, and I had to wipe and reinstall a few times as it was easier to get back to work than to figure out what tidbit of an advanced feature I was misunderstanding. Then I lost a lot more productivity after package updates broke other packages (mostly language syntax stuff, but enough to be a big distraction when coding). It felt like getting into ES6 JS for the first time after only using jQuery - except in Atom's case, it was a tool getting in the way of me working.

I also really loathe all of the git-integration features, though they sounded great at first. I am constantly having to git reset and git checkout <filename> etc because I diddnt realize I had the @#$%ing sidebar in focus instead of the text area for the zillionth time. I diddnt realize when I was trying to select and delete text with a keystroke, that I deleted files from the sidebar view yet again. So on and so forth - its given me a major fear of using the software as misclicks and such lead to pain that I have to undo via my terminal. Dont get me started on how bad its auto indent or copy paste intelligence is... and again, zero of these issues with ST3.

Atom might be "free," in theory, but it cost me many hundreds (possibly low 4-figure number) of dollars worth of billable hours in my 2017 fiscal year.

Ive probably lost a cumulative total of 4-5 billable hours to Sublime Text in my whole life, and that was usually to Sublime's wonky updating patterns.

Id really like to like Atom, but Im "thiiiiiiiiiiiiiis close" to deleting it off my work machines and going back to Sublime Text 3. It has taught me that productivity it way more important to me than modern web-enabled features.

Here is to hoping 2018 is a better year for the Atom IDE, as my relationship with it has about 1-more incident worth of tolerance left.

If anything, we're "bitching" about wanting actual money for compensation, not a raffle to a lottery that is highly likely to have no prize at all, and just as likely to be worth far less than the typical compensation in cash.

"Sorry we cant actually fulfill the contractural obligations we are (sort of) legally bound to fulfill, and cant pay you like we promised. So will you take a much smaller amount of money and a bunch of worthless stock options instead? By the way our stock options are going to be worth millions in a few months, so this is actually a better deal for you."

Its like some weird pathogen has infected the whole industry with this!

I just want to say, I miss you, Sublime. Can you just pls get all of the community oriented niceness that Atom has, so I can stop using Atom and come back to your elegance, pls?

The state forces you to acknowledge its authority before you are allowed to observe and ponder an artistic message - additionally, compromising the display of said artistic message with a big nasty horribly designed stamp of disapproval covering a significant portion of the work.

Its is parents' responsibility to police content their children are exposed to. Its parents' responsibility to read the lyrics of "Louie Louie" and determine if that is safe for their children or not. Requiring the state to burden itself with this role is not only no route to security in such a situation, but tremendously irresponsible of this so-called league of concerned parents.

I think people should instead be thinking about how we can save the existence of the entire species, and all other higher order forms of life on earth, rather than focusing on their individual tax breaks, savings, or other trivial concerns. Yes, your cash flow is rendered quite trivial if life on Earth ends.

Invest in the Life Economy, and turn your back on the Death Economy. The value here is in the benefit to life, concern over state monopolized currencies clearly facilitates an economy of death.

This is mainly in response to that Reddit thread from many years ago which basically spread the neg against System76. I was cautious due to being biased from the negative reviews of the past, but would consider my experience evidence that its at least not that way now :).

Your hiring strategy is not "your" hiring strategy: its every mindless, exploitative, and compassionless corporation in the universe. In otherwords, youre overwhelmingly average! Youre contributing to the very problem youre having: no one wants to work for an entity that operates like this.

Also, I had a nice comfy savings account, so I decided not to work for 6 months while I focused on me-time and learning NewTechnologyStack. I fell in love with it, and havent looked at OldTechnologyStack since. I wrote many demo apps, started making open source contribs, and engaged with NewTechStack communities online. Damn that was fun! I joined local meetup groups and other communities to fill my sponge-like passion for NewTechStack to the max.

Let me also state that with OldTechStack, I never, ever had a problem finding a job - really, it usually takes me about a week to land a new job somewhere else in my bustling tech-hub city. My resume with OldTechStack was, well, very trendy. I could often tell in interviews that people were going to hire me based on my resume before they even spoke to me in person, and that the in-person resume was just to reassure themselves that I wasnt bullshitting them. Dont get me wrong, Im a great programmer, but I know I was hired because my resume was nice 'n trendy (with the OldTechStack culture).

So, once I started looking for jobs in NewTechStack culture, the reality of the superficial hiring process really set in. Firstly, NewTechStack people have a cultural internalization that OldTechStack really sucks. Mind you, I am not referring to technical folk, but HR people, recruiters, entrepreneurial types, etc. Secondly, I had no idea that taking time off from work made me look really bad to most folks at the base level of recruitment. Because I was not currently employed, I was not making it past many screening interviews. Thirdly, there was this magic phrase, "x many years of PRODUCTION experience in NewTechnologyStack..." that was really screwing me over. Despite the fact that I am proficient in 4-5 major programming languages, and have experience in several more. Despite the fact that I have lots of demonstrable work, both public open source, and my own creations (living at live URLs). Despite that my career experience has given me challenges that are scaled many-powers-of-ten beyond what your rinky-dink logistics app's customers demand. Despite that I interview wonderfully, am willing to do programming challenges for free, and usually deliver above and beyond expectations... Despite basically being a wonderful candidate from your engineering team's perspective, I found myself being rejected for these and many other superficial reasons.

Right now I am elated that none of those companies hired me, as I found my way via freelance contracts, and my life could not possibly be more well balanced and I have never been happier in my career. Right now I also work on about 7 different NewTechnologyStack production websites with relatively complex e-commerce and marketplace challenges, as again, I handle generalism well, and well adopt AnyTechnologyStack much better than your "senior dev" with a whopping "5 years production experience."

Guess what? Every single company that I interviewed with about 9 months ago is still hiring for the same damned position I applied for. Some of them have even reached out to me on StackOverFlow or other career sites, like a zombie, unknowing that theyve already interviewed this candidate...

Why?

Because theyre obsessed with an irrational, non-science based, peacock-dance, superficial standard for hiring people, specifically with standards they are not at all knowledgeable of, that they somehow believe will lead them to "hiring the best" and becoming the next Google (with their rinky-dink logistics app with about 4K customers).

I am not suggesting some "science based" checklist system take its place. I do think the peacock-dance, and other completely inauthentic behavioral checks, need to be removed from evaluation. Dont get me started on all the dinosaurs still relying on "technical tests" that throw college-level abstract puzzle games at you, which have been scientifically proven to produce false positives as well as false negatives.

Pro tip: copy and paste documentation from YourTechnologyStack official site to your blog, write one sentence saying, "please leave a comment below!" and youre instantly more hireable (to recruiters at the screening level) because, well, youre a blogger, and youre clearly engaged in the community.

Companies are so obsessed with "hiring the best" that they basically buy a "hiring kit 'n a box" and hope it automates itself, when all theyre doing is creating an absurd gauntlet that rejects lots of great candidates, and leaves them without any hired candidates 6 months later. The "rockstar" programmer, mythical though she/he may be, is still the goose that lays the golden egg and turns your company into NextGoogle.

The level of absurdity with the hiring process as a software engineer is obscene. For people who spend most of their professional time dwelling in thought-realms of pure logic, getting hired is a maddeningly illogical process.

Best solution: be a freelancer ;-)

2. Pick some other language you've never worked with, that has some potential market (i.e., you could make money with it), and just start learning. Do online courses, cookbooks, make demo projects, and once you have some competency - join an open source project in it. The point isnt just to get a new job, thats a side effect. The point is to regain a fondness for programming by seeing it from a totally new angle. If youre into Python, have you ever worked in a compiled language like C? How about Java? Functional programming w Haskell? Metaprogramming with Ruby? What about learning a whole new concept, like 3D graphics with an API/framework like OpenGL? Or game engine architecture with Unity3D? Just do something different, and rediscover a love of being a maker in the process. Even if it doesnt become a new trade, you certainly will be a better Python programmer due to your experience in a completely different technology stack.

3. Find local meetup groups that are involved in programming. Meetup.com is a good resource. Keep up to date with technology happenings in your area (conventions, talks, expos, etc), and attend them. Say hi to people, talk about what youd want in a job you think youd love.

Additional advice: Read the book "The Passionate Programmer"

Rubycorns of Rails Girls workshops

Also: https://github.com/spacetraveler/rubyissues

Rubyissues